Yemsa is the language of the
Yem people of the former Kingdom of
Yamma, known as
Kingdom of Janjero to the
Amhara. It is a member of the
Omotic
The Omotic languages are a group of languages spoken in southwestern Ethiopia, in the Omo River region. The Ge'ez script is used to write some of the Omotic languages, the Latin script for some others. They are fairly agglutinative and have com ...
group of languages, most closely related to
Kafa. It is distinctive in having different systems of vocabulary depending on social status, rather like
Japanese and
Javanese. The estimated number of speakers varies wildly from about 1000 (Bender, 1976) to half a million (Aklilu, 1993).
Yemsa is the main language spoken in
Yem special woreda,
SNNPR.
The Fuga dialect is distinct enough to perhaps be a different language.
Sample verb forms
* - I do
* - we do
* - you (singular) do
* - he does
* - she does
[''African Languages: An Introduction'', edited by Bernd Heine & Derek Nurse, Cambridge University Press, 2000.]
Notes
External links
*
World Atlas of Language Structures information o
YemsaYemsa basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
North Omotic languages
Languages of Ethiopia
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