Karo (also Cherre, Kere, Kerre, Kara) is a South

Omotic The Omotic languages are a group of languages spoken in southwestern Ethiopia, in the Omo River region and southeastern Sudan in Blue Nile State. The Geʽez script is used to write some of the Omotic languages, the Latin script for some others. T ...

language spoken in the Debub (South) Omo Zone of the

Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region The Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region (often abbreviated as SNNPR; ) was a Regions of Ethiopia, regional state in southwestern Ethiopia. It was formed from the merger of five ''kililoch'', called Regions 7 to 11, following the ...

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

. Karo is described as being closely related to its neighbor, Hamer-Banna, with a lexical similarity of 81%, and is considered a dialect of Hamer by Blench (2006), but as a separate language belonging to the ''Hamer-Karo'' subfamily in

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is an open-access online bibliographic database of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials ( grammars, articles, dictionaries) describing individual languages, the database also contains the most up-to-d ...

. The Karo people, who live close to the lower Omo River, use colorful bodywork, complex headdresses and body scars to express beauty and importance within the community. 2,400 speakers are using the Karo language.

Basic vocabulary

In percentages of basic vocabulary scored by 14

languages against 13 others, Karo scored 12 in Male, 9 in Chara, 12 in Basketo, 12 in Wolaytta, 14 in Kullo, 10 in Dace, 14 in Dorze, 14 in Oyda, 5 in Kacama, 10 in Koyra, 10 in Gidicho, 14 in Zayse, 14 in Zergulla. Unlike the strongest contributors to pairs of languages sharing unitary forms language-wise such as Inyangatom, Central Koma and Langa, Disoha, and Ingassana, Karo contributed none.

References

Languages of Ethiopia Aroid languages Afroasiatic languages {{Ethiopia-stub