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Oromo language



 
 
Oromo, also known as Afaan borana Oromoo, Oromiffa(a) (Ethiopic: ???? ’Orominya), and sometimes in other languages by variant spellings of these names (Oromic, Afan Oromo, etc.), is an Afro-Asiatic
Afro-Asiatic languages

The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 living languages and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southwest Asia ....
 language, and the most widely spoken of the Cushitic
Cushitic languages

The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages language family spoken in the Horn of Africa. They are named after the Biblical figure Cush by analogy with Shem being the eponym origin of Semitic languages....
 family. It is spoken as a first language by more than 25 million Oromo and neighboring peoples in Ethiopia and Kenya
Kenya

The Republic of Kenya is a country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the northeast, Tanzania to the south, Uganda to the west, and Sudan to the northwest, with the Indian Ocean running along the southeast border....
. Older publications refer to the language as "Galla", a term that is resented by Oromo people and no longer used.

Speakers
About 95 percent of Oromo speakers live in Ethiopia, mainly in Oromia Region
Oromia Region

Oromia is one of the nine Regions of Ethiopia of Ethiopia. Covering 353,632 square kilometers stretching from the eastern border in an arc to the southwestern corner of the country, its population was estimated in 2002 at about twenty-four million, making it the largest state in terms of both population and area....
.






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Encyclopedia


Oromo, also known as Afaan borana Oromoo, Oromiffa(a) (Ethiopic: ???? ’Orominya), and sometimes in other languages by variant spellings of these names (Oromic, Afan Oromo, etc.), is an Afro-Asiatic
Afro-Asiatic languages

The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 living languages and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southwest Asia ....
 language, and the most widely spoken of the Cushitic
Cushitic languages

The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages language family spoken in the Horn of Africa. They are named after the Biblical figure Cush by analogy with Shem being the eponym origin of Semitic languages....
 family. It is spoken as a first language by more than 25 million Oromo and neighboring peoples in Ethiopia and Kenya
Kenya

The Republic of Kenya is a country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the northeast, Tanzania to the south, Uganda to the west, and Sudan to the northwest, with the Indian Ocean running along the southeast border....
. Older publications refer to the language as "Galla", a term that is resented by Oromo people and no longer used.

Speakers


About 95 percent of Oromo speakers live in Ethiopia, mainly in Oromia Region
Oromia Region

Oromia is one of the nine Regions of Ethiopia of Ethiopia. Covering 353,632 square kilometers stretching from the eastern border in an arc to the southwestern corner of the country, its population was estimated in 2002 at about twenty-four million, making it the largest state in terms of both population and area....
. In Somalia
Somalia

Somalia , officially the Republic of Somalia and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic, is a country located in the Horn of Africa....
 there are also about 42,000 speakers of the language. In Kenya, the Ethnologue also lists 157,000 speakers of Borana and Orma, two languages closely related to Ethiopian Oromo. Within Ethiopia, Oromo is the first most spoken (more than 40%). Within Africa, it is the language with the fourth most speakers, after Arabic
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
 (if one counts the mutually unintelligible spoken forms of Arabic as a single language and assuming the same for the varieties of Oromo), Swahili
Swahili language

Swahili is the first language of the Swahili people , who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands....
, Hausa
Hausa language

Hausa is the Chadic languages with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 24 million people, and as a second language by about 15 million more....
.

Besides first language speakers, a number of members of other ethnicities who are in contact with the Oromos speak Oromo as a second language, for example, the Omotic
Omotic languages

The Omotic languages are a branch of the Afro-Asiatic family spoken in southwestern Ethiopia. The Ge'ez alphabet is used to write some Omotic languages, the Roman alphabet for some others....
-speaking Bambassi
Bambassi language

Bambassi is an Afro-Asiatic languages language spoken in Ethiopia around Bambesi town in the area east of Asosa in Benishangul-Gumuz Region . The language is also called Bambeshi, Siggoyo, Amam, Fadiro, Northern Mao, Didessa....
 and the Nilo-Saharan
Nilo-Saharan languages

The Nilo-Saharan languages are a hypothetical group of African languages spoken mainly in the upper parts of the Chari River and Nile rivers , including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of Nile meet....
-speaking Kwama in northwestern Oromia.

Language policy


Before the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974, publishing or broadcasting in Oromo was prohibited, and the few works that had been published, most notably Onesimos Nesib
Onesimos Nesib

Onesimos Nesib , was a native Oromo who converted to Lutheranism and translated the Christian Bible into the Oromo language. His parents named him Hika as a baby, meaning "Translator"; he took the name "Onesimus", after the Biblical character, upon converting to Christianity....
's and Aster Ganno
Aster Ganno

Aster Ganno was an Ethiopian Bible translator who worked with the better known Onesimos Nesib as a translator of the Oromo people Bible, published in 1899....
's translation of the Bible
Bible

The Bible is the central religious text of Judaism and Christianity. The exact Books of the Bible is dependent on the religious traditions of specific denominations....
 from the late nineteenth century, were written in the Ge'ez alphabet
Ge'ez alphabet

Ge'ez , also called Ethiopic, is an abugida script that was originally developed to write Ge'ez language, a Semitic languages. In communities that use it, such as the Amharic language and Tigrinya language, the script is called , which means "script" or "alphabet"....
, as was the 1875 New Testament produced by Krapf
Johann Ludwig Krapf

Johann Ludwig Krapf was a Germany missionary in East Africa, as well as an explorer, Linguistics, and traveler. Krapf played an important role in exploring East Africa with Johannes Rebmann....
. Following the 1974 Revolution, the government undertook a literacy campaign in several languages, including Oromo, and publishing and radio broadcasts began in the language. All Oromo materials printed in Ethiopia at that time, such as the newspaper Barissa, were written in the traditional script.

Plans to introduce Oromo instruction in the schools, however, were not realized until the government of Mengistu Haile Mariam
Mengistu Haile Mariam

Mengistu Haile Mariam was the most prominent officer of the Derg, the military junta that governed Ethiopia from 1974 to 1987, and the President of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia from 1987 to 1991....
 was overthrown in 1991, except in regions controlled by the Oromo Liberation Front
Oromo Liberation Front

The Oromo Liberation Front , or OLF, is an organization established in 1973 by Oromo people nationalists to promote self-determination for the Oromo people against what they call "Abyssinian colonial rule"....
. With the creation of "Oromia" under the new system of ethnic regions, it has been possible to introduce Oromo as the medium of instruction in elementary schools throughout the region (including areas where other ethnic groups live speaking their languages) and as a language of administration within the region.

Oromo is most commonly written with a modified Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
 called Qubee, which was formally adopted in 1991, . Various versions of the Latin based orthography had been used previoiusly, mostly by Oromos outside of Ethiopia and by the Oromo Liberation Front
Oromo Liberation Front

The Oromo Liberation Front , or OLF, is an organization established in 1973 by Oromo people nationalists to promote self-determination for the Oromo people against what they call "Abyssinian colonial rule"....
 rebels by the late 1970's (Heine 1986). In recent years, it is said to have been limited by the Ethiopian government. With the adoption of Qubee, it is believed more texts were written in the Oromo language between 1991 and 1997 than in the previous 100 years.

The Saphalo script was an indigenous Oromo script invented by Sheikh Bakri Saphalo (also known by his birth name, Abubaker Usman Odaa) in the years following Italian invasion of Ethiopia, and used underground afterwards . The Arabic alphabet
Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet is the writing system used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic language, Persian language, and Urdu language....
 has also been used intermittently in areas with Muslim populations.

Within Kenya
Kenya

The Republic of Kenya is a country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the northeast, Tanzania to the south, Uganda to the west, and Sudan to the northwest, with the Indian Ocean running along the southeast border....
 there has been radio broadcasting in Oromo (in the Borana dialect) on the Voice of Kenya since at least the 1980s. The Borana Bible in Kenya was printed in 1995 using the Latin alphabet, but not using the same spelling rules as in Ethiopian Qubee.

Sounds and orthography


Consonant and vowel phonemes

Like most other Ethiopian languages, whether Semitic, Cushitic, or Omotic, Oromo has a set of ejective consonant
Ejective consonant

In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspiration or tenuis consonants....
s, that is, voiceless stops or affricates that are accompanied by glottalization and an explosive burst of air. Oromo has another glottalized phone that is more unusual, an implosive
Implosive consonant

Implosive consonants are stop consonant with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in addition to expelling air from the lungs....
 retroflex stop, "dh" in Oromo orthography, a sound that is like an English "d" produced with the tongue curled back slightly and with the air drawn in so that a glottal stop is heard before the following vowel begins.

Oromo has the typical Southern Cushitic set of five short and five long vowels, indicated in the orthography by doubling the five vowel letters. The difference in length is contrastive, for example, hara 'lake', haaraa 'new'. Gemination
Gemination

In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant.Consonant length is distinctive in some languages, for instance Arabic language, Estonian language, Finnish language, Russian language, Hebrew language, Hungarian language, Italian language, Japanese language, L...
 is also significant in Oromo. That is, consonant length can distinguish words from one another, for example, badaa 'bad', baddaa 'highland'.

In the Qunee alphabet, a single "letter" consists either of a single symbol or a digraph ("ch", "dh", "ny", "ph", "sh"). Gemination is not obligatorily marked for the digraphs, though some writers indicate it by doubling the first symbol: qopphaa'uu 'be prepared'. In the charts below, the International Phonetic Alphabet
International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic....
 symbol for a phoneme is shown in brackets where it differs from the Oromo letter. The phonemes /p/, /v/ and /z/ appear in parentheses because they are only found in recent loan words. Note that there have been minor changes in the orthography since it was first adopted: "x" (IPA [t']) was originally represented as "th", and there has been some confusion among authors in the use of "c" and "ch" in representing the phonemes // and //, with some early works using "c" for // and "ch" for // and even "c" for different phonemes depending on where it appears in a word. This article uses "c" consistently for // and "ch" for //.




Grammar


Nouns


Gender
Like most other Afro-Asiatic languages
Afro-Asiatic languages

The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 living languages and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southwest Asia ....
, Oromo has two grammatical gender
Grammatical gender

In linguistics, grammatical genders, sometimes also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once....
s, masculine and feminine, and all nouns belong to either one or the other. Grammatical gender in Oromo enters into the grammar in the following ways:
  • Verbs (except for the copula be) agree with their subjects in gender when the subject is third person singular (he or she).
  • Third person singular personal pronouns (he, she, it, etc. in English) have the gender of the noun they refer to.
  • Adjectives agree with the nouns they modify in gender.
  • Some possessive adjectives ("my", "your") agree with the nouns they modify in some dialects.


Except in some southern dialects, there is nothing in the form of most nouns that indicates their gender. A small number of nouns pairs for people, however, end in -eessa (m.) and -eettii (f.), as do adjectives when they are used as nouns: obboleessa 'brother', obboleettii 'sister', dureessa 'the rich one (m.)', hiyyeettii 'the poor one (f.)'. Grammatical gender normally agrees with biological gender for people and animals; thus nouns such as abbaa 'father', ilma 'son', and sangaa 'ox' are masculine, while nouns such as haadha 'mother' and intala 'girl, daughter' are feminine. However, most names for animals do not specify biological gender.

Names of astronomical bodies are feminine: aduu 'sun', urjii 'star'. The gender of other inanimate nouns varies somewhat among dialects.

Number
Oromo has singular and plural number
Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
, but nouns that refer to multiple entities are not obligatorily plural. That is, if the context is clear, a formally singular noun may refer to multiple entities: nama 'man', nama shan, 'five men'. Another way of looking at this is to treat the "singular" form as unspecified for number.

When it is important to make the plurality of a referent clear, the plural form of a noun is used. Noun plurals are formed through the addition of suffix
Suffix

In grammar, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the grammatical conjugation of verbs....
es. The most common plural suffix is -oota; a final vowel is dropped before the suffix, and in the western dialects, the suffix becomes -ota following a syllable
Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of Speech communication sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter....
 with a long vowel: mana 'house', manoota 'houses', hiriyaa 'friend', hiriyoota 'friends', barsiisaa 'teacher', barsiiso(o)ta 'teachers'. Among the other common plural suffixes are -(w)wan, -een, and -(a)an; the latter two may cause a preceding consonant to be doubled: waggaa 'year', waggaawwan 'years', laga 'river', laggeen 'rivers', ilma 'son', ilmaan 'sons'.
Definiteness
Oromo has no indefinite articles
Article (grammar)

An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the types of reference being made by the noun, and to specify the volume or numerical scope of that reference....
 (corresponding to English a, some), but (except in the southern dialects) it indicates definiteness
Definiteness

In grammar, definiteness is a feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between entities which are specific and identifiable in a given context and entities which are not ....
 (English the) with suffixes on the noun: -(t)icha for masculine nouns (the ch is geminated though this is not normally indicated in writing) and -(t)ittii for feminine nouns. Vowel endings of nouns are dropped before these suffixes: karaa 'road', karicha 'the road', nama 'man', namicha/namticha 'the man', haroo 'lake', harittii 'the lake'. Note that for animate nouns that can take either gender, the definite suffix may indicate the intended gender: qaalluu 'priest', qaallicha 'the priest (m.)', qallittii 'the priest (f.)'. The definite suffixes appear to be used less often than the in English, and they seem not to co-occur with the plural suffixes.
Case
An Oromo noun has a citation form
Citation form

In linguistics the citation form of a word can mean:* its canonical form or lemma : the form of an inflection word given in dictionaries or glossaries, thus also called the dictionary form....
 or base form that is used when the noun is the object of a verb, the object of a preposition or postposition, or a nominal predicative
Predicative (adjectival or nominal)

In grammar, a predicative is an element of the Predicate of a sentence which supplements the subject or object by means of the verb. A predicative may be nominal or adjectival....
.
  • mana 'house', mana binne 'we bought a house'
  • hamma 'until', dhuma 'end', hamma dhuma 'until (the) end'
  • mana keessa, 'inside (a/the) house'
  • inni 'he', barsiisaa 'teacher', inni barsiisaa (dha) 'he is a teacher'


A noun may also appear in one of six other grammatical case
Grammatical case

In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject , of direct object, or of possession ....
s, each indicated by a suffix or the lengthening of the noun's final vowel. The case endings follow plural or definite suffixes if these appear. For some of the cases, there is a range of forms possible, some covering more than one case, and the differences in meaning among these alternatives may be quite subtle. Nominative
The nominative is used for nouns that are the subject
Subject (grammar)

The subject is one of the two main constituent every sentence can be divided into, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle....
s of clauses.
  • Ibsaa man's name, Ibsaan 'Ibsaa (nom.)', makiinaa, qaba 'he has', Ibsaan makiinaa qaba 'Ibsaa has a car'
Most nouns ending in short vowels with a preceding single consonant drop the final vowel and add -ni to form the nominative. Following certain consonants, assimilation
Assimilation (linguistics)

Assimilation is a common phonological process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word . A common example of assimilation would be "don't be silly" where the and in "don't" become and , where said naturally in many accents and discourse styles ....
 changes either the n or that consonant (the details depend on the dialect).
  • nama 'man', namni 'man (nom.)'
  • namoota 'men'; namootni, namoonni 'men (nom.)' (t + n may assimilate to nn)
If a final short vowel is preceded by two consonants or a geminated consonant, -i is suffixed.
  • ibsa 'statement', ibsi 'statement (nom.)'
  • namicha 'the man', namichi 'the man (nom.)' (the ch in the definite suffix -icha is actually geminated, though not normally written as such)
If the noun ends in a long vowel, -n is suffixed to this. This pattern applies to infinitives, which end in -uu.
  • maqaa 'name', maqaan 'name (nom.)'
  • nyachuu 'to eat, eating', nyachuun 'to eat, eating (nom.)'
If the noun ends in n, the nominative is identical to the base form.
  • afaan 'mouth, language (base form or nom.)'
Some feminine nouns ending in a short vowel add -ti. Again assimilation occurs in some cases.
  • haadha 'mother', haati (dh + t assimilates to t)
  • lafa 'earth', lafti
Genitive
The genitive is used for possession or "belonging"; it corresponds roughly to English of or -'s. The genitive is usually formed by lengthening a final short vowel, by adding -ii to a final consonant, and by leaving a final long vowel unchanged. The possessor noun follows the possessed noun in a genitive phrase. Many such phrases with specific technical meanings have been added to the Oromo lexicon in recent years.
  • obboleetti 'sister', namicha 'the man', obboleetti namichaa 'the man's sister'
  • hojii 'job', Caaltuu, woman's name, hojii Caaltuu, 'Caaltuu's job'
  • barumsa 'field of study', afaan 'mouth, language', barumsa afaanii 'linguistics'
In place of the genitive it is also possible to use the relative marker kan (m.) / tan (f.) preceding the possessor.
  • obboleetti kan namicha 'the man's sister'
Dative
Dative

Dative has several meanings.*In grammar, the dative case is used to indicate the noun to whom something is given.*In chemistry, a dative bond is a chemical bond in which the shared electrons come from one atom only....
The dative is used for nouns that represent the recipient (to) or the benefactor (for) of an event. The dative form of a verb infinitive
Infinitive

In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English language, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the grammatical particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives....
 (which acts like a noun in Oromo) indicates purpose. The dative takes one of the following forms:
  • Lengthening of a final short vowel (ambiguously also signifying the genitive)
  • namicha 'the man', namichaa 'to the man, of the man'
  • -f following a long vowel or a lengthened short vowel; -iif following a consonant


  • intala 'girl, daughter', intalaaf 'to a girl, daughter'
  • saree 'dog', sareef 'to a dog'
  • baruu 'to learn', baruuf 'in order to learn'
  • bishaan 'water', bishaaniif 'for water'
  • -dhaa or -dhaaf following a long vowel


  • saree 'dog'; sareedhaa, sareedhaaf 'to a dog'
  • -tti (with no change to a preceding vowel), especially with verbs of speaking


  • Caaltuu woman's name, himi 'tell, say (imperative)', Caaltuutti himi 'tell Caaltuu'
Instrumental
Instrumental case

The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action....
The instrumental is used for nouns that represent the instrument ("with"), the means ("by"), the agent ("by"), the reason, or the time of an event. The formation of the instrumental parallels that of the dative to some extent:
  • -n following a long vowel or a lengthened short vowel; -iin following a consonant
  • harka 'hand', harkaan 'by hand, with a hand'
  • halkan 'night', halkaniin 'at night'
  • -tiin following a long vowel or a lengthened short vowel


  • Afaan Oromoo 'Oromo (language)', Afaan Oromootiin 'in Oromo'
  • -dhaan following a long vowel


  • yeroo 'time', yeroodhaan 'on time'
  • bawuu 'to come out, coming out', bawuudhaan 'by coming out'
Locative
The locative is used for nouns that represent general locations of events or states, roughly at. For more specific locations, Oromo uses prepositions or postpositions. Postpositions may also take the locative suffix. The locative also seems to overlap somewhat with the instrumental, sometimes having a temporal function. The locative is formed with the suffix -tti.
  • Arsiitti 'in Arsii'
  • harka 'hand', harkatti 'in hand'
  • guyyaa 'day', guyyaatti 'per day'
  • jala, jalatti 'under'
Ablative
The ablative is to represent the source of an event; it corresponds closely to English from. The ablative, applied to postpositions and locative adverbs as well a nouns proper, is formed in the following ways:
  • When the word ends in a short vowel, this vowel is lengthened (as for the genitive).
  • biyya 'country', biyyaa 'from country'
  • keessa 'inside, in', keessaa 'from inside'
  • When the word ends in a long vowel, -dhaa is added (as for one alternative for the dative).


  • Finfinneedhaa 'from Finfinnee (Addis Ababa)'
  • gabaa 'market', gabaadhaa 'from market'
  • When the word ends in a consonant, -ii is added (as for the genitive).


  • Hararii 'from Harar'
  • Following a noun in the genitive, -tii is added.


  • mana 'house', buna 'coffee', mana bunaa 'cafe', mana bunaatii 'from cafe'
An alternative to the ablative is the postposition irraa 'from' whose initial vowel may be dropped in the process:
  • gabaa 'market', gabaa irraa, gabaarraa 'from market'


Pronouns


Personal pronouns
In most languages, there is a small number of basic distinctions of person
Grammatical person

Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deixis reference to a participant in an event, such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns....
, number
Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
, and often gender
Grammatical gender

In linguistics, grammatical genders, sometimes also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once....
 that play a role within the grammar of the language. Oromo and English are such languages. We see these distinctions within the basic set of independent personal pronouns, for example, English I, Oromo ani; English they, Oromo isaani and the set of possessive adjective
Possessive adjective

What are traditionally and popularly, if mistakenly, called possessive adjectives — in linguistic analyses possessive pronouns, possessive determiners or genitive pronouns — are a part of speech that prototypically modifies a noun by attributing possession to someone or something ....
s
and pronouns
Possessive pronoun

A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that attributes ownership to someone or something. Like all other pronouns, it substitutes a noun phrase and can prevent its repetition....
, for example, English my, Oromo koo; English mine, Oromo kan koo. In Oromo, the same distinctions are also reflected in subject-verb agreement: Oromo verbs (with a few exceptions) agree
Agreement (linguistics)

In languages, agreement is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when one word changes in form depending on to which other words it is being related....
 with their subjects
Subject (grammar)

The subject is one of the two main constituent every sentence can be divided into, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle....
; that is, the person, number, and (singular third person) gender of the subject of the verb are marked by suffixes
Affix

An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivation , like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed....
 on the verb. Because these suffixes vary greatly with the particular verb tense
Grammatical tense

Grammatical tense is a temporal language quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, and grammatical person, which verb forms may express....
/aspect
Grammatical aspect

In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow in the described event or state. In English, for example, the past-tense sentences "I swam" and "I was swimming" differ in aspect ....
/mood
Grammatical mood

Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive verb forms that are used to signal Linguistic modality.It is distinct from grammatical tense or grammatical aspect, although these concepts are conflated to some degree in many languages, including English and most other modern Indo-European languages, insofar as the same word patterns are used...
, they are normally not considered to be pronouns and are discussed elsewhere in this article under verb conjugation
Grammatical conjugation

In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb, noun or adjective from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by grammatical person, grammatical number, grammatical gender, grammatical tense, Grammatical aspect, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, or other grammatical category....
.

In all of these areas of the grammar — independent pronouns, possessive adjectives, possessive pronouns, and subject-verb agreement — Oromo distinguishes seven combinations of person, number, and gender. For first and second persons, there is a two-way distinction between singular ('I', 'you sg.') and plural ('we', 'you pl.'), whereas for third person, there is a two-way distinction in the singular ('he', 'she') and a single form for the plural ('they'). Because Oromo has only two genders, there is no pronoun corresponding to English it; the masculine or feminine pronoun is used according to the gender of the noun referred to.

Oromo is a subject pro-drop language
Pro-drop language

A pro-drop language is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatics inference . The phenomenon of "pronoun-dropping" is also commonly referred to in linguistics as zero or null anaphora ....
. That is, neutral sentences in which the subject is not emphasized do not require independent subject pronouns: kaleessa dhufne 'we came yesterday'. The Oromo word that translates 'we' does not appear in this sentence, though the person and number are marked on the verb dhufne ('we came') by the suffix -ne. When the subject in such sentences needs to be given prominence for some reason, an independent pronoun can be used: nuti kaleessa dhufne 'we came yesterday'.

The table below gives forms of the personal pronouns in the different cases, as well as the possessive adjectives. For the first person plural and third person singular feminine categories, there is considerable variation across dialects; only some of the possibilities are shown.

The possessive adjectives, treated as separate words here, are sometimes written as noun suffixes. In most dialects there is a distinction between masculine and feminine possessive adjectives for first and second person (the form agreeing with the gender of the modified noun). However, in the western dialects, the masculine forms (those beginning with
k-) are used in all cases. Possessive adjectives may take the case endings for the nouns they modify: ganda kootti 'to my village' (-tti: locative case).

As in languages such as French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
, Russian
Russian language

Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe....
, and Turkish
Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
, the Oromo second person plural is also used as a polite singular form, for reference to people that the speaker wishes to show respect towards. This usage is an example of the so-called T-V distinction
T-V distinction

In sociolinguistics, a T-V distinction describes the situation wherein a language has Grammatical person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....
 that is made in many languages. In addition, the third person plural may be used for polite reference to a single third person (either 'he' or 'she').

For possessive pronouns ('mine', 'yours', etc.), Oromo adds the possessive adjectives to
kan 'of': kan koo 'mine', kan kee 'yours', etc.

Reflexive and reciprocal pronouns
Oromo has two ways of expressing reflexive pronoun
Reflexive pronoun

A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphora that must be bound by its antecedent ....
s ('myself', 'yourself', etc.). One is to use the noun meaning 'self':
of(i) or if(i). This noun is inflected for case but, unless it is being emphasized, not for person, number, or gender: isheen of laalti 'she looks at herself' (base form of of), isheen ofiif makiinaa bitte 'she bought herself a car' (dative of of).

The other possibility is to use the noun meaning 'head',
mataa, with possessive suffixes: mataa koo 'myself', mataa kee 'yourself (s.)', etc.

Oromo has a reciprocal pronoun
Reciprocal (grammar)

A reciprocal is a Linguistics structure that marks a particular kind of relationship between two noun phrases. In a reciprocal construction, each of the thematic role occupies both the role of agent and patient with respect to each other....
 
wal (English 'each other') that is used like of/if. That is, it is inflected for case but not person, number, or gender: wal jaalatu 'they like each other' (base form of wal), kennaa walii bidan 'they brought each other gifts' (dative of wal).

Demonstrative pronouns
Like English, Oromo makes a two-way distinction between proximal ('this, these') and distal ('that, those') demonstrative pronouns and adjectives. Some dialects distinguish masculine and feminine for the proximal pronouns; in the western dialects the masculine forms (beginning with
k-) are used for both genders. Unlike in English, singular and plural demonstratives are not distinguished, but, as for nouns and personal pronouns in the language, case is distinguished. Only the base and nominative forms are shown in the table below; the other cases are formed from the base form as for nouns, for example, sanatti 'at/on/in that' (locative case).

Verbs

An Oromo verb consists minimally of a stem, representing the lexical
Lexicon

In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes....
 meaning of the verb, and a suffix, representing tense
Grammatical tense

Grammatical tense is a temporal language quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, and grammatical person, which verb forms may express....
 or aspect
Grammatical aspect

In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow in the described event or state. In English, for example, the past-tense sentences "I swam" and "I was swimming" differ in aspect ....
 and subject
Subject (grammar)

The subject is one of the two main constituent every sentence can be divided into, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle....
 agreement. For example, in
dhufne 'we came', dhuf- is the stem ('come') and -ne indicates that the tense is past and that the subject of the verb is first person plural.

As in many other Afro-Asiatic languages
Afro-Asiatic languages

The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 living languages and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southwest Asia ....
, Oromo makes a basic two-way distinction in its verb system between the two tensed forms, past (or "perfect") and present (or "imperfect" or "non-past"). Each of these has its own set of tense/agreement suffixes. There is a third conjugation based on the present which has three functions: it is used in place of the present in subordinate clauses, for the jussive ('let me/us/him, etc. V', together with the particle
haa), and for the negative
Negation

In logic and mathematics, negation or not is an operation on logical values, for example, the logical value of a proposition, that sends true to false and false to true....
 of the present (together with the particle
hin). For example, deemne 'we went', deemna 'we go', akka deemnu 'that we go', haa deemnu 'let's go', hin deemnu 'we don't go'. There is also a separate imperative
Imperative

Imperative can mean:*Imperative mood, a grammatical mood expressing commands, direct requests, and prohibitions*Imperative programming, a programming paradigm in computer science...
 form:
deemi 'go (sg.)!'.
Conjugation
The table below shows the conjugation in the affirmative and negative of the verb
beek- 'know'. The first person singular present and past affirmative forms require the suffix -n to appear on the word preceding the verb or the word nan before the verb. The negative particle hin, shown as a separate word in the table, is sometimes written as a prefix on the verb.

For verbs with stems ending in certain consonants and suffixes beginning with consonants (that is,
t or n), there are predictable changes to one or the other of the consonants. The dialects vary a lot in the details, but the following changes are common.

Verbs whose stems end in two consonants and whose suffix begins with a consonant must insert a vowel to break up the consonants since the language does not permit sequences of three consonants. There are two ways this can happen: either the vowel
i is inserted between the stem and the suffix, or the final stem consonants are switched (an example of metathesis
Metathesis

Metathesis may refer to the following:* Metathesis , in phonology, a sound change that alters the order of phonemes in a word** Quantitative metathesis, a situation in which two vowel sounds follow directly one after the other and a transposition of vowel length takes place...
) and the vowel
a is inserted between them. For example, arg- 'see', arga 'he sees', argina or agarna 'we see'; kolf- 'laugh', kolfe 'he laughed', kolfite or kofalte 'you (sg.) laughed'.

Verbs whose stems end in the consonant ' (which may appear as
h, w, or y in some words, depending on the dialect) belong to three different conjugation classes; the class is not predictable from the verb stem. It is the forms that precede suffixes beginning with consonants (t and n) that differ from the usual pattern. The third person masculine singular, second person singular, and first person plural present forms are shown for an example verb in each class.
  1. du'- 'die': du'a 'he dies', duuta 'you (sg.) die', duuna 'we die'
  2. beela'-, 'be hungry': beela'a 'he is hungry', beelofta 'you (sg.) are hungry', beelofna 'we are hungry'
  3. dhaga'- 'hear': dhaga'a 'he hears', dhageessa 'you (sg.) hear', dhageenya 'we hear' (note that the suffix consonants change)


The common verbs
fedh- 'want' and godh- 'do' deviate from the basic conjugation pattern in that long vowels replace the geminated consonants that would result when suffixes beginning with t or n are added: fedha 'he wants', feeta 'you (sg.) want', feena 'we want', feetu 'you (pl.) want', hin feene 'didn't want', etc.

The verb
dhuf- 'come' has the irregular imperatives koottu, koottaa. The verb deem- 'go' has, alongside regular imperative forms, the irregular imperatives beenu, beenaa.
Derivation
An Oromo verb root can be the basis for three derived voices, passive, causative, and autobenefactive, each formed with addition of a suffix to the root, yielding the stem that the inflectional suffixes are added to. Passive voice
The Oromo passive corresponds closely to the English passive in function. It is formed by adding -am to the verb root. The resulting stem is conjugated regularly. Examples: beek- 'know', beekam- 'be known', beekamani 'they were known'; jedh- 'say', jedham- 'be said', jedhama 'it is said'
Causative voice
The Oromo causative of a verb V corresponds to English expressions such as 'cause V', 'make V', 'let V'. With intransitive verbs, it has a transitivizing function. It is formed by adding -s, -sis, or -siis to the verb root, except that roots ending in -l add -ch. Verbs whose roots end in ' drop this consonant and may lengthen the preceding vowel before adding -s. Examples: beek- 'know', beeksis- 'cause to know, inform', beeksifne 'we informed'; ka'- 'go up, get up', kaas- 'pick up', kaasi 'pick up (sing.)!'; gal- 'enter', galch- 'put in', galchiti 'she puts in'; bar- 'learn', barsiis- 'teach', nan barsiisa 'I teach'.
Autobenefactive voice
The Oromo autobenefactive (or "middle" or "reflexive-middle") voice of a verb V corresponds roughly to English expressions such as 'V for oneself' or 'V on one's own', thought the precise meaning may be somewhat unpredictable for many verbs. It is formed by adding -adh to the verb root. The conjugation of a middle verb is irregular in the third person singular masculine of the present and past (-dh in the stem changes to -t) and in the singular imperative (the suffix is -u rather than -i). Examples: bit- 'buy', bitadh- 'buy for oneself', bitate 'he bought (something) for himself', bitadhu 'but for yourself (sing.)!'; qab- 'have', qabadh- 'seize, hold (for oneself)', qabanna 'we hold'. Some autobenefactives are derived from nouns rather than verbs, for example, hojjadh- 'work' from the noun hojii 'work'.


The voice suffixes can be combined in various ways. Two causative suffixes are possible:
ka'- 'go up', kaas- 'pick up', kaasis- 'cause to pick up'. The causative may be followed by the passive or the autobenefactive; in this case the s of the causative is replaced by f: deebi'- 'return (intransitive)', deebis- 'return (transitive), answer', deebifam- 'be returned, be answered', deebifadh- 'get back for oneself'.

Another derived verbal aspect is the frequentative
Frequentative

In grammar, a frequentative form of a word is one which indicates repeated action. The frequentative form can be considered a separate, but not completely independent word, called a frequentative....
 or "intensive," formed by copying the first consonant and vowel of the verb root and geminating the second occurrence of the initial consonant. The resulting stem indicates the repetition or intensive performance of the action of the verb. Examples:
bul- 'spend the night', bubbul- 'spend several nights', cab- 'break', caccab- 'break to pieces, break completely'; dhiib- 'push, apply pressure', dhiddhiib- 'massage'.

The infinitive is formed from a verb stem with the addition of the suffix
-uu. Verbs whose stems end in -dh (in particular all autobenefactive verbs) change this to ch before the suffix. Examples: dhug- 'drink', dhuguu 'to drink'; ga'- 'reach', ga'uu 'to reach'; jedh- 'say', jechu 'to say'. The verb fedh- is exceptional; its infinitive is fedhuu rather than the expected fechuu. The infinitive behaves like a noun; that is, it can take any of the case suffixes. Examples: ga'uu 'to reach', ga'uuf 'in order to reach' (dative case); dhug- 'drink', dhugam- 'be drunk', dhugamuu to be drunk', dhugamuudhaan 'by being drunk' (instrumental case).

External links

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Bibliography


Grammar






Dictionaries



  • Gragg, Gene B. et al. (ed., 1982) Oromo Dictionary. Monograph (Michigan State University. Committee on Northeast African Studies) no. 12. East Lansing, Mich. : African Studies Center, Michigan State Univ.