Nayi (also known as "Nao") is an

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 of the

Afro-Asiatic The Afroasiatic languages (also known as Afro-Asiatic, Afrasian, Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic) are a language family (or "phylum") of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of th ...

language family spoken in western

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 ...

. Most of the speakers of the language live in two separated areas. The largest grouping live in

Decha Decha is a Districts of Ethiopia, district in the South West Ethiopia Peoples' Region, South West Region of Ethiopia. The name Decha comes from one of the provinces in the former Kingdom of Kaffa, which had the approximately same boundaries. Part o ...

woreda Districts of Ethiopia, also called woredas (; ''woreda''), are the third level of the administrative divisions of Ethiopia – after ''List of zones of Ethiopia, zones'' and the ''Regions of Ethiopia, regional states''. These districts are f ...

of the

Keffa Zone Keffa or Kaffa, is a zone in the South West Region of Ethiopia. The administrative center is Bonga. History The Zone is named after the Kingdom of Kaffa. Kaffa was part of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region (SNNPR) unti ...

. The nearest city to their region is

Bonga Bonga is a town, woreda and one of the multicapital of the South West Ethiopia Peoples' Region in Ethiopia. Located in the Keffa Zone upon a hill in the upper Barta valley, it has a latitude and longitude of with an elevation of 1,714 meters a ...

. A few in Dulkuma village of the Shoa Bench woreda, some in Sheko woreda having moved there in 1976-1977 as a result of conflicts between local feudal lords and the military government (Aklilu 2002:4). In Decha, young people no longer speak the language. The language is notable for its

retroflex consonant A retroflex () or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consona ...

s (Aklilu Yilma 1988), a striking feature shared with closely related

Dizi Dizi may refer to: *Dizi (instrument), a Chinese transverse flute * Dizi (woreda), a district of Ethiopia *Dizi people, an ethnic group in southern Ethiopia **Dizi language * Dizi, Iran *Abgoosht, a Persian dish *Turkish television drama series ('' ...

, Sheko and nearby (but not closely related) Bench. The language has 5 vowels that can be long or short. The question of the status of a short mid central vowel is still unresolved. There are three phonemic tones and syllabic nasal consonants. There are

ejective In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some l ...

stops and affricates, but no

implosives Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants (and possibly also some affricates) with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in additio ...

(Aklilu 2002:6,7). Nayi, together with the

and Sheko languages, is part of a cluster of languages variously called "Maji" or " Dizoid" Andualem Adal Tessema said that according to Aklilu (1990), Naayì has twenty nine consonant phonemes and two Syllabic nasals n and m which carry tone. It is also indicated that consonant gemination is phonemic in Naayì and the language has three tonemes: high, mid and low. Regarding the vowel phonemes, Naayì has six short vowel phonemes i, e, ä, a, u, o and five long vowel phonemes i:, e:, a:, u:, o:. He remarks that the status of the short vowel ä in Naayì needs further investigations; and its long counterpart is not found in the language.

Notes

References

*Aklilu Yilma. 1990. Two phonological processes in Nayi: palatalization and labialization. In Tadesse Beyene, Richard Pankhurst, Ahmed Zekaria, eds., ''Proceedings of the Firstr National Conference of Ethiopian Studies''. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University. *Aklilu Yilma. 1994. "A sketch of the Nayi grammar." S.L.L.E. linguistic reports 16: 1-20. *Aklilu Yilma. 2002
"Sociolinguistic survey report of the Nayi language of Ethiopia."
SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2002-010. * Aklilu Yilma and Ralph Siebert. 1995. "Survey of Chara, Dime, Melo and Nayi, part 1." S.L.L.E. linguistic reports 25: 2-8. * Andualem Adal Tessema 2020 A Descriptive Syntax of Naayì page 10

External links

Nayi basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
Languages of Ethiopia Dizoid languages {{AfroAsiatic-lang-stub