The Somali language is written officially with the Latin alphabet although the Arabic alphabet and several Somali scripts like Osmanya and the Borama script are informally used.
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The Somali language is written officially with the Latin alphabet although the Arabic alphabet and several Somali scripts like Osmanya and the Borama script are informally used.
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Somali language is classified within the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family, specifically, Lowland East Cushitic in addition to Afar and Saho.
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Somali language is regulated by the Regional Somali Language Academy, an intergovernmental institution established in June 2013 in Djibouti City by the governments of Djibouti, Somalia and Ethiopia.
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Such a language is Maay which is principally spoken by the Digil and Mirifle clans in the southern regions of Somalia.
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Somali language has five vowel articulations that all contrast murmured and harsh voice as well as vowel length.
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Pitch is phonemic in Somali, but it is debated whether Somali is a pitch accent or tonal language.
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Andrzejewski posits that Somali is a tonal language, whereas Banti (1988) suggests that it is a pitch accent language.
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Lexical prominence in Somali language can be classified under a pitch accent system, in which there is one high-tone mora per word.
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Somali language has an old prefixal verbal inflection restricted to four common verbs, with all other verbs undergoing inflection by more obvious suffixation.
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Somali language has two sets of pronouns: independent pronouns and clitic (verbal) pronouns.
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Somali language uses three focus markers: baa, ayaa and wax, which generally mark new information or contrastive emphasis.
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Somali language contains a few Indo-European loanwords that were retained from the colonial period.
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Furthermore, all the months in Somali language are now loaned words from the Italian, like "Febraayo" that comes from "febbraio".
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Besides Ahmed's Latin script, other orthographies that have been used for centuries for writing the Somali language include the long-established Arabic script and Wadaad writing.
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Various such historical manuscripts in Somali language nonetheless exist, which mainly consist of Islamic poems, recitations and chants.
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Andrzejewski and Shire Jama Ahmed specifically for transcribing the Somali language, and uses all letters of the English Latin alphabet except p, v and z There are no diacritics or other special characters except the use of the apostrophe for the glottal stop, which does not occur word-initially.
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