| Also Known As: Danakil,Afaraf,Adal,Denkel,<Afar Af,`Afar Af,Afar
Description:
Afar (Qafár af) is a Lowland East Cushitic language spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti. It is believed to have 1.5 million speakers, the Afar. The basic word order in Afar, like in other East Cushitic languages, is subject object verb. Its speakers have a literacy rate of between one and three per cent. Its closest relative is the Saho language.
The consonants of the Afar language in the standard orthography are listed below (with IPA notation in brackets):
Consonants which close syllables are released, e.g., akʰˈme.
Sentence final vowels of affirmative verbs are aspirated (and stressed), e.g. abeh = /aˈbeʰ/ 'He did.' Sentence final vowels of negative verbs are not aspirated (nor stressed), e.g. maabinna = /ˈmaabinna/ 'He did not do.' Sentence final vowels of interrogative verbs are lengthened (and stressed), e.g. abee? = /aˈbeː/ 'Did he do?' Otherwise, stress in word-final.
Syllables are of the form (C)V(V)(C). One exception is the three-consonant cluster -str-.
Afar may be written either with the Latin alphabet or Ge'ez script...... full article at Wikipedia |
