Karo (also Cherre, Kere, Kerre) is a South Omotic language spoken in the Debub (South) Omo Zone of the

Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region The Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region (often abbreviated as SNNPR; am, የደቡብ ብሔር ብሔረሰቦችና ሕዝቦች ክልል, Yädäbub Bḥer Bḥeräsäbočna Hzboč Kllə) is a regional state in southwestern E ...

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 ...

. Karo is described as being closely related to its neighbor, Hamer-Banna, with a lexical similarity of 81%, and is considered a dialect of Hamer by Blench (2006), but as a separate language belonging to the ''Hamer-Karo'' subfamily in

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is a bibliographic database of the world's lesser-known languages, developed and maintained first at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute for ...

. The Karo people, who live close to the lower

Omo River The Omo River (also called Omo-Bottego) in southern Ethiopia is the largest Ethiopian river outside the Nile, Nile Basin. Its course is entirely contained within the boundaries of Ethiopia, and it empties into Lake Turkana on the border with Keny ...

, use colorful bodywork, complex headdresses and body scars to express beauty and importance within the community. 2,400 speakers are using the Karo language.

Basic vocabulary

In percentages of basic vocabulary scored by 14 Omotic languages against 13 others, Karo scored 12 in Male, 9 in Chara, 12 in Basketo, 12 in Wolaytta, 14 in Kullo, 10 in Dace, 14 in Dorze, 14 in Oyda, 5 in Kacama, 10 in Koyra, 10 in Gidicho, 14 in Zayse, 14 in Zergulla. Unlike the strongest contributors to pairs of languages sharing unitary forms language-wise such as Inyangatom, Central Koma and Langa, Disoha, and Ingassana, Karo contributed none.

References

Languages of Ethiopia Aroid languages Afroasiatic languages {{Ethiopia-stub