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57-478: Samaale , also spelled Samali or Samale ( Somali : Samaale ) is traditionally considered to be the common forefather of several major Somali clans and their respective sub-clans. His name is the source of the ethnonym Somali . As the purported ancestor of most pastoralist clans living in the northern part of Somalia , Samaale lies at the basis of the largest and most widespread Somali lineage (the second largest lineage belonging to Samaale's brother Sab ,
114-738: A Latin orthography as the official national alphabet over several other writing scripts that were then in use. Concurrently, the Italian -language daily newspaper Stella d'Ottobre ("The October Star") was nationalized, renamed to Xiddigta Oktoobar , and began publishing in Somali. The state-run Radio Mogadishu has also broadcast in Somali since 1951. Additionally, other state-run public networks like Somaliland National TV , regional public networks such as Puntland TV and Radio and, as well as Eastern Television Network and Horn Cable Television , among other private broadcasters, air programs in Somali. Somali
171-515: A post-Islamic common TMRCA (time to most recent common ancestor) and with a post-Islamic paternal Arabian origin for the majority of the ethnicity. The majority of Somalis have a TMRCA between 4,000-2,000 years before present in the Bronze Age . The claimed descent of Samaale from the Banu Hashim is as follows: Samaale was the son of Hill, the son of Muhammad Yow, the son of Muhammad Abd al-Rahman,
228-453: A cousin of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and older brother of Ali . Although these claims of descent are historically untenable, they do reflect the longstanding cultural contacts between Somalia (especially, though not exclusively, its most northern part Somaliland ) and Southern Arabia . The progenitor Samaale is generally regarded as the source of the ethnonym Somali . Others state that
285-463: A harmonic counterpart, expressed either at the front or at the back of the mouth. Somali words follow a vowel harmony rule. However, Somali orthography, neither Somali Latin alphabet , nor Arabic alphabet, nor Osmanya alphabet distinguish between the two vowel harmony sets. A shortcoming of the Arabic script for Somali language, is that while Somali has 5 vowels, Arabic has 3. This was where, Galaal got
342-488: A prominent 40,000-entry Somali dictionary. Most of the terms consisted of commonly used nouns. These lexical borrowings may have been more extensive in the past since a few words that Zaborski (1967:122) observed in the older literature were absent in Agostini's later work. In addition, the majority of personal names are derived from Arabic. The Somali language also contains a few Indo-European loanwords that were retained from
399-516: Is a result of a long series of southward population movements over the past ten centuries from the Gulf of Aden littoral. Lamberti subdivides Northern Somali into three dialects: Northern Somali proper (spoken in the northwest; he describes this dialect as Northern Somali in the proper sense), the Darod group (spoken in the northeast and along the eastern Ethiopia frontier; greatest number of speakers overall), and
456-448: Is a tonal language, whereas Banti (1988) suggests that it is a pitch system. The syllable structure of Somali is (C)V(C). Root morphemes usually have a mono- or di-syllabic structure. Clusters of two consonants do not occur word-initially or word-finally, i.e., they only occur at syllable boundaries. The following consonants can be geminate: /b/, /d/, /ɖ/, /ɡ/, /ɢ/, /m/, /n/, /r/ and /l/. The following cannot be geminate: /t/, /k/ and
513-703: Is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch. It is spoken primarily in Greater Somalia , and by the Somali diaspora as a mother tongue. Somali is an official language in both Somalia and Ethiopia , and serves as a national language in Djibouti , it is also a recognised minority language in Kenya . The Somali language is officially written with the Latin alphabet although
570-473: Is an important part of Somali culture, epitomized by the saying tol waa tolane , meaning 'clan is something joined together'. One of multiple possible tables used by scholars to sketch the main outlines of Somali clan genealogy is as follows: Somali language Somali ( / s ə ˈ m ɑː l i , s oʊ -/ sə- MAH -lee, soh- ; Latin script: Af Soomaali ; Wadaad : اف صومالِ ; Osmanya : 𐒖𐒍 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘 [af soːmaːli] )
627-583: Is not marked, and front and back vowels are not distinguished. Writing systems developed in the twentieth century include the Osmanya , Borama and Kaddare alphabets , which were invented by Osman Yusuf Kenadid , Abdurahman Sheikh Nuur and Hussein Sheikh Ahmed Kaddare , respectively. Several digital collections of texts in the Somali language have been developed in recent decades. These corpora include Kaydka Af Soomaaliga (KAF), Bangiga Af Soomaaliga,
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#1732844259463684-428: Is rarely pronounced as a velar fricative, Partially the reason why is that it is mostly found in Arabic loanwords. It is pronounced as the phoneme χ when it is an allophone for the letter ⟨q⟩ in syllabic codas. As in A kh ri from A q ri meaning (read). Pitch is phonemic in Somali, but it is debated whether Somali is a pitch accent , or it is a tonal language . Andrzejewski (1954) posits that Somali
741-570: Is recognized as an official working language in the Somali Region of Ethiopia. Although it is not an official language of Djibouti , it constitutes a major national language there. Somali is used in television and radio broadcasts, with the government-operated Radio Djibouti transmitting programs in the language from 1943 onwards. The Kenya Broadcasting Corporation also broadcasts in the Somali language in its Iftin FM Programmes. The language
798-467: Is similar to the stem alternation that typifies Cairene Arabic . Somali has two sets of pronouns: independent (substantive, emphatic) pronouns and clitic (verbal) pronouns. The independent pronouns behave grammatically as nouns, and normally occur with the suffixed article -ka/-ta (e.g. adiga , "you"). This article may be omitted after a conjunction or focus word. For example, adna meaning "and you..." (from adi - na ). Clitic pronouns are attached to
855-712: Is spoken by an estimated 95% of the country's inhabitants, and also by a majority of the population in Djibouti. Following the start of the Somali Civil War in the early 1990s, the Somali-speaking diaspora increased in size, with newer Somali speech communities forming in parts of the Middle East, North America and Europe. Constitutionally, Somali and Arabic are the two official languages of Somalia . Somali has been an official national language since January 1973, when
912-557: Is spoken in Somali inhabited areas of Somalia , Djibouti , Ethiopia , Kenya , Yemen and by members of the Somali diaspora . It is also spoken as an adoptive language by a few ethnic minority groups and individuals in Somali majority regions. Somali is the most widely spoken Cushitic language in the region followed by Oromo and Afar . As of 2021, there are approximately 24 million speakers of Somali, spread in Greater Somalia of which around 17 million reside in Somalia. The language
969-685: Is spoken in the Somali territories within North Eastern Kenya , namely Wajir County , Garissa County and Mandera County . The Somali language is regulated by the Regional Somali Language Academy , an intergovernmental institution established in June 2013 in Djibouti City by the governments of Djibouti, Somalia and Ethiopia. It is officially mandated with preserving the Somali language. As of October 2022, Somali and Oromo are
1026-627: The Arabic script and several Somali scripts like Osmanya , Kaddare and the Borama script are informally used. Somali is classified within the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family, specifically, Lowland East Cushitic in addition to Afar and Saho . Somali is the best-documented of the Cushitic languages, with academic studies of the language dating back to the late 19th century. The Somali language
1083-450: The Near East and South Asia (e.g. khiyaar "cucumber" from Persian : خيار khiyār ). Other loan words have also displaced their native synonyms in some dialects (e.g. jabaati "a type of flat bread" from Hindi: चपाती chapāti displacing sabaayad). Some of these words were also borrowed indirectly via Arabic. As part of a broader governmental effort of linguistic purism in
1140-542: The Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain, scientist Johann Maria Hildebrandt noted upon visiting the area that "we know from ancient authors that these districts, at present so desert, were formerly populous and civilised[...] I also discovered ancient ruins and rock-inscriptions both in pictures and characters[...] These have hitherto not been deciphered." According to the 1974 report for Ministry of Information and National Guidance, this script represents
1197-489: The Somali language . Originally, it referred to a non-grammatical Arabic featuring some words from the Somali language, with the proportion of Somali vocabulary varying depending on the context. The Somalis were among the first people in Africa to embrace Islam . Alongside standard Arabic, Wadaad's writing was used by Somali religious men (Wadaado) to record xeer (customary law) petitions and to write qasidas . It
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#17328442594631254-584: The Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC) declared it the Somali Democratic Republic 's primary language of administration and education. Somali was thereafter established as the main language of academic instruction in forms 1 through 4 , following preparatory work by the government-appointed Somali Language Committee. It later expanded to include all 12 forms in 1979. In 1972, the SRC adopted
1311-691: The 19th century when the Qadiriyyah saint Sheikh Uways al-Barawi of the Digil and Mirifle clan would improve the application of the Arabic script to represent the Maay dialect of southern Somalia, which at the time was close to standard Somali with Arabic script. Al-Barawi modeled his alphabet after the Arabic transcription adopted by the Amrani of Barawa (Brava) to also write the Swahili dialect, Bravanese . Wadaad's writing
1368-629: The Cushitic and Semitic Afroasiatic languages spoken in the Horn region (e.g. Amharic ). However, Somali noun phrases are head-initial, whereby the noun precedes its modifying adjective. This pattern of general head-finality with head-initial noun phrases is also found in other Cushitic languages (e.g. Oromo), but not generally in Ethiopian Semitic languages. Somali uses three focus markers: baa , ayaa and waxa(a) , which generally mark new information or contrastive emphasis. Baa and ayaa require
1425-520: The Latin nor Osmanya scripts accommodate this numerical switching. *the commas in the Osmanya number chart are added for clarity Wadaad%27s writing Wadaad's writing , also known as Wadaad's Arabic ( Somali : Far Wadaad , lit. 'Scholar's Handwriting'), is the traditional Somali adaptation of written Arabic as well as the Arabic script as historically used to transcribe
1482-579: The Lower Juba group (spoken by northern Somali settlers in the southern riverine areas). Benadir (also known as Coastal Somali) is spoken on the central Indian Ocean seaboard, including Mogadishu . It forms a relatively smaller group. The dialect is fairly mutually intelligible with Northern Somali. The language has five basic vowels . Somali has 22 consonant phonemes . The retroflex plosive /ɖ/ may have an implosive quality for some Somali Bantu speakers, and intervocalically it can be realized as
1539-570: The Semitic Himyarite and Sabaean languages that were largely spoken in what is modern day Yemen —"there is an extensive and ancient relationship between the people and cultures of both sides of the Red Sea coast" Mire posits. Yet, while many more such ancient inscriptions are yet to be found or analyzed, many have been "bulldozed by developers, as the Ministry of Tourism could not buy the land or stop
1596-656: The Somali Web Corpus (soWaC), a Somali read-speech corpus, Asaas (Beginning in Somali) and a Web-Based Somali Language Model and text Corpus called Wargeys (Newspaper in Somali). For all numbers between 11 kow iyo toban and 99 sagaashal iyo sagaal , it is equally correct to switch the placement of the numbers, although larger numbers is some dialects prefer to place the 10s numeral first. For example 25 may both be written as labaatan iyo shan and shan iyo labaatan (lit. Twenty and Five & Five and Twenty). Although neither
1653-439: The Somali language ) in which he printed Somali orthographic conventions as well as several sample letters and many sample proverbs. He built upon earlier work by Ibraahim Cabdullaahi Mayal . In this book, he also argues against those who at the time favored adopting Arabic language as the sole official language of Somalia, and he argued strongly for adopting Arabic Script for Somali language. Makaahiil's proposed orthography uses
1710-513: The Somali language, the past few decades have seen a push in Somalia toward replacement of loanwords in general with their Somali equivalents or neologisms . To this end, the Supreme Revolutionary Council during its tenure officially prohibited the borrowing and use of English and Italian terms. Archaeological excavations and research in Somalia uncovered ancient inscriptions in a distinct writing system . In an 1878 report to
1767-522: The Somali people's extensive social, cultural, commercial and religious links and contacts with nearby populations in the Arabian peninsula. Arabic loanwords are most commonly used in religious, administrative and education-related speech (e.g. aamiin for "faith in God"), though they are also present in other areas (e.g. kubbad-da , "ball"). Soravia (1994) noted a total of 1,436 Arabic loanwords in Agostini a.o. 1985,
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1824-463: The Somali poems by Sheikh Uways and Sheikh Ismaaciil Faarah. The rest of the existing historical literature in Somali principally consists of translations of documents from Arabic. Since then a number of writing systems have been used for transcribing the Somali language. Of these, the Somali Latin alphabet , officially adopted in 1972, is the most widely used and recognised as official orthography of
1881-543: The colonial period. Most of these lexical borrowings come from English and Italian and are used to describe modern concepts (e.g. telefishen-ka , "the television"; raadia-ha , "the radio"). There are 300 loan words from Italian, such as garawati for "tie" (from Italian cravatta ), dimuqraadi from democratico (democratic), mikroskoob from microscopio , and so on. Additionally, Somali contains lexical terms from Persian , Urdu and Hindi that were acquired through historical trade with communities in
1938-534: The destruction". Besides Ahmed's Latin script, other orthographies that have been used for centuries for writing the Somali language include the long-established Arabic script and Wadaad's writing . According to Bogumił Andrzejewski , this usage was limited to Somali clerics and their associates, as sheikhs preferred to write in the liturgical Arabic language. Various such historical manuscripts in Somali nonetheless exist, which mainly consist of Islamic poems ( qasidas ), recitations and chants. Among these texts are
1995-402: The earliest written attestation of Somali. Much more recently, Somali archaeologist Sada Mire has published ancient inscriptions found throughout Somaliland . As much for much of Somali linguistic history the language was not widely used for literature, Dr. Mire's publications however prove that writing as a technology was not foreign nor scarce in the region. These piece of writing are from
2052-441: The flap [ɽ] . Some speakers produce /ħ/ with epiglottal trilling as / ʜ / in retrospect. /q/ is often epiglottalized . The letter ⟨dh⟩ is a retroflex flap when it is pronounced intervocalically, hence becoming the phoneme ( ɽ ): for example, Qu r aanjo (Ant) from Qu dh aanjo; But however, more often than not is the pronunciation of ɽ to the unretained-retroflex ɾ . The letter ⟨kh⟩
2109-400: The focused element to occur preverbally, while waxa(a) may be used following the verb. Somali loanwords can be divided into those derived from other Afroasiatic languages (mainly Arabic), and those of Indo-European extraction (mainly Italian). Somali's main lexical borrowings come from Arabic, and are estimated to constitute about 20% of the language's vocabulary. This is a legacy of
2166-471: The fricatives. Two vowels cannot occur together at syllable boundaries. Epenthetic consonants, e.g. [j] and [ʔ], are therefore inserted. Somali is an agglutinative language, and also shows properties of inflection . Affixes mark many grammatical meanings, including aspect, tense and case. Somali has an old prefixal verbal inflection restricted to four common verbs, with all other verbs undergoing inflection by more obvious suffixation. This general pattern
2223-457: The letters alif (ا), wāw (و), and yāʾ (ي) respectively. For the short vowel sound [e], Makaahil interpreted the sound to be in between [a] and [i], thus he proposed to combine "◌َ " ( Fatha , [a]) and "◌ِ" and ( Dhamma , [i]), and write "◌َِ". As for long vowel sound [e:], it'd be written as "◌َِ" followed by yāʾ (ي). Vowels, when occurring at the beginning of words, are placed on top of alif (ا). Long vowels are written as they would in
2280-472: The middle of the word, except that wāw (و), and yāʾ (ي) would be preceded by alif instead of another consonant.The exception to this convention is long vowel [aa], where similar to Arabic, alif madda (آ) is used. In 1887, British writer, J. S. King wrote for the Indian Antiquary an article titled "Somali as a written language" in which he proposes a standard Arabic based Somali script. Some of
2337-549: The most accurate Arabic alphabet to have been devised for the Somali language. He had published his work in the Islamic Quarterly, outlining and providing examples as to why a new Arabic based script was needed for use in Somalia. Despite the accuracy of Galaal's writing system and its correspondence with Somali phonology, his writing system turned out to be controversial, facing criticism from Somalia's religiously devout and conservative society. The introduction of new letters
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2394-522: The most creative, coming up with brand new letters to represent vowels. In the 1961 Somali Language Committee Report, several other Arabic proposals were also listed, where other solutions were proposed for showing the 5 short vowels and 5 long vowels. None of these other proposals gained traction. In Mahammad 'Abdi Makaahiil's orthographic convention, he added two new diacritics. For short vowel sounds [a], [u], and [i], Arabic diacritics are used. For long vowel sounds [a:], [u:], and [i:], similar to Arabic,
2451-651: The official adoption of Latin Alphabet in 1972, the process of standardization of orthography of Somali Arabic script came to a halt. Makaahiil's orthographic convention remains the most notable final iteration today. The Arabic script was introduced to Somalia in the 10th century by Sheikh Yusuf bin Ahmad al-Kawneyn (colloquially referred to as Aw Barkhadle meaning "Blessed Father") a man described as "the most outstanding saint in Somalia ." Of Somali descent, he sought to advance
2508-512: The only Cushitic languages available on Google Translate . The Somali languages are broadly divided into three main groups: Northern Somali , Benadir and Maay . Northern Somali forms the basis for Standard Somali. It is spoken by the majority of the Somali population with its speech area stretching from Djibouti , and the Somali Region of Ethiopia to the Northern Frontier District . This widespread modern distribution
2565-453: The plural of the masculine noun dibi ("bull") is formed by converting it into feminine dibi . Somali is unusual among the world's languages in that the object is unmarked for case while the subject is marked, though this feature is found in other Cushitic languages such as Oromo. Somali is a subject–object–verb (SOV) language. It is largely head final , with postpositions and with obliques preceding verbs. These are common features of
2622-931: The purported progenitor of most southern, cultivating clans). The main branches of the Samaale clan are the Dir , the Hawiye , the Isaaq , the Darod , and the 'pre-Hawiya' group (containing the Gardere , the Yakabur , and the Mayle ). Both the Samaale and the Sab claim to be ultimately descended from the Arab clan of the Quraysh through Aqil ibn Abi Talib ( c. 580 – 670 or 683 ),
2679-587: The same letters as in Arabic, with only two additional letters, ڎ for /ɖ/ and گ for /g/. On the other hand, there are 8 consonants in Arabic alphabet that do not exist in Somali language (except for writing Arabic loanwords), which include the letters thāʼ ( ث ), dhal ( ذ ), zāy ( ز ), ṣād ( ص ), ḍād ( ض ), ṭāʾ ( ط ), ẓāʾ ( ظ ), and ghayn ( غ ). This writing convention relies on vowel diacritics . As for vowels, in Somali phonology , there are five vowel articulations. These vowel articulations can either be short or long . Each vowel also has
2736-513: The son of Aqil , the son of Abu Talib (paternal uncle of the Islamic prophet Muhammad ), the son of Abd al-Muttalib (paternal grandfather of Muhammad). Samaale's father Hill is also thought of as the father of Sab, the progenitor of most southern Somali clans (most notably the Rahanweyn ). Constructing and reconstructing genealogical tables according to changing political and economical alliances
2793-550: The state. The script was developed by a number of leading scholars of Somali, including Musa Haji Ismail Galal , B. W. Andrzejewski and Shire Jama Ahmed specifically for transcribing the Somali language, and uses all letters of the English Latin alphabet except p , v and z . There are no diacritics or other special characters except the use of the apostrophe for the glottal stop , which does not occur word-initially. There are three consonant digraphs : DH, KH and SH. Tone
2850-473: The teachings of the Qur'an . Al-Kawneyn devised a Somali nomenclature for the Arabic vowels, which enabled his pupils to read and write in Arabic. Sheikh Abi-Bakr Al Alawi, a Harari historian, states in his book that Yusuf bin Ahmad al-Kawneyn was of native and local Dir extraction. Although various Somali wadaads and scholars had used the Arabic script to write in Somali for centuries, it would not be until
2907-589: The use of the Arabic script for writing Somali, showing examples of this usage through proverbs, letters and sentences. In 1954, the Somali linguist Musa Haji Ismail Galaal (1917–1980) introduced a more radical alteration of Arabic to represent the Somali Language. Galaal came up with an entirely new set of symbols for the Somali vowels . Galaal's goal was to eliminate the need to use diacritics and also to provide easy to write and read distinction between short vowels and long. Lewis (1958) considered this to be
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#17328442594632964-408: The verb and do not take nominal morphology. Somali marks clusivity in the first person plural pronouns; this is also found in a number of other East Cushitic languages, such as Rendille and Dhaasanac. As in various other Afro-Asiatic languages, Somali is characterized by polarity of gender , whereby plural nouns usually take the opposite gender agreement of their singular forms. For example,
3021-463: The word Somali is derived from the words soo and maal , which together mean "go and milk"—a reference to the ubiquitous pastoralism of the Somali people . Another etymology proposes that the term Somali is derived from the Arabic for "wealthy" ( zāwamāl ), again referring to Somali riches in livestock. Just like the descendants of the other main Somali clan progenitor Sab , the clans tracing their lineage to Samaale claim that their forefather
3078-482: Was also used by merchants for business purposes and letter writing. Over the years, various Somali scholars improved and altered the use of the Arabic script for conveying Somali. This culminated in the 1930s with the work of Mahammad 'Abdi Makaahiil, standardizing vowel diacritics and orthographic conventions, and in 1950s with the controversial proposal of Musa Haji Ismail Galal which substantially modified letter values and introduced new letters for vowels. With
3135-620: Was himself a descendant of the Arab Banu Hashim clan (a sub-clan of the Quraysh ), through Aqil ibn Abi Talib , a cousin of Muhammad and older brother of Ali . According to the British anthropologist and Somali Studies veteran Ioan M. Lewis , the traditions of descent from noble Arab families related to Muhammad embraced by most Somali clans are most probably figurative expressions of the importance of Islam in Somali society. The paternal genetics of ethnic Somalis are inconsistent with
3192-549: Was interpreted as deviating away from the Arabic script, and moreover, a worry arose that teaching such new letters can cause difficulty in teaching the Quran to Somali students. In 1932, Mahammad 'Abdi Makaahiil ( Somali : Maxamed Cabdi Makaahiil ), a Somali scholar who studied at Al-Azhar University , published a short book titled "Inšāʾ al makātibāt al ʿarabiyyah fīl-luġah as-Sūmāliyyah" ( Arabic : إنشاء المكاتبات العربية في اللغة الصوماليّة ; Creating of Arabic correspondences in
3249-403: Was often unintelligible to Somali pupils who learned standard Arabic in government-run schools. During the 1930s in the northwestern British Somaliland protectorate, Mahammad 'Abdi Makaahiil attempted to standardize the orthography in his book The Institution of Modern Correspondence in the Somali language . Following in the footsteps of Sh. Ibraahim 'Abdallah Mayal, Makaahiil therein championed
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