Afar language

Afar (Afar: Qafaraf; also known as ’Afar af, Afaraf, Qafar af) is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch. It is spoken by the Afar people inhabiting Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Afar
Qafar af
Native to	Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia
Region	Horn of Africa
Ethnicity	Afar
Native speakers	2.6 million (2019–2022)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Cushitic East Lowland Saho–Afar Afar
Dialects	Aussa Ba'adu Central Afar Northern Afar
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Ethiopia
Recognised minority language in	Djibouti  Eritrea
Language codes
ISO 639-1	aa
ISO 639-2	aar
ISO 639-3	aar
Glottolog	afar1241
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Classification

Afar is classified within the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family. It is further categorized in the Lowland East Cushitic sub-group, along with Saho and Somali. Its closest relative is the Saho language.

Geographic distribution

The Afar language is spoken as a mother tongue by the Afar people in Djibouti, Eritrea, and the Afar Region of Ethiopia.

According to Ethnologue, there are 2,600,000 total Afar speakers. Of these, 1,280,000 were recorded in the 2007 Ethiopian census, with 906,000 monolinguals registered in the 1994 census.

Official status

In Djibouti, Afar is a recognized national language. It is also one of the broadcasting languages of the Radio Television of Djibouti public network.

In Eritrea, Afar is recognized as one of nine national languages which formally enjoy equal status although Tigrinya and Arabic are by far of greatest significance in official usage. There are daily broadcasts on the national radio and a translated version of the Eritrean constitution. In education, however, Afar speakers prefer Arabic – which many of them speak as a second language – as the language of instruction.

In the Afar Region of Ethiopia, Afar is also recognized as an official working language. Since 2020, Afar is one of the five official working languages of Ethiopia.

Phonology

Consonants

The consonants of the Afar language in the standard orthography are listed below in angle brackets (preceded by the IPA notation):

		Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless		t ⟨t⟩			k ⟨k⟩
	voiced	b ⟨b⟩	d ⟨d⟩			ɡ ⟨g⟩
Fricative	voiceless	f ⟨f⟩	s ⟨s⟩				ħ ⟨c⟩	h ⟨h⟩
	voiced						ʕ ⟨q⟩
Nasal		m ⟨m⟩	n ⟨n⟩
Approximant		w ⟨w⟩	l ⟨l⟩		j ⟨y⟩
Tap			ɾ ⟨r⟩	ɽ ⟨x⟩

Voiceless stop consonants which close syllables are released, e.g., [ʌkʰˈme].

Vowels and stress

	Front		Central	Back
	short	long	long	short	long
Close	i ⟨i⟩	iː ⟨ii⟩		u ⟨u⟩	uː ⟨uu⟩
Mid	e ⟨e⟩	eː ⟨ee⟩		o ⟨o⟩	oː ⟨oo⟩
Open			aː ⟨aa⟩	ʌ ⟨a⟩

Sentence final vowels of affirmative verbs are aspirated (and stressed), e.g.

• Afar: abeh = /aˈbeʰ/ 'He did.'

Sentence final vowels of negative verbs are not aspirated (nor stressed), e.g.

• Afar: maabinna = /ˈmaːbinːaː/ 'He did not do.'

Sentence final vowels of interrogative verbs are lengthened (and stressed), e.g.

• Afar: abee? = /aˈbeː/ 'Did he do?'

Otherwise, stress in word-final.

Phonotactics

Possible syllable shapes are V, VV, VC, VVC, CV, CVV and CVVC.

Syntax

As in most other Cushitic languages, the basic word order in Afar is subject–object–verb.

Writing system

In Ethiopia, Afar used to be written with the Ge'ez script (Ethiopic script). Since around 1849, the Latin script has been used in other areas to transcribe the language. Additionally, Afar is also transcribed using the Arabic script.

In the early 1970s, two Afar intellectuals and nationalists, Dimis and Redo, formalized the Afar alphabet. Known as Qafar Feera, the orthography is based on the Latin script.

Officials from the Institut des Langues de Djibouti, the Eritrean Ministry of Education, and the Ethiopian Afar Language Studies and Enrichment Center have since worked with Afar linguists, authors and community representatives to select a standard orthography for Afar from among the various existing writing systems used to transcribe the language.

Latin alphabet

^{[clarification needed]}

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

a

ba

ca

da

e

fa

ga

ha

i

ja

ka

la

ma

na

o

pa

qa

ra

sa

ta

u

va

wa

xa

ya

za

A

B

T

S

E

C

K

X

I

D

Q

R

F

G

O

L

M

N

U

W

H

Y

a

ba

ta

sa

e

ca

ka

xa

i

da

qa

ra

fa

ga

o

la

ma

na

u

wa

ha

ya

See also

For a list of words relating to in Afar, see the Afar language category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Afar Region

Notes

1. Afar at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024)
2. Lewis, I. (1998). Peoples of the Horn of Africa: Somali, Afar and Saho. Red Sea Press. p. 11.
3. "Djibouti". The World Factbook. CIA. Archived from the original on 25 May 2023. Retrieved 31 August 2014.
4. Simeone-Senelle, Marie-Claude (2000). "Les langues en Erythrée". Chroniques Yeménites 8, 2000 (in French). 8 (8). Cy.revues.org. doi:10.4000/cy.39. Archived from the original on 6 January 2010. Retrieved 6 April 2010.
5. Kizitus Mpoche; Tennu Mbuh, eds. (2006). Language, literature, and identity. Cuvillier. pp. 163–164. ISBN 3-86537-839-0. Archived from the original on 22 May 2024. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
6. Getachew, Samuel (3 March 2020). "Ethiopia is adding four more official languages to Amharic as political instability mounts". Quartz. Archived from the original on 12 April 2022. Retrieved 12 April 2022.
7. Hamann, Silke; Fuchs, Susanne (June 2010) [2008]. "How do voiced retroflex stops evolve? Evidence from typology and an articulatory study". Language and Speech. 53 (2): 181–216. doi:10.1177/0023830909357159. PMID 20583729. S2CID 23502367.
8. Kamil, Mohamed Hassan (2015). Afar : grammatical description of a Cuchitic Language (Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia ) (Theses thesis). Université Sorbonne Paris Cité. Archived from the original on 5 June 2019. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
9. "Development of the Afar Language" (PDF). Afar Friends. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 March 2012. Retrieved 23 August 2013.
10. "Afar (ʿAfár af)". Omniglot. Archived from the original on 11 May 2021. Retrieved 23 August 2013.
11. "Berraka". Qafaraf. Archived from the original on 11 August 2015. Retrieved 23 August 2015.
12. "Afar language, alphabet and pronunciation". Omniglot. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 29 September 2021.

Bibliography

• Bliese, Loren F. (1976). "Afar". In Bender, Lionel M. (ed.). The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia. Ann Arbor: African Studies Center, Michigan State University. pp. 133–164.
• Bliese, Loren F. (1981). A generative grammar of Afar. Summer Institute of Linguistics publications in linguistics. Vol. 65. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and The University of Texas at Arlington. ISBN 0-88312-083-6.
• Colby, James G. (1970). "Notes on the northern dialect of the Afar language". Journal of Ethiopian Studies. 8 (1): 1–8. JSTOR 41965797.
• Hayward, R. J.; Parker, Enid M. (1985). Afar-English-French dictionary with Grammatical Notes in English. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. ISBN 978-0-7286-0124-6.
• Hayward, Richard J. (1998). "Qafar (West Cushitic)". In Spencer, Andrew; Zwicky, Arnold M. (eds.). Handbook of Morphology. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 624–647. doi:10.1002/9781405166348.ch29. ISBN 978-0-631-22694-9.
• Morin, Didier (1997). Poésie traditionnelle des Afars. Langues et cultures africaines. Vol. 21. Paris: Peeters. ISBN 978-2-87723-363-7.
• Parker, Enid M. (2006). English–Afar Dictionary. Washington DC: Dunwoody Press. ISBN 978-1-931546-23-2.
• Voigt, Rainer M. (1975). "Bibliographie des Saho–Afar". Africana Marburgensia. 8: 53–63.

External links

Afar language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

For a list of words relating to Afar language, see the Afar language category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• World Atlas of Language Structures information on Qafar
• Afar language learning web site (Much information about Afar, in English and French)
• Omniglot – Afar (ʿAfár af)