According toEthnologue, there are 2,600,000 total Afar speakers. Of these, 1,280,000 were recorded in the 2007 Ethiopian census, with 906,000 monolinguals registered in the 1994 census.[1]
In Djibouti, Afar is a recognized national language.[3] It is also one of the broadcasting languages of theRadio Television of Djibouti public network.
In Eritrea, Afar is recognized as one of nine national languages which formally enjoy equal status althoughTigrinya andArabic are by far of greatest significance in official usage. There are daily broadcasts on the national radio and a translated version of the Eritrean constitution. In education, however, Afar speakers prefer Arabic – which many of them speak as a second language – as the language of instruction.[4]
In the Afar Region of Ethiopia, Afar is also recognized as an official working language.[5] Since 2020, Afar is one of the five official working languages of Ethiopia.[6]
In Ethiopia, Afar used to be written with theGe'ez script (Ethiopic script). Since around 1849, theLatin script has been used in other areas to transcribe the language.[1] Additionally, Afar is also transcribed using theArabic script.[9]
In the early 1970s, two Afar intellectuals and nationalists, Dimis and Redo, formalized the Afar alphabet. Known asQafar Feera, the orthography is based on the Latin script.[10]
Officials from the Institut des Langues de Djibouti, the Eritrean Ministry of Education, and the Ethiopian Afar Language Studies and Enrichment Center have since worked with Afar linguists, authors and community representatives to select a standard orthography for Afar from among the various existing writing systems used to transcribe the language.[9]
^Lewis, I. (1998).Peoples of the Horn of Africa: Somali, Afar and Saho. Red Sea Press. p. 11.
^"Djibouti".The World Factbook. CIA.Archived from the original on 25 May 2023. Retrieved31 August 2014.
^Simeone-Senelle, Marie-Claude (2000)."Les langues en Erythrée".Chroniques Yeménites 8, 2000 (in French).8 (8). Cy.revues.org.doi:10.4000/cy.39.Archived from the original on 6 January 2010. Retrieved6 April 2010.
^Hamann, Silke; Fuchs, Susanne (June 2010) [2008]. "How do voiced retroflex stops evolve? Evidence from typology and an articulatory study".Language and Speech.53 (2):181–216.doi:10.1177/0023830909357159.PMID20583729.S2CID23502367.
Bliese, Loren F. (1976). "Afar". In Bender, Lionel M. (ed.).The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia. Ann Arbor: African Studies Center, Michigan State University. pp. 133–164.
Colby, James G. (1970). "Notes on the northern dialect of the Afar language".Journal of Ethiopian Studies.8 (1):1–8.JSTOR41965797.
Hayward, R. J.; Parker, Enid M. (1985).Afar-English-French dictionary with Grammatical Notes in English. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.ISBN978-0-7286-0124-6.
Hayward, Richard J. (1998). "Qafar (West Cushitic)". In Spencer, Andrew; Zwicky, Arnold M. (eds.).Handbook of Morphology. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 624–647.doi:10.1002/9781405166348.ch29.ISBN978-0-631-22694-9.
Morin, Didier (1997).Poésie traditionnelle des Afars. Langues et cultures africaines. Vol. 21. Paris: Peeters.ISBN978-2-87723-363-7.
Parker, Enid M. (2006).English–Afar Dictionary. Washington DC: Dunwoody Press.ISBN978-1-931546-23-2.
Voigt, Rainer M. (1975). "Bibliographie des Saho–Afar".Africana Marburgensia.8:53–63.
