The Yem are an ethnic group living in south-western
Ethiopia. Their native language is
Yemsa, one 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 ...
, although many also speak
Amharic
Amharic ( or ; (Amharic: ), ', ) is an Ethiopian Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amharas, and also serves as a lingua franca for all oth ...
. The neighbors of the Yem include the
Gurage,
Hadya
The Hadiya Sultanate (r. ~13th century – 15th century) was a medieval kingdom located in southwestern Ethiopia, south of the Abbay River and west of Shewa. It was ruled by the Hadiya people, who spoke the Cushitic Hadiyya language. The hist ...
, and Kembata to the east across the
Omo River and the Jimma
Oromo to the south, north and west.
History
The first reference to Yem as a political unit is found, under the name of Jangero, in the victory song of King
Yesaq (1412-1427) of the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, as paying tribute in the form of horses to the king. The first European traveler to mention Yem was the European traveler Father Fernandez, who travelled through their homeland in 1614.
Population
Their number was not definitely known until recently, as Aklilu Yilma states, "Bender gives the estimate as '1000' (Bender 1976: 4), whereas the ''
Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...
'' reported 1,000 to 4,000 Yemsa speakers in 1992. The report of the
Central Statistical Office gives the 1984 census figures of the Yem people as 34,951 (Central Statistical Office 1991:61), but this census seems to comprise only the
Fofa area." The 1994 national census reported 60,811 people identified themselves as Yem in the
Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region (SNNPR), of whom 59,581 lived in the around Fofa, and 52,292 speakers of the Yemsa language in the SNNPR, of whom 51,264 were living in the same area.Now the administration city is saja. The more recent 2007 national census reports that 160,447 were identified as Yem, of whom 84,607 lived in the
Oromia Region and 74,906 in the SNNPR.
"Census 2007"
first draft, Table 5.
See also
* Yem special woreda
* Kingdom of Janjero
References
Ethnic groups in Ethiopia
Omotic-speaking peoples
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