Gedeo is a
Highland East Cushitic
Highland East Cushitic, or Sidamic, is a branch of the Afroasiatic language family spoken in south-central Ethiopia. They are often grouped with Lowland East Cushitic, Dullay, and Yaaku as ''East Cushitic'', but that group is not well defined a ...
language of the
Afro-Asiatic
The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic ...
family spoken in south central
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the Er ...
. Alternate names for the language include Derasa, Deresa, Darassa, Geddeo, Derasanya, Darasa. It is spoken by the
Gedeo people, who live in the highland area, southwest of
Dila and east of
Lake Abaya
Lake Abaya ( Amharic: አባያ ሐይቅ) is a lake in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region of Ethiopia. It is located in the Main Ethiopian Rift, east of the Guge Mountains.
The town of Arba Minch lies on its southwestern ...
.
[Raymond G. Gordon Jr., ed. 2005. ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World''. 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.]
The languages has SOV word order. Verbs are marked for person, number, and gender of subject. Verbs are marked for voice: active, causative, middle, and passive.
The New Testament was published in the Gedeo language in 1986, using the
Ethiopian syllabary.
Notes
References
* Wedekind, Klaus. 1980. "Sidamo, Gedeo (Derasa), Burji: Phonological differences and likenesses," ''Journal of Ethiopian Studies'' 14: 131-76.
* Wedekind, Klaus. 1985. "Gedeo (Derasa) verb morphology and morphophonemics," ''The verb morphophonemics of five highland east Cushitic languages, including Burji''. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 2. Cologne: Institut für Afrikanistik. Pages 82–109.
External links
Introduction to Gedeo dictionary(archived)
Gedeo dictionary(archived)
East Cushitic languages
Languages of Ethiopia
{{AfroAsiatic-lang-stub