| Afar | |
| Nativename: | Afar: Qafar af, Afar: عَفَر أَف |
| Ethnicity: | Afar |
| States: | Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia |
| Region: | Horn of Africa |
| Speakers: | million |
| Date: | 2019–2022 |
| Ref: | e27 |
| Familycolor: | Afroasiatic |
| Fam2: | Cushitic |
| Fam3: | East |
| Fam4: | Lowland |
| Fam5: | Saho–Afar |
| Script: | Latin |
| Dialects: | Aussa Ba'adu Central Afar Northern Afar |
| Minority: | |
| Iso1: | aa |
| Iso2: | aar |
| Iso3: | aar |
| Notice: | IPA |
| Glotto: | afar1241 |
| Glottorefname: | Afar |
| Pronunciation: | pronounced as /aa/ |
Afar, also known as Afar: ’Afar af, Afar: Qafar af, or Afar: عَفَر أَف, is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch, primarily spoken by the Afar people, native to parts of Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia. It is an official language in Ethiopia; and a national language in Djibouti and Eritrea. Afar is officially written in the Latin script and has over 2.6 million speakers.
Afar is classified within the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family. It is further categorized in the Lowland East Cushitic sub-group, along with Saho and Somali.[1] Its closest relative is the Saho language.
The Afar language is spoken as a mother tongue by the Afar people in Djibouti, Eritrea, and the Afar Region of Ethiopia.
According to Ethnologue, there are total Afar speakers. Of these, 1,280,000 were recorded in the 2007 Ethiopian census, with 906,000 monolinguals registered in the 1994 census.
In Djibouti, Afar is a recognized national language.[2] It is also one of the broadcasting languages of the Radio Television of Djibouti public network.
In Eritrea, Afar is recognized as one of nine national languages which formally enjoy equal status although Tigrinya and Arabic 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.[3]
In the Afar Region of Ethiopia, Afar is also recognized as an official working language.[4] Since 2020, Afar is one of the five official working languages of Ethiopia.[5]
The consonants of the Afar language in the standard orthography are listed below in angle brackets (preceded by the IPA notation):
| Plosive | voiceless | pronounced as /ink/ (t) | pronounced as /ink/ (k) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| voiced | pronounced as /ink/ (b) | pronounced as /ink/ (d) | pronounced as /ink/ (x) | pronounced as /ink/ (g) | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | pronounced as /ink/ (f) | pronounced as /ink/ (s) | pronounced as /ink/ (c) | pronounced as /ink/ (h) | ||||
| voiced | pronounced as /ink/ (q) | ||||||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /ink/ (m) | pronounced as /ink/ (n) | |||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /ink/ (w) | pronounced as /ink/ (l) | pronounced as /ink/ (y) | ||||||
| Tap | pronounced as /ink/ (r) | ||||||||
Voiceless stop consonants which close syllables are released, e.g., pronounced as /[ʌkʰˈme]/.
pronounced as //ɖ// may be realized as a tap pronounced as /link/[6] or lose its retroflexion as pronounced as /[d]/ in certain dialects.
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /ink/ (i) | pronounced as /ink/ (ii) | pronounced as /ink/ (u) | pronounced as /ink/ (uu) | ||
| Mid | pronounced as /ink/ (e) | pronounced as /ink/ (ee) | pronounced as /ink/ (o) | pronounced as /ink/ (oo) | ||
| Open | pronounced as /ink/ (aa) | pronounced as /ink/ (a) | ||||
Sentence final vowels of affirmative verbs are aspirated (and stressed), e.g.
Sentence final vowels of negative verbs are not aspirated (nor stressed), e.g.
Sentence final vowels of interrogative verbs are lengthened (and stressed), e.g.
Otherwise, stress in word-final.
Possible syllable shapes are V, VV, VC, VVC, CV, CVV and CVVC.[7]
As in most other Cushitic languages, the basic word order in Afar is subject–object–verb.
In Ethiopia, Afar used to be written with the Ge'ez script (Ethiopic script). Since around 1849, the Latin script has been used in other areas to transcribe the language. Additionally, Afar is also transcribed using the Arabic script.[8]
In the early 1970s, two Afar intellectuals and nationalists, Dimis and Redo, formalized the Afar alphabet. Known as Qafar Feera, the orthography is based on the Latin script.[9]
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.[8]
| Djibouti, Ethiopia | Eritrea | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| /a/ | A a | ||
| /b/ | B b | ||
| /t/ | T t | ||
| /s/ | S s | ||
| /e/ | E e | ||
| /ħ/ | C c | X x | |
| /k/ | K k | ||
| /ɖ/ | X x | Dh dh | |
| /i/ | I i | ||
| /d/ | D d | ||
| /ʕ/ | Q q | C c | |
| /r/ | R r | ||
| /f/ | F f | ||
| /g/ | G g | ||
| /o/ | O o | ||
| /l/ | L l | ||
| /m/ | M m | ||
| /n/ | N n | ||
| /u/ | U u | ||
| /w/ | W w | ||
| /h/ | H h | ||
| /j/ | Y y | ||
Long vowels are represented by doubling. The letters P p, J j, V v and the digraphs Ch ch, Kh kh, Sh sh are used in loanwords.
