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| Siltʼe | |
|---|---|
| የስልጤ (Yesiltʼe) | |
| Native to | Ethiopia |
| Region | Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region |
| Ethnicity | 1.4 millionSilt'e (2018)[1] |
Native speakers | 880,000 (2007 census)[1] |
| Ge'ez script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Either:stv – Siltʼewle – Wolane |
| Glottolog | silt1239 |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
Siltʼe (ስልጥኘ[siltʼiɲɲə] or የስልጤ አፍ[jəsiltʼeaf]) is anEthiopian Semitic language spoken in SouthEthiopia. A member of theAfroasiatic family, its speakers are theSiltʼe, who mainly inhabit theSiltʼe Zone in theSouthern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region. Speakers of the Wolane dialect mainly inhabit theKokir Gedebano district ofGurage Zone, as well as the neighbouringSeden Sodo district of theOromia Region. Some have also settled in urban areas in other parts of the country, especiallyAddis Ababa.
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Dialects of the Siltʼe language include:Azernet-Berbere,Silti,Wuriro,Ulbareg andWolane.[citation needed] There are about 940,000 native Siltʼe speakers (2007 census); 125,000 speakers of Wolane.
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Siltʼe has a fairly typical set of consonants for anEthiopian Semitic language. There are the usualejective consonants, alongside plain voiceless and voiced consonants and all of the consonants, except/h/ and/ʔ/, can begeminated, that is, lengthened.
The charts below show the phonemes of Siltʼe. For the representation of Siltʼe consonants, this article uses a modification of a system that is common (though not universal), among linguists who work on Ethiopian Semitic languages, but differs somewhat from the conventions of theInternational Phonetic Alphabet. When the IPA symbol is different, it is indicated in brackets in the charts.
Siltʼe vowels differ considerably from the typical set of seven vowels in languages such asAmharic,Tigrinya andGeʽez. Siltʼe has the set of five short and five long vowels that are typical of the nearby Eastern Cushitic languages, which may be the origin of the Siltʼe system. There is considerableallophonic variation within the short vowels, especially fora; the most frequent allophone of/a/,[ə], is shown in the chart. All of the short vowels may bedevoiced preceding a pause.
Since at least the 1980s, Siltʼe has been written in theGeʽez script, originally developed for the now-extinct Geʽez language and most familiar today in its use forAmharic andTigrinya.
This orthographic system makes distinctions among only seven vowels. Some of the short-long distinctions in Siltʼe are therefore not marked. In practice, this probably does not interfere with comprehension because there are relatively fewminimal pairs based on vowel length.In written Siltʼe, the seven Geʽez vowels are mapped onto the ten Siltʼe vowels as follows:
Meshesha Make Jobo reports that the use of the Siltʼe language is being replaced by the use of Amharic by some speakers for some domains. He points to large political and social factors, many from the national level. He also points out smaller, local factors, such as the lack of creative genres.[2]
