17 Facts About Somali language

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.

Somali language is classified within the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family, specifically, Lowland East Cushitic in addition to Afar and Saho.

Somali language is spoken in Somali inhabited areas of Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Yemen and by members of the Somali diaspora.

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.

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.

Pitch is phonemic in Somali, but it is debated whether Somali is a pitch accent or tonal language.

Andrzejewski posits that Somali is a tonal language, whereas Banti (1988) suggests that it is a pitch accent language.

Lexical prominence in Somali language can be classified under a pitch accent system, in which there is one high-tone mora per word.

Somali language has an old prefixal verbal inflection restricted to four common verbs, with all other verbs undergoing inflection by more obvious suffixation.

Somali language has two sets of pronouns: independent pronouns and clitic (verbal) pronouns.

Somali language uses three focus markers: baa, ayaa and wax, which generally mark new information or contrastive emphasis.

Somali language contains a few Indo-European loanwords that were retained from the colonial period.

Furthermore, all the months in Somali language are now loaned words from the Italian, like "Febraayo" that comes from "febbraio".

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.

Various such historical manuscripts in Somali language nonetheless exist, which mainly consist of Islamic poems, recitations and chants.

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.