Ongota (also known as Birale [ISO 639-3], Birayle) is a moribund language of southwest
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
. In 2008, it was said to be in a state of decline with only 6 elderly native speakers, the rest of their small village on the west bank of the
Weito RiverThe Weito River is a river in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region of Ethiopia...
having adopted the
Tsamai languageTsamai is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Ethiopia. Tsamai is a member of the Dullay dialect continuum.- References :* - Further reading :...
instead. The
grammarIn linguistics, grammar is the set of logical and structural rules that govern the composition of sentences, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology,...
follows a Subject Object Verb word order. It is probably
AfroasiaticThe Afroasiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 living languages and more than 350 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southwest Asia, as well as parts of the Sahel, West Africa and East Africa. Arabic is the most widespread Afroasiatic...
, but has not been definitively classified. As of 2004, it is being studied by Aklilu Yilma of
Addis Ababa UniversityAddis Ababa University is a university in Ethiopia. It was originally named "University College of Addis Ababa" at its founding, then renamed for the former Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I in 1962, receiving its current name in 1975....
.
Ongota has features of both Afroasiatic and Nilo-Saharan languages that confuse its classification.
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Ongota (also known as Birale [ISO 639-3], Birayle) is a moribund language of southwest
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
. In 2008, it was said to be in a state of decline with only 6 elderly native speakers, the rest of their small village on the west bank of the
Weito RiverThe Weito River is a river in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region of Ethiopia...
having adopted the
Tsamai languageTsamai is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Ethiopia. Tsamai is a member of the Dullay dialect continuum.- References :* - Further reading :...
instead. The
grammarIn linguistics, grammar is the set of logical and structural rules that govern the composition of sentences, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology,...
follows a Subject Object Verb word order. It is probably
AfroasiaticThe Afroasiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 living languages and more than 350 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southwest Asia, as well as parts of the Sahel, West Africa and East Africa. Arabic is the most widespread Afroasiatic...
, but has not been definitively classified. As of 2004, it is being studied by Aklilu Yilma of
Addis Ababa UniversityAddis Ababa University is a university in Ethiopia. It was originally named "University College of Addis Ababa" at its founding, then renamed for the former Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I in 1962, receiving its current name in 1975....
.
Classification
Ongota has features of both Afroasiatic and Nilo-Saharan languages that confuse its classification. Fleming (2006) considers it to be an independent branch of Afroasiatic. Savà and Tosco (2003) believe it to be an East Cushitic language with a Nilo-Saharan
substratumIn linguistics, a stratum or strate is a language that influences, or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum is a language which is influenced by another, while a superstratum is the language that exerts the influence...
—that is, that Ongota speakers shifted to East Cushitic from an earlier Nilo-Saharan language, traces of which still remain.
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