Mao Languages
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Mao Languages
The Mao languages are a branch of the Omotic languages spoken in Ethiopia and parts of Sudan. The group had the following categories: * Bambasi, spoken in the Bambasi woreda of Benishangul-Gumuz Region, * Hozo and Seze (often described together as 'Begi Mao'), spoken around Begi in the Mirab (West) Welega Zone of the Oromia Region, and * Ganza, which is spoken south of Bambasi in the Asosa Zone of Benishangul-Gumuz Region, west of the Hozo and Seze languages and in Blue Nile State in Sudan. 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 and Belo Jegonfoy woreda Districts of Ethiopia, also called woredas (; ''woreda''), are the third level of the administrative divisions of Ethiopia – after ''List of zones of Ethiopia, zones'' and the ''Regions of ...
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Ethiopia
Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Kenya to the south, South Sudan to the west, and Sudan to the northwest. Ethiopia covers a land area of . , it has around 128 million inhabitants, making it the List of countries and dependencies by population, thirteenth-most populous country in the world, the List of African countries by population, second-most populous in Africa after Nigeria, and the most populous landlocked country on Earth. The national capital and largest city, Addis Ababa, lies several kilometres west of the East African Rift that splits the country into the African Plate, African and Somali Plate, Somali tectonic plates. Early modern human, Anatomically modern humans emerged from modern-day Ethiopia and set out for the Near East and elsewhere in the Middle Paleolithi ...
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Ganza Language
Ganza, also known as Ganzo or Koma, is an Omotic language of the Afro-Asiatic family spoken in the Al Kurumik District of the Blue Nile (state) in Sudan and in the western Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia, specifically in the village districts of Penishuba and Yabeldigis. It also goes by the names Ganzo, Gwami, Koma, and Koma-Ganza. Phonology Ganza does not utilize consonant length phonemically. Although vowel length is typically contrastive in Omotic languages The Omotic languages are a group of languages spoken in southwestern Ethiopia, in the Omo River region and southeastern Sudan in Blue Nile State. The Geʽez script is used to write some of the Omotic languages, the Latin script for some others ..., Ganza does not have a clear contrast between long and short vowel phonemes. Instead, Ganza has predictable utterance-final vowel lengthening and a set of monosyllabic words with double vowels. References *Smolders, Joshua. 2015. ''A Wordlist of Ganza''. Addis Aba ...
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Language Families
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics analogous to a family tree, or to phylogenetic trees of taxa used in evolutionary taxonomy. Linguists thus describe the ''daughter languages'' within a language family as being ''genetically related''. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, with different regional dialects of the proto-language undergoing different language changes and thus becoming distinct languages over time. One well-known example of a language family is the Romance languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, and many others, all of which are descended from Vulgar Latin.Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig (eds.)''Ethnologue: Languages of th ...
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Languages Of Ethiopia
The languages of Ethiopia include the official languages of Ethiopia, its national and regional languages, and a large number of minority languages, as well as foreign languages. Overview Number of languages According to Glottolog, there are 109 languages spoken in Ethiopia, while ''Ethnologue'' lists 90 individual languages spoken in the country. Most people in the country speak Afroasiatic languages of the Cushitic languages, Cushitic or Semitic languages, Semitic branches. The former includes the Oromo language, spoken by the Oromo people, Oromo, and Somali language, Somali, spoken by the Somalis, Somali; the latter includes Amharic, spoken by the Amhara people, Amhara, and Tigrinya language, Tigrinya, spoken by the Tigrayans. Together, these four groups make up about three-quarters of Ethiopia's population. Other Afroasiatic languages with a significant number of speakers include the Cushitic Sidamo language, Sidamo, Afar language, Afar, Hadiyya language, Hadiyya and Agaw l ...
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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, many scholars treat it as an independent language family. Among scholars who do accept its inclusion within Nilo-Saharan, opinions vary as to their position within it. Koman languages in Ethiopia are in close contact with the Omotic Mao languages. In Ethiopia, some Koman-speaking groups also consider themselves to be ethnically Mao. Internal classification The Koman languages are: *Koman ** Uduk, or T’wampa, (formerly in South Sudan) — about 20,000 speakers, most at a large refugee camp at Bonga, near Gambela ** Kwama (Ethiopia) — about 15,000 speakers, mainly in Benishangul-Gumuz ** Komo (Sudan) — about 12,000 speakers mainly in An Nil al Azraq ** Opuuo (Opo), or Shita (Ethiopia) — spoken in 5 villages north of the ...
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Oromo Language
Oromo, historically also called Galla, is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch, primarily spoken by the Oromo people, native to the Ethiopian state of Oromia; and northern Kenya. It is used as a lingua franca in Oromia and northeastern Kenya. It is officially written in the Latin script, although traditional scripts are also informally used. With more than 41.7 million speakers making up 33.8% of the total Ethiopian population, Oromo has the largest number of native speakers in Ethiopia, and ranks as the second most widely spoken language in Ethiopia by total number of speakers (including second-language speakers) following Amharic. Forms of Oromo are spoken as a first language by an additional half-million people in parts of northern and eastern Kenya. It is also spoken by smaller numbers of emigrants in other African countries such as South Africa, Libya, Egypt and Sudan. Oromo is the most widely spoken Cushitic language and among the five languages o ...
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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 Hanger River which separates it from Yaso, and by Oromia region in the east and south; parts of the woreda are enclaves in the Oromia region. Demographics The 2007 national census reported a total population for this woreda of 30,143, of whom 15,983 were men and 14,160 were women; 2,762 or 9.16% of its population were urban dwellers. The majority of the inhabitants said they practiced Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, with 46.39% of the population reporting they observed this belief, while 44.55% of the population were Protestant, 4.57% were Muslim, 2.15% practiced traditional beliefs, and 1.55% were Catholic. Based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency in 2005, this woreda has an estimated total population of 14,943, of whom 7,624 ...
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Didessa River
The Didessa (pronounced: ɗeɗ:e:s:a; ) is a river in western Ethiopia. A tributary of the Abay River, it rises in the mountains of Gomma, flowing in a northwesterly direction to its confluence where the course of the Abay has curved to its southernmost point before turning northwards. The Didessa's drainage area is about , covering portions of the Benishangul-Gumuz Region and the West Welega Zone of the Oromia Region. Tributaries on the right bank include the Enareya, Aet, Wama, and the Angar rivers; on the left side the most important tributary is the Dobana River. Exploring this river in the mid-1890s and from interviews with local inhabitants, Alexander Bulatovich asserted that downstream of its junction with the Angar, the Didessa is rapid-free and potentially navigable. Human history The early 20th-century explorer Herbert Weld Blundell opined that "Didessa" appears to have replaced a much older name for this river, finding no earlier usage for it "before 1861, when ...
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Blue Nile State
Blue Nile State ( ') is one of the eighteen states of the Republic of the Sudan. It was established by presidential decree nº 3 in 1992 and it is named after the Blue Nile River. The region is host to around forty different ethnic groups. Its economic activity is based on agriculture and livestock and increasing mineral exploitation. History In 2011, residents of Blue Nile were scheduled to hold ill-defined "popular consultations" to determine the constitutional future of the state, per the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Instead, a dispute over the rightful government of the state, and the determination of Omar al-Bashir to eradicate the Sudan People's Liberation Movement–North, led to a renewed nine-year conflict between government forces and the Sudan Revolutionary Front as well as contributing to a refugee crisis. The conflict finally came to an end in 2020 after a peace agreement was signed and the government to not discriminate based on ethnicity or religion. Furth ...
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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 the northeast by the Kamashi. The largest town in this zone is Assosa. Its highest point is Mount Bambashi, located in the woreda of the same name. The majority ethnic group in the zone is the Berta people. The area Assosa occupies came under Ethiopian control in 1898, when Emperor Menelik II skillfully exploited the traditional rivalry of the three local rulers, Sheikh Ejail al-Hassan of Assosa, Sheikh Mahmud of Khomosha and Sheikh Abd al-Rahman Al-Ejail of Bela-Shangul proper. When Ethiopia and the British administration of Sudan demarcated their common border in 1902, this finalized their annexation. Demographics Based on the 2007 Census conducted by the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia (CSA), this Zone has a total populat ...
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Oromia Region
Oromia (, ) is a Regions of Ethiopia, regional state in Ethiopia and the homeland of the Oromo people. Under Article 49 of 1995 Constitution of Ethiopia, Ethiopian Constitution, the capital of Oromia is Addis Ababa, also called Finfinne. The provision of the article maintains special interest of Oromia by utilizing social services and natural resources of Addis Ababa. It is bordered by the Somali Region to the east; the Amhara Region, the Afar Region and the Benishangul-Gumuz Region to the north; Dire Dawa to the northeast; the South Sudanese state of Upper Nile (state), Upper Nile, Gambela Region, South West Ethiopia Peoples' Region, South West Ethiopia Region, Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region and Sidama Region to the west; the Eastern Province (Kenya), Eastern Province of Kenya to the south; as well as Addis Ababa as an enclave surrounded by a Oromia Special Zone Surrounding Addis Ababa, Special Zone in its centre and the Harari Region as an enclave surro ...
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