Nayi (also known as "Nao") is an
Omotic
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 ...
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 ...
language family spoken in western
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 ...
.
Most of the speakers of the language live in two separated areas. The largest grouping live in
Decha
Decha is a district in the South West Region of Ethiopia. The name Decha comes from one of the provinces in the former Kingdom of Kaffa, which had the approximately same boundaries. Part of the Keffa Zone, Decha is bordered on the south by the Omo ...
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 ...
of the
Keffa Zone
Keffa or Kaffa, is a zone in the South West Region of Ethiopia. The administrative center is Bonga.
History
The Zone is named after the Kingdom of Kaffa. Kaffa was part of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region (SNNPR) until ...
. The nearest city to their region is
Bonga
Bonga is a town, woreda and capital of the South West Ethiopia Peoples' Region in Ethiopia. Located in the Keffa Zone upon a hill in the upper Barta valley, it has a latitude and longitude of with an elevation of 1,714 meters above sea level. ...
. A few in Dulkuma village of the Shoa Bench woreda, some in
Sheko woreda having moved there in 1976-1977 as a result of conflicts between local feudal lords and the military government (Aklilu 2002:4). In Decha, young people no longer speak the language.
The language is notable for its
retroflex consonant
A retroflex ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the har ...
s (Aklilu Yilma 1988), a striking feature shared with closely related
Dizi,
Sheko and nearby (but not closely related)
Bench. The language has 5 vowels that can be long or short. The question of the status of a short mid central vowel is still unresolved. There are three phonemic tones and syllabic nasal consonants. There are
ejective stops and affricates, but no
implosives (Aklilu 2002:6,7).
Nayi, together with the
Dizi and
Sheko languages, is part of a cluster of languages variously called "Maji" or "
Dizoid".
Notes
References
*Aklilu Yilma. 1990. Two phonological processes in Nayi: palatalization and labialization. In Tadesse Beyene, Richard Pankhurst, Ahmed Zekaria, eds., ''Proceedings of the Firstr National Conference of Ethiopian Studies''. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University.
*Aklilu Yilma. 1994. "A sketch of the Nayi grammar." S.L.L.E. linguistic reports 16: 1-20.
*Aklilu Yilma. 2002
"Sociolinguistic survey report of the Nayi language of Ethiopia." SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2002-010.
* Aklilu Yilma and Ralph Siebert. 1995. "Survey of Chara, Dime, Melo and Nayi, part 1." S.L.L.E. linguistic reports 25: 2-8.
External links
Nayi basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
Languages of Ethiopia
Dizoid languages
{{AfroAsiatic-lang-stub