Gedeo is a

Highland East Cushitic Highland East Cushitic, or Sidamic, is a branch of the Afroasiatic language family spoken in south-central Ethiopia. They are often grouped with Lowland East Cushitic, Dullay, and Yaaku as ''East Cushitic'', but that group is not well defined ...

language of the

Afro-Asiatic The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...

family spoken in south central

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 ...

. Alternate names for the language include Derasa, Deresa, Darassa, Geddeo, Derasanya, Darasa. It is spoken by the

Gedeo people The Gedeo are an ethnic group in southern Ethiopia. The Gedeo Zone in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region (SNNPR) is named for this people. They speak the Gedeo language, which is one of the Cushitic languages. Overview Acc ...

, who live in the highland area, southwest of Dila and east of Lake Abaya.Raymond G. Gordon Jr., ed. 2005. ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World''. 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics. The languages has SOV word order. Verbs are marked for person, number, and gender of subject. Verbs are marked for voice: active, causative, middle, and passive. The New Testament was published in the Gedeo language in 1986, using the

Ethiopian syllabary Ethiopians are the native inhabitants of Ethiopia, as well as the global diaspora of Ethiopia. Ethiopians constitute several component ethnic groups, many of which are closely related to ethnic groups in neighboring Eritrea and other parts o ...

Notes

References

* Wedekind, Klaus. 1980. "Sidamo, Gedeo (Derasa), Burji: Phonological differences and likenesses," ''Journal of Ethiopian Studies'' 14: 131-76. * Wedekind, Klaus. 1985. "Gedeo (Derasa) verb morphology and morphophonemics," ''The verb morphophonemics of five highland east Cushitic languages, including Burji''. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 2. Cologne: Institut für Afrikanistik. Pages 82–109.

External links

Introduction to Gedeo dictionary
(archived)
Gedeo dictionary
(archived) East Cushitic languages Languages of Ethiopia {{AfroAsiatic-lang-stub