The Saho language (

Tigrinya (; also spelled Tigrigna) is an Ethio-Semitic language commonly spoken Eritrea and in northern Ethiopia's Tigray Region by the Tigrinya and Tigrayan peoples. It is also spoken by the global diaspora of these regions. History and literatur ...

: ሳሆኛ/ቋንቋ ሳሆ) is an

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 spoken in

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 Ethiopia ...

, Sudan 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 ...

. It belongs to the family's

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.

Overview

Saho is spoken natively by the

Saho people The Saho are a Cushitic ethnic group from Eritrea, and they also inhabit some parts of northern Ethiopia. They speak Saho as a mother tongue. Society Ethnicity and societal structure According to Abdulkader Saleh Mohammad, most of the Saho ...

. Traditionally, they inhabit the territory in Eritrea bounded by the bay of Erafayle in the east, the Laacasi Gade valleys in the south, and the

Eritrean highlands The Eritrean Highlands are a mountainous region in central Eritrea. Bordered to the south by the Mareb River, it is a northern continuation of the Ethiopian Highlands. The region has seen tremendous deforestation since the colonial period, which b ...

to the west (the Shimejana district on the eastern flank of the South- or

Debub Debub Region, also known as the South Region (Tigrinya: ዞባ ደቡብ, it, Regione del Sud), is an administrative region of Eritrea. The region was formed on 15 April 1996, from the historical provinces of Serae and Akele Guzai. It lies alo ...

region in what was formerly known as

Akele Guzai The Provinces of Eritrea existed between Eritrea's incorporation as a colony of Italy until the conversion of the provinces into administrative regions. Overview In Italian Eritrea, the Italian colonial administration had divided the colony into ...

province). This speech area is bordered by other

-speaking communities, with Tigre speakers on the west and Afar speakers on the east. In Ethiopia, Saho is primarily spoken in the

Tigray Region The Tigray Region, officially the Tigray National Regional State, is the northernmost regional state in Ethiopia. The Tigray Region is the homeland of the Tigrayan, Irob, and Kunama people. Its capital and largest city is Mekelle. Tigray ...

. It has about 250,000 speakers in total and four main dialects: Northern dialect, mainly spoken by Casawurta,Tharuuca, Casabat Care etc., Central dialect is mainly spoken by Faqhat Xarak of Minifere,and Southern dialect mainly spoken by Minifire, Xazo, Dabrti-meela, Irob, Sancafe etc.Raymond G. Gordon Jr., ed. 2005. ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World''. 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics. The Saho also use the Arabic ( Special now Latin letters ) to document their history and render information. Also recently the language is being used on the cyberspace as a tool of communication. And there is on website completely designed with saho language. Saho is so closely related to the Cushitic Afar language, spoken as a mother tongue by the

Afar people The Afar ( aa, Qafár), also known as the Danakil, Adali and Odali, are a Cushitic-speaking ethnic group inhabiting the Horn of Africa. They primarily live in the Afar Region of Ethiopia and in northern Djibouti, as well as the entire southern co ...

, that some linguists regard the two tongues as dialects of a single "Saho–Afar language". Regardless, it has been shown that at least in their

basic lexicon BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

the two can be cleanly separated.

Writing systems

Saho has three written versions: a version in the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

, official in Eritrea; a version in the Ge'ez script, official in Ethiopia; and a version in the

Ajami script Ajami ( ar, عجمي, ) or Ajamiyya ( ar, عجمية, ), which comes from the Arabic root for ''foreign'' or ''stranger'', is an Arabic-derived script used for writing African languages, particularly those of Mandé, Hausa and Swahili, although ...

with no official recognition.

Notes

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-ROM i ...

information o
Saho

(with map)

Overview

Writing systems

Notes

External links

Further reading