The Mao languages are a branch of the

Omotic languages The Omotic languages are a group of languages spoken in southwestern Ethiopia, in the Omo River region. The Ge'ez script is used to write some of the Omotic languages, the Latin script for some others. They are fairly agglutinative and have com ...

spoken in

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 ...

. The group had the following categories: *

Bambasi Bambasi (also known as Abba Moti) is a town in western Ethiopia. The town is named after the highest point in the Asosa Zone of the Benishangul-Gumuz Region, Mount Bambasi. Bambasi has a longitude and latitude of with an elevation of 1668 mete ...

, spoken in the

woreda Districts of Ethiopia, also called woredas ( am, ወረዳ; ''woreda''), are the third level of the administrative divisions of Ethiopia – after ''zones'' and the '' regional states''. These districts are further subdivided into a number of ...

Benishangul-Gumuz Region Benishangul-Gumuz ( am, ቤንሻንጉል ጉሙዝ, Benšangul Gumuz) is a regional state in northwestern Ethiopia to the border of Sudan. It was previously known as Region 6. The region's capital is Assosa. Following the adoption of the 1 ...

, * Hozo and Seze (often described together as 'Begi Mao'), spoken around Begi in the Mirab (West) Welega Zone of the

Oromia Region Oromia (Amharic: ) ( om, Oromiyaa) is a regional state in Ethiopia and the homeland of the Oromo people. The capital of Oromia is Addis Ababa. It is bordered by the Somali Region to the east; the Amhara Region, the Afar Region and the Benis ...

, and * Ganza, which is spoken south of

in the

Asosa Zone Assosa is a zone in Benishangul-Gumuz Region of Ethiopia. This Zone was named after the Assosa Sultanate, which had approximately the same boundaries. Assosa is bordered on the south by the Mao-Komo special woreda, on the west by Sudan, and on ...

of Benishangul-Gumuz Region and west of the Hozo and Seze languages. It is estimated that there are 5,000 speakers of Bambasi, 3,000 speakers each of Hozo and Seze and a few hundred Ganza speakers (Bender, 2000). During recent political upheavals, a few thousand Bambassi speakers established themselves in the valley of the

Didessa River The Didessa River (pronounced: ɗeɗ:e:s:a; om, Dhedheessa) is a river in western Ethiopia. A tributary of the Abay River, it rises in the mountains of Gomma, flowing in a northwestern direction to its confluence where the course of the Abay has ...

and

Belo Jegonfoy Bolo Jiganfo is one of the 20 Districts of Ethiopia, or ''woredas'', in the Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia. Part of the Kamashi Zone, it is bordered on the west by the Didessa River, which separates it from Kamashi, on the north by the Hange ...

. Much of the Mirab Welega Zone was once the home of Mao languages, but they have lost speakers because of the increasing influence of Oromo.

Contact

Mao languages are in close contact with

Koman languages The Koman languages are a small close-knit family of languages located along the Ethiopia–Sudan border with about 50,000 speakers. They are conventionally classified as part of the Nilo-Saharan family. However, due to the paucity of evidence, ...

. Some Koman-speaking groups in Ethiopia consider themselves to be ethnically Mao.

Numerals

Comparison of numerals in individual languages:

References

{{Omotic languages Languages of Ethiopia Language families Omotic languages

Contact

Numerals

See also

Further reading

References