The Afar language ( aa, Qafaraf, links=no; also known as ’Afar Af, Afaraf, Qafar af) is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the

Cushitic The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As o ...

branch. It is spoken by the Afar people inhabiting

Djibouti Djibouti, ar, جيبوتي ', french: link=no, Djibouti, so, Jabuuti officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country in the Horn of Africa, bordered by Somalia to the south, Ethiopia to the southwest, Eritrea in the north, and the Red ...

Eritrea Eritrea ( ; ti, ኤርትራ, Ertra, ; ar, إرتريا, ʾIritriyā), officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of Eastern Africa, with its capital and largest city at Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopi ...

and

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

Classification

Afar is classified within the

branch of the Afroasiatic family. It is further categorized in the

Lowland East Cushitic Lowland East Cushitic is a group of roughly two dozen diverse languages of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. Its largest representatives are Somali and Oromo. Classification Lowland East Cushitic classification from Tosco (2020: ...

sub-group, along with Saho and

Somali Somali may refer to: Horn of Africa * Somalis, an inhabitant or ethnicity associated with Greater Somali Region ** Proto-Somali, the ancestors of modern Somalis ** Somali culture ** Somali cuisine ** Somali language, a Cushitic language ** Somali ...

. Its closest relative is the Saho language.

Geographic distribution

The Afar language is spoken as a mother tongue by the Afar people in

, and the Afar Region of

. According to ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensi ...

'', there are 1,379,200 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 Radio Television of Djibouti (RTD) ( ar, إذاعة وتلفزيون جيبوتي, french: Radiodiffusion télévision de Djibouti) is the national broadcaster of Djibouti. The station is based in Djibouti city and the only media outlet of the co ...

public network. In Eritrea, Afar is recognized as one of nine national languages which formally enjoy equal status although Tigrinya and

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

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 (with IPA notation in brackets): Voiceless stop consonants which close syllables are released, e.g., .

Vowels and stress

:* ''short'' :** a :**e :**i :**o :**u :* ''long'' :**aa :**ee :**ii :**oo :**uu Sentence final vowels of affirmative verbs are aspirated (and stressed), e.g. = 'He did.' Sentence final vowels of negative verbs are not aspirated (nor stressed), e.g. = 'He did not do.' Sentence final vowels of interrogative verbs are lengthened (and stressed), e.g. = '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 The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...

has been used in other areas to transcribe the language. Additionally, Afar is also transcribed using the

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and th ...

. 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

Notes

Bibliography

* Loren F. Bliese. 1976. "Afar", ''The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia''. Ed. Lionel M. Bender. Ann Arbor, Michigan: African Studies Center, Michigan State University. Pages 133–164. * Loren F. Bliese. 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. . * J. G. Colby. 1970. "Notes on the northern dialect of the Afar language", ''Journal of Ethiopian Studies'' 8:1–8. * R. J. Hayward and Enid M. Parker. 1985. ''Afar-English-French dictionary with Grammatical Notes in English''. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. * Richard J. Hayward. 1998. "Qafar (West Cushitic)", ''Handbook of Morphology''. Ed. A. Spencer and A. Zwicky. Oxford: Blackwell. Pages 624–647. * Didier Morin. 1997. ''Poésie traditionnelle des Afars''. Langues et cultures africaines, 21 / SELAF vol. 363. Paris/Louvain: Peeters. * Enid M. Parker. 2006. ''English–Afar Dictionary''. Washington DC: Dunwoody Press. * Rainer M. Voigt. 1975. "Bibliographie des Saho–Afar", ''Africana Marburgensia'' 8:53–63.

External links

World Atlas of Language Structures The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a database of structural ( phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD-R ...

information o
QafarAfar language learning web site
(Much information about Afar, in English and French)

{{Authority control Afar people East Cushitic languages Languages of Djibouti Languages of Eritrea Languages of Ethiopia