Hadiyya language

Hadiyya (speakers call it Hadiyyisa, others sometimes call it ''Hadiyigna'', ''Adiya'', ''Adea'', ''Adiye'', ''Hadia'', ''Hadiya'', ''Hadya'') is the language of the Hadiya people of Ethiopia. Over 1.2 million speakers of Hadiyya, making it one of the ten major languages in Ethiopia. It is a Highland East Cushitic language of the Afroasiatic family. Most speakers live in the Hadiya Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region (SNNPR). The language has four recognized dialects—Leemo, Badawacho, Shashogo, and Sooro. These are mutually intelligible, with slight regional variations.

The closely related Libido language, located just to the north in the Mareko district of Gurage Zone, is very similar lexically, but has significant morphological differences. Historically oral, Hadiyya is now written using a Latin-based orthography, developed for educational and administrative use. Hadiyya has a set of complex consonant phonemes consisting of a glottal stop and a sonorant: .

In their book (English version 1999), Braukämper and Mishago compiled a reasonably sized collection of the presently vanishing art of traditional songs of Hadiyya. The lyrics adhere to the strict rule of Hadiyya traditional poetry where rhythmical rhyming occurs at the beginning of the verse.

The New Testament of the Christian Bible has been translated into Hadiyya, published by the Bible Society of Ethiopia in 1993. It was originally produced using the traditional Ethiopic syllabary. A later printing used the Latin alphabet.

Phonology

Consonants

The phonology of the Hadiyya language, part of the Highland East Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, is characterized by its unique consonantal and vowel systems, syllable structure, and morphophonemic processes.
Hadiyya has 23 consonant phonemes categorized by place and manner of articulation:

* /r/ can be heard as either a flap �or a trill
* Gemination can occur in most consonants word-medially, except for /r, z, h, Ê”/.

Vowels

Vowel System

Hadiyya has a set of five vowel phonemes: /a, e, i, o, u/. These vowels exhibit:

* Phonemic vowel length: The length of vowels changes word meanings (e.g., short /a/ vs. long /aa/).
* Distribution restrictions: Certain vowels co-occur only under specific conditions.

Pitch Accent

Hadiyya exhibits a pitch accent system, where pitch can distinguish lexical or grammatical meanings. This is a defining feature of Highland East Cushitic languages.

Orthography

Grammar

General features of the hadiyyan grammar

Word Order: Hadiyya follows a Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) word order.

Agglutinative Morphology: Words are built through the addition of suffixes and infixes, marking tense, aspect, case, number, and more.

Case Marking: Nouns and pronouns are marked for various cases, reflecting their grammatical roles in sentences.

Pitch Accent: Hadiyya employs a pitch accent system, where changes in pitch can distinguish word meanings or grammatical forms.

Nouns

Hadiyya has a detailed system for marking nouns, with about nine main cases: absolutive (the basic form), nominative, genitive, dative, ablative, locative, instrumental, comitative, and similative. The absolutive is used for subjects in simple sentences and objects when the subject performs an action. If a noun is definite, specific suffixes are added to show its role in the sentence, while indefinite nouns remain unmarked in some cases.

Hadiyya also uses postpositions (similar to prepositions in English) that combine with certain cases, like the genitive or dative, to express relationships like possession or location. Reflexive forms are common, where a suffix shows that a noun belongs to the subject of the sentence (e.g., "his own house").

Adjectives in Hadiyya usually match the nouns they describe in gender, number, and definiteness, but they don’t take case suffixes unless the noun is implied. Special suffixes are also used to create related nouns, such as ones that describe tools, doers of actions, or abstract ideas. This system makes Hadiyya a rich and expressive language, typical of its Highland East Cushitic family.

Pronouns

Hadiyya has a detailed system of pronouns that are essential for expressing relationships, ownership, and forming questions. Below is an overview of the key types of pronouns.

Personal pronouns in Hadiyya indicate the speaker, listener, or others. They are distinguished by person (first, second, third), number (singular or plural), and sometimes gender.

* Examples:
** First Person: ''ane'' (‘I’), ''neen'' (‘we’)
** Second Person: ''att'' (‘you’ singular), ''ateen'' (‘you all’)
** Third Person: ''isu'' (‘he’), ''isa'' (‘she’), ''isen'' (‘they’)

Possessive pronouns show ownership and are typically formed by adding possessive suffixes to nouns. They agree with the possessor in person and number.

* Examples:
** ''guri-ane'' (‘my house’)
** ''guri-att'' (‘your house’)
** ''guri-isen'' (‘their house’)

Verbs

Adjectives

Numerals - t'íga

Source:

When combining numerals, in Hadiyya from the numbers 11-99, you attach the base of the decade with the unit, using a structure that translates as “ ecade+ nit��. For example:

21: ''Tommá máto'' ("20 and 1")

35: ''Sómmo ʔónto'' ("30 and 5")

48: ''Soóre sadeénto'' ("40 and 8")

After 100, the speakers of Hadiyya combine the numeral of 100 with the decades and the units of the numerals before.

142: ''ʃíha sóore lámo'' ("100 and 40 and 2")

Notes

References

* Korhonen, Elsa, Mirja Saksa, and Ronald J. Sim. 1986. "A dialect study of Kambaata-Hadiyya (Ethiopia) art 1" Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 5: 5-41.
* Korhonen, Elsa, Mirja Saksa, and Ronald J. Sim. 1986. "A dialect study of Kambaata-Hadiyya (Ethiopia), part 2: Appendices." Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 6: 71-121.
* Leslau, Wolf. 1985. The liquid l in Hadiyya and West Gurage. Mélanges linguistiques offerts à Maxime Rodinson (Comptes rendus du groupe linguistique d’études chamito-sémitiques supplément 12), 231-238. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner.
* Perrett, Denise Lesley. 1993. The switch-reference phenomena in Hadiyya: A labelled deductive system perspective, M.A. thesis, Univ. of London.
* Perrett, Denise Lesley. 2000. The dynamics of tense construal in Hadiyya, Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of London.
* Plazikowsky-Brauner, Herma. 1960. Die Hadiya-Sprache. Rassegna di Studi Etiopici 16.38-76.
* Plazikowsky-Brauner, Herma. 1961. Texte der Hadiya-Sprache. Rassegna di Studi Etiopici 17.83-115.
* Plazikowsky-Brauner, Herma. 1964. Wörterbuch der Hadiya-Sprache. Rassegna di Studi Etiopici 20.133-182.
* Sim, Ronald J. 1985. "The morphological structure of some main verb forms in Hadiyya." In The verb morphophonemics of five highland east Cushitic languages, including Burji, 10-43. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere, 2. Cologne: Institut für Afrikanistik.
* Sim, Ronald J. 1988. "Violations of the two-consonant constraint in Hadiyya." African Languages and Cultures 1: 77-90.
* Sim, Ronald J. 1989. Predicate conjoining in Hadiyya: a head-driven PS grammar. Ph.D. thesis. University of Edinburgh.
* Stinson, D. Lloyd. 1976. Hadiyya. In Language in Ethiopia, M. L. Bender et al., eds., 148-154. London: Oxford University Press.
* Tadese Sibamo Garkebo. 2015. ''Documentation and Description of Hadiyya''. Addis Ababa University doctoral dissertation
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East Cushitic languages
Languages of Ethiopia
Subject–object–verb languages
Cushitic-speaking peoples