Advanced Comprehensive Afaan Oromo English Dictionary

Gadaa Journal, 2020

Science, Technology and Arts Research Journal, 2013

Few studies were conducted between languages of Horn of Africa and Nubia from the African point of view aiming to consider the genetic relationship between such languages. Although some scholars indicated that Oromo language was used in the Nile Valley, few comparative and historical investigations were made between Dongolawi Nubian and Oromo languages. The present work aims to investigate the relationship between Oromo and Dongolawi Nubian languages. It claims a possible genetic relationship between the two languages. As regards the data analysis method, the researchers have employed the historical-comparative linguistic method and sought to apply Grimm's law. The researchers, in addition, used terms of body parts, grammatical particles and postpositions, and placenames to support the relationship between the two languages. Concerning the data collection method, the data under analysis was collected from various sources; written sources like published and unpublished works. The researchers also elicited data from native speakers of Oromo. For the results, the study found that there is a genetic similarity between Oromo and Dongolawi languages. We recommend that Afro-Asiatic languages be reexamined in the light of the results concluded by the current study. We also recommend further investigations to be conducted between Nubian languages and languages of Horn of Africa.

The paper presents a critical review of the previous research on dialects of Oromo and tries to identify the focus of the future research in order to explore various aspects of the dialects which are least or not studied. The review of relevant literature has revealed that most of the previous studies are inconclusive, shallow, very much limited in scope and some of them are outdated or based on old data, which may not reflect the current sociolinguistic features of the language. The review has also showed that the process of standardizing the language appears to get stuck; thus individuals and organizations make desperate attempts to coin and loan-translate words to satisfy their immediate needs. Undoubtedly, the review suggests that extensive sociolinguistic studies will have to be carried out in order to describe and identify the dialects of the language, and to assess their mutual intelligibility. It is recommended that the process of standardizing the language should not be trustingly left to linguistic evolution. It seems appropriate to establish Oromo Language Academy so as to coordinate all genuine efforts aimed at studying and standardizing the language.

2019

Annual Conference on African Linguistics, 517–538. Berlin: Language Science Press., 2024

Oromic, the language of the Oromo people, a Cushitic language spoken mainly in Ethiopia, has officially been using a Latin script-based orthography since 1991. The orthography is widely accepted by Oromic speakers. With the expansion of the application of this orthography to more than literacy and elementary education, the necessity for some updates on the rules has been felt at times. One such required update is the rules of determining word boundaries encompassing affixes, clitics, and words. This issue is very important in Oromic to minimize ambiguity and manage the length of the words. This paper proposes which morphemes should be affixed and which ones should be written separately, based mainly on the criteria proposed by Kutsch Lojenga (2014), and explains how this helps disambiguation.

2021

The study examines the lexical and phonological variations of Kemisie Oromo with respect to the locations of the society. To do this, the researcher applied a descriptive research design and conducted a study in Oromia Zone Amhara region. To make it manageable, the researcher used Kemisie teachers training college as a sample area and selected 120 representative students from different Woredas of Kemisie Zone, and provided 335 word lists in Amharic and English language to convert it to Affan Oromo. Additionally, three teachers who teach Affan Oromo in the college were selected purposively for sociolinguistic interview. Analysis was made qualitatively by eliciting the collected data and by adopting "Comparative Method" approach. Furthermore, the study classify the Kemisie Oromo varieties based on the Woreda of the Zone into three varieties of local dialects such as Bati local dialect, Jile Tumuga local dialect, and Other local dialects that is Dewa Chefa, Dewi Harwa, Artuma...