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 University of Kent

The Development of Oromo Writing System

A Thesis

By

Teferi Degeneh Bijiga

School of European Culture and Languages

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the

degree of

Doctor of Philosophy, Ph.D.

November, 2015
Abstract

The development and use of languages for official, education, religion, etc.

purposes have been a major political issue in many developing multilingual

countries. A number of these countries, including China and India, have

recognised the issues and developed language policies that have provided

some ethnic groups with the right to develop their languages and cultures by

using writing systems based on scripts suitable for these purposes. On the

other hand, other countries, such as Ethiopia (a multilingual African state)

had, for a long time, preferred a policy of one language and one script in the

belief that this would help the assimilation of various ethnic groups create a

homogenous population with one language and culture. Rather than realizing

that aim, the policy became a significant source of conflict and demands for

political independence among disfavoured groups.

This thesis addresses the development of a writing system for Oromo, a

language spoken by approximately 40 percent of the total population of

Ethiopia, which remained officially unwritten until the early 1990s. It begins

by reviewing the early history of Oromo writing and discusses the Ethiopian

language policies, analysing materials written in various scripts and certain

writers starting from the 19th century. The adoption of Roman script for

Oromo writing and the debates that followed are explored, with an

ii
examination of some phonological aspects of the Oromo language and the

implications of representing them using the Roman alphabet.

This thesis argues that the Oromo language has thrived during the past few

years having implemented a Roman-based alphabetical script. There have

been and continue to be, however, internal and external challenges

confronting the development of the Oromo writing system which need to be

carefully considered and addressed by stakeholders, primarily by the Oromo

people and the Ethiopian government, in order for the Oromo language to

establish itself as a fully codified language in the modern nation-state.

iii
Acknowledgements

I have received much support and understanding from many people in

completing this thesis. But, first of all, I should thank God, who has been so

gracious in keeping me well and helping me complete this project.

People to whom I am indebted include my mother and father, who have been

inspirational, mentor and generous with their unconditional love especially

during my childhood. Their moral and practical support has been

instrumental in making me the person I am.

Professor Richard Hayward was not only my supervisor at the School of

Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, where I started this research,

but he has been also a good friend and adviser. I thank him for being there

whenever I needed someone to listen to me or support me with most part of

the research and for his continuous friendship, during thick and thin times. I

would also like to thank Dr Chege Githiora of the SOAS for his input during

the early part of the research and for the moral support he offered me.

My deepest gratitude goes to my supervisors, Dr David Hornsby and

Professor Mike Fischer, who have devoted their time, experience and

iv
knowledge to make this work a success. Both were dream supervisors in

being available by telephone, email and in person to provide me with their

useful comments and advice that helped shape the thesis.

I am grateful to a number of fellow Oromos who have been kind in sharing

with me their wisdom and experience of Oromo language. Among these Mr

Taha Abdi and Mr Amin Abdella were informative especially on the Oromo

writing system. Professor Asafa Jalata of the University of Tennessee (U.S.A.)

and Dr Taye Regassa of Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia) have been kind

enough proofreading some chapters of the thesis. I say thank you to them and

all the other Oromo friends from whom I have benefited in different ways.

The Oromo Community in the United Kingdom deserves my heartfelt

gratitude for participating in a workshop in which I made a presentation on

the Oromo writing system and for its continuous effort in sustaining and

developing Afaan Oromo as a written language in the UK.

Last, but by no means least, I like to thank Mrs Almaz Negash and my

children, Sirbo and Obse Degeneh, for tolerating me spending many

weekends, evenings and holidays pursuing my studies rather than spending

time with them. I hope and believe they understand my intention and forgive

me as the sacrifice was worth paying.

Teferi Degeneh Bijiga

v
Some abbreviation used in the thesis

E.C. The Ethiopian calendar (EC) is based on the Julian calendar and
lags "seven" years behind the western calendar between
September 11th (12th in leap year) to January 1st; or "eight" years
behind between January 1st to September 11th (12th in leap
year) in western calendar. The Ethiopian calendar has 12
months of 30 days and a short month of 5 or 6 days, depending
whether it’s a leap year. In this thesis all years are written in
western calendar unless they are indicated otherwise.

EPRDF Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front

IPA International Phonetic Alphabet

OLF Oromo Liberation Front

SNNPR Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region

TGE Transitional Government of Ethiopia

TPLF Tigrai Liberation Front

vi
Table of Contents
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................. II
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.........................................................................................IV
SOME ABBREVIATION USED IN THE THESIS.................................................VI
CHAPTER I ..................................................................................................................4
1. INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................................4

CHAPTER II...............................................................................................................13
2. THE OROMO PEOPLE AND THEIR LANGUAGE ...............................................................................13
2.1. THE OROMO PEOPLE ..................................................................................................................13
2.2. THE OROMO LANGUAGE ............................................................................................................24
2.3 PHONEMIC INVENTORY AND PHONOLOGY OF OROMO .............................................................32
2.3.1. The Oromo consonants .......................................................................................................32
2.3.2. Loan phonemes/consonants.................................................................................................35
2.3.3. The glottals /h/ and / ʔ / ......................................................................................................36
2.3.4. Ejective and implosive sounds ............................................................................................41
2.3.5. The implosive /ɗ/ ................................................................................................................43
2.3.6. Consonant clusters..............................................................................................................44
2.3.7. Gemination .........................................................................................................................48
2.3.8. Assimilation........................................................................................................................51
[Link]. Regressive assimilation ....................................................................................................51
[Link]. Progressive assimilation ..................................................................................................52
2.3.9. Gemination – compensation................................................................................................52
2.4 THE VOWELS ................................................................................................................................52
2.5 TONE ............................................................................................................................................58

CHAPTER III .............................................................................................................60

3. THE EARLY HISTORY OF OROMO WRITING ....................................................................................60
3.1 REFORMS AND ADAPTATION OF SCRIPTS ....................................................................................60
3.1.1. Criteria for the adaptation of scripts ...................................................................................71
[Link]. Linguistic Criteria ...........................................................................................................73
[Link]. Non linguistic considerations ..........................................................................................75
3.1.2. Standardisation...................................................................................................................77
3.2. AN OVERVIEW THE EARLY HISTORY OF WRITING OROMO.........................................................82
3.2.1. Consonant representations .................................................................................................89
3.2.2. Gemination representation..................................................................................................94
3.2.3. Vowel representations .........................................................................................................97

CHAPTER IV ...........................................................................................................105
4. WRITING OROMO IN NON-ROMAN SCRIPTS ...............................................................................105
4.1. THE ARABIC ALPHABET............................................................................................................105
4.2. THE SHAYKH BAKRI SAPALO SCRIPT .......................................................................................112
4.3. THE GE’EZ WRITING SYSTEM ....................................................................................................117
4.4.1. The superfluous symbols...................................................................................................128
4.4.2. Gemination and the Ge’ez script.......................................................................................131
4.4.3. The implosive / ɗ / and the Ge’ez script ...........................................................................135
4.4.4. The glottal stop and the Ge’ez script.................................................................................136
 4.4.5. The Oromo vowels and the Ge’ez script............................................................................137

CHAPTER V ............................................................................................................142
5. THE LANGUAGE POLICY OF ETHIOPIA AND ITS IMPLICATIONS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
OROMO LANGUAGE AND ITS WRITING SYSTEM ..............................................................................142
5.1. THE PRE-1974 LANGUAGE POLICY ...........................................................................................142
5.2. THE LANGUAGE POLICY DURING THE MARXIST DERG REGIME ..............................................154
5.3. THE POST-DERG LANGUAGE POLICY OF ETHIOPIA..................................................................158
5.4. THE ETHIOPIAN LANGUAGE POLICIES AND THE OROMO WRITING SYSTEM ...........................163

CHAPTER VI ...........................................................................................................169
6. THE RECENT HISTORY OF OROMO WRITING ...............................................................................169
6.1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................169
6.2. A GENERAL SURVEY OF OROMO WRITING IN THE 1970’S AND 1980’S ....................................170
6.3. SOME OROMO WRITTEN MATERIALS IN GE’EZ SCRIPT IN 1970’S AND 1980’S.........................172
6.4. SOME OROMO MATERIALS WRITTEN IN THE ROMAN ALPHABET IN THE 1970’S AND 1980’S.175
6.4.1. The Oromo Liberation Front and the Oromo writing system...........................................175
6.4.2. A brief account of Haile Fida’s contribution to the Oromo writing system .....................180
6.4.3. Tilahun Gamta’s contributions to the development of Oromo writing ............................187

CHAPTER VII..........................................................................................................191
7.1. ARGUMENTS ON THE SELECTION OF A SCRIPT FOR OROMO WRITING.....................................191
7.2. THE COLOGNE WORKING GROUP ............................................................................................192
7.3 COMMON AND ONGOING ARGUMENTS ON SCRIPT SELECTION FOR OROMO WRITING ...........196

CHAPTER VIII ........................................................................................................223

8. THE ADOPTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE QUBEE ALPHABET AS OROMO WRITING SYSTEM .223
8.1. WHAT IS QUBEE?......................................................................................................................223
8.2. THE QUBEE – HISTORICAL BACKGROUND ...............................................................................224
8.3. THE ADOPTION OF QUBEE ........................................................................................................227
8.4. REPRESENTATION OF SOME PHONEMES ...................................................................................230
8.5. REPRESENTATION OF GEMINATION, VOWEL LENGTH AND ASSIMILATION .............................235
8.6. THE DIGRAPHS ..........................................................................................................................239
8.7. PUNCTUATION MARKS .............................................................................................................243
8.8. ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS ............................................................................................244
8.9. TONE AND QUBEE ....................................................................................................................244
8.10. WORD DIVISION ......................................................................................................................246
8.11. THE PRESENT STATE OF THE QUBEE AND THE OROMO LANGUAGE ......................................250

CHAPTER IX ...........................................................................................................255
9. QUBEE AND THE MODERNISATION OF OROMO VOCABULARY ...................................................255

CHAPTER X.............................................................................................................266
10. CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................266

BIBLIOGRAPHY .....................................................................................................273
WEB REFERENCES ................................................................................................281
APPENDICES ..........................................................................................................283
I. MAP OF OROMIA..........................................................................................................................283

2
II. ETHIOPIA – REGIONAL STATES ...................................................................................................284
III. MAP OF AFRICA ........................................................................................................................285
IV. LARYNGOGRAPHY OF OROMO SINGLE AND GEMINATE /D/.....................................................286
V. EXAMPLES OF COMMON OROMO ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS. .......................................288

3
Chapter I

1. Introduction

The Oromo proverb: worqeen harkaa qaban sibiila (a piece of gold seems like a

piece of iron to its owner) indicates how human beings often take familiar

things for granted and fail to appreciate the value of the precious items they

own. For example, writing, which is such an integral part of the way modern

society functions, is rarely taken seriously or widely discussed as to its origins

and development by the wider community that uses it. People do not often

stop to think about how human beings came to have the skill of graphically

representing speech on a material. We rarely concern ourselves with the

question of what would have happened to society if there had been no

writing. Or how disadvantaged those are whose languages are not written.

How are these people affected by the lack of a writing system? Do they have

the right to write their own language? These and similar questions relevant to

writing are not often asked even though the ability to read and write

(“literacy”) has long been a concern for many countries throughout world.

Writing can easily be taken as part and parcel of human existence, especially

in the developed world where it has been in operation for centuries and

where the literacy rate is very high. It is customary nowadays for every child

4
born in modern society to be taught to read and write from an early age. It is

almost universally assumed that every person needs to read and write in

order to live in their society. Contrary to this expectation for every person in

the developed world, the acquisition of writing is not part of the way of life

for many people or societies in the developing world. Indeed, there are many

in the world today who do not possess the skills of reading or writing.

Moreover, there are a number of languages in different parts of the world that

remain unwritten and which do not have a system of writing.

The implications for people who do not have the skills of reading or writing,

or who have no written language at all, are not difficult to imagine. Put

simply, one who cannot read or write is often excluded from the benefits

associated with being literate - for example, one cannot record his ideas, read

written information or receive a school education. People who cannot read

and write are disadvantaged politically, socially and economically compared

to those who are literate and able to apply their knowledge for specific

purposes. Similarly, people who have no option but to learn reading and

writing in a second language because their first language is not written are in

most cases disadvantaged when they compete for a job or promotion as they

are unlikely to be as fluent as those for whom the written language is their

first language.

5
This may result in discrimination and creates political tension, thus, leading

to conflict. The political turmoil and conflicts in Ethiopia (which have been

on-going for decades) are believed by many to have partly resulted from the

language policies of different regimes, which were based on the promotion of

one language and the repression of others in order to establish a linguistically

homogenous country.

In practical terms, it is understandable that in a country like Ethiopia, where

resources are limited and the number of languages spoken is large, it would

be difficult to develop systems of writing for each language and enable the

people to read and write in their first language, or to promote each and every

spoken language to be used in offices or schools. However, in order to achieve

harmony, equality, and understanding between the people it is imperative

that the problems are recognized, openly discussed, and useful lessons learnt

from the experiences of countries such as India, which accommodate regional

and local languages as national and official languages without disintegration.

Imposition of the will of the ruling group upon its population and denying

people the opportunity to use their own language in writing (as has long been

the case in Ethiopia) has not proved to be the best way forward for a peaceful

co-existence amongst people. This has now been recognized in the country’s

constitution, which provides for all people to have the right to develop their

own languages.

6
One of the languages that has benefited from the recognition of the people’s

rights to develop their languages is Oromo, which had remained without an

officially accepted system of writing until 1991. The research presented here is

concerned with the development of a writing system for this important

language, which is predominantly spoken in the Horn of Africa in Ethiopia.

Oromo is believed to be spoken by approximately 40 per cent of the

population of Ethiopia, but it has been neglected for many years and

consequently remained unwritten until recently. The economic, social and

political implications of making it a mandatory requirement for people to use

a second language (Amharic) rather than their first language in Ethiopia have

not been investigated although it is widely believed that most people find it

easier to learn in their first language rather than in a second. Nevertheless it

has been an open Ethiopian policy to discourage Oromo from being used in

public institutions (such as schools or churches) and for the speakers of that

language to use Amharic, the preferred language of the Ethiopian rulers.

Inevitably, this, coupled with prevailing oppressive political, cultural and

economic situations, has caused resentment amongst some Oromo people

who felt it necessary to rebel against successive regimes and play a part in the

downfall of the Derg1 in 1991 in order to allow the development of` their own

language and culture. Although the issue of writing Oromo in the Ge’ez script

was not a primary concern, the formation of the OLF resulted in a new

1
A military government which ruled Ethiopia from 1974 to 1991

7
chapter in the development of the Oromo language involving the choice of a

new script and system of writing. However, instead of being a part of a

lasting solution to the conflicts that existed, this development itself has

created more challenges which still need to be resolved. On the one hand, the

choice of a new script (the Roman Alphabet) for Oromo in a country where

the existing Ge’ez syllabary had been in use for centuries has resulted in

anger on the part of those people who believed in the unity of Ethiopians via

the use of a single script.

On the other hand, there is a group of people who feel that it is their right to

make the decision about which script to use and they oppose the use of the

Ge’ez script for Oromo writing. The reason given by this group is

multifaceted and is examined critically in this thesis. However, it is probably

true to ascertain that a script, besides being a tool for writing, can also be a

means of expressing a national, regional or ethnic identity and culture as well

as a source of political pride. This means that, if imposed, a script can be

resisted in the belief that it is a symbol of political, social and economic

oppression and exploitation.

Even though Oromo is known to have been written unofficially for many

decades before the adoption of its writing system in 1991, there were no

officially approved or commissioned discussions in Ethiopia on how or why it

8
should be written. Neither were there any discussions in Ethiopia as to the

positive or negative outcomes of promoting an unwritten language to written

status and using it in offices, education, the judiciary and other day-to-day

activities alongside other languages that might use the same or a different

script. Moreover, there have been no detailed studies of the history of Oromo

writing, nor of the possible challenges faced by the people engaged in writing

it in various scripts since the nineteenth century. This thesis aims to address

this discrepancy by discussing the development of Oromo writing, in

considering the following main questions:

• What is the historical background of Oromo writing?

• In which other scripts has Oromo been written? Is the Roman alphabet

the right choice and a suitable script for Oromo writing?

• Who should decide which script to use for writing Oromo?

• Should a script other than the Ethiopic (Ge’ez) be used to write other

languages in Ethiopia? And are there possible consequences of using

different scripts for writing different languages side-by-side in

Ethiopia?

• What are the possible challenges and prospects of the Oromo writing

system based on the Roman Alphabet?

In discussing and analyzing these issues, this thesis makes reference to the

available relevant literature, and the writer has interviewed Mr Taha Abdi in

9
London, UK, on 19 February 2005, and carried out a phonological study of the

Oromo language.

The thesis is divided into ten chapters. The second chapter presents the

contextual background by discussing the Oromo people and their language. It

describes the social and linguistic contexts, including the geo-political

conditions and the dialects of Oromo language, which can both affect and be

affected by the writing system.

Chapter Three examines the historical background to early Oromo writing

and considers the individuals who wrote in Oromo beginning in the

nineteenth century and by looking at the ways they represented the various

phonological aspects of the language in writing. It also discusses reforms and

adaptations of scripts and looks at the linguistic and non-linguistic issues that

need to be taken into account when adopting a script for writing a language.

The non-Roman scripts, in which Oromo has been unofficially written, are

discussed in Chapter Four. These included the Arabic script, the Shaykh Bakri

Sapalo script and the Ethiopic (Ge’ez) script. These are all examined in terms

of the extent to which each of them was a viable script for Oromo writing

system.

10
The language policies of different Ethiopian regimes and their implications

for the Oromo language and its writing system are analyzed in Chapter Five.

Chapter Six examines the recent history of the Oromo writing system and

looks at the sporadic - but nevertheless crucial - work recently undertaken by

Oromo nationals such as Haile Fida and Tilahun Gamta. This chapter also

briefly discusses the works of many other Oromo writers who wrote on

different subjects in the Ge’ez script during the Haile Sellassie and Derg

regimes, when writing in Oromo in any script was not encouraged in

Ethiopia.

The adoption of a Roman script for Oromo writing in Ethiopia has brought

about a contention regarding the choice of script in that country. The debate

on which script Oromo’s writing system should be based - a ‘foreign’ script

(Roman Alphabet) or a ‘home-grown’ one (Ge’ez script) - is critically analyzed

in Chapter Seven.

Chapter Eight discusses the adoption of the current Oromo writing system

(Qubee), which is based on the Roman Alphabet. It examines how the

graphemes have been used to represent the sound system in writing. Other

aspects of writing, such as the use of punctuation marks and word divisions

in the Oromo writing system are also discussed within this chapter. Chapter

Nine assesses the modernization of Oromo vocabulary since the adoption of

11
the new writing system and the changes in its status from a vernacular to

official language in Oromia in 1991. It describes how the vocabulary has been

modernized and how the language has come to be used for education,

litigation, business as well as for official purposes. The last chapter concludes

the thesis by analyzing some possible challenges and prospects of the

development of the Oromo writing system and suggests further some

recommendations.

12
Chapter II

2. The Oromo people and their language

2.1. The Oromo people

Oromo are probably one of the most misrepresented people in Ethiopia with

their origin, name, population size and contribution to the civilization of the

country being subjected to much debate. In order to establish a better

understanding of the Oromo, it is helpful to discuss briefly first how they

have been misrepresented.

As early as the mid 19th Century, Ludwig Krapf, a German missionary who

visited the Horn of Africa for the purpose of converting the people to

Christianity, argued the term “morma” (coined by a French gentleman to

refer to the (Oromo) people) was wrong, as the people called themselves

“Orma” and not “morma”. Information about the people is further

complicated by Krapf’s reference to the country where the Oromo people

lived as “Ormania” (Krapf, 1850). In this way, the name of the people and the

location where they lived was misrepresented in writing even though this

misrepresentation gained little publicity due to the fact that Krapf’s book was

not widely circulated and read.

13
Indeed, the confusion to the name of the Oromo people continued unabated

even after Krapf’s description. Almost all pre-1970’s literature on the Oromo

people refers to them as “Galla”, a name that is derogatory and offensive to

them, and which the people themselves detested. Instead the Oromo people

have referred to themselves as “Oromo” ([oromo:]2) and called their language

Afaan Oromo (Oromo language). Non-Oromos in the Ethiopian Empire who

referred to the people as Galla added the Amharic suffix [ -ùa ], pronounced

as “ña” ( like in mañana, tomorrow in Spanish) and written with the symbols

“ -gna”, to call the language as ‘Galligna’ and more recently as ‘Oromigna’.

The misrepresentation of the Oromo people was not limited to the changing

of their name to ‘Galla’. It was also extended to the discussion of their origin

and of their contributions to the so-called Ethiopian civilization as described

by a British linguist, Edward Ullendorff. His comment, which indicated his

bias against the Oromo people (Ullendorff, 1965:76), read: “The Gallas had

nothing to contribute to the civilization of Ethiopia; they possessed no

material or intellectual culture, and their social organization was at a far

lower stage of development than that of the population among whom they

settled.” This comment by Ullendorff suggests that he was either racist or

ignorant of the Oromo Gada way of life (see, for example, Asmerom Legesse,

2
From here on all words or symbols in square brackets ([ ]) indicate phonetic
transcriptions.

14
1973, 2000). Gada is a complex system developed and practised by the Oromo

people for centuries in regard to their social, political, legal, religious, and

other aspects of life. It embodies democratic principles in which officials are

elected to serve for a period of time, in this case for eight years. Then how

Ullendorff says the Oromo have not contributed to Ethiopian civilization is

hard to believe because, surely, the democratic way of life, which the Oromo

are known for, is part and parcel of a civilization. In fact what is interesting

here is not the question of Oromo’s contribution to the so called Ethiopian

civilization but the question of how the Oromo managed to practise Gada

when they did not have a system of writing. This may appear implausible, for

example to early Europeans, but it has been possible for people to live

successful and complex lives without having an established writing system.

However, the fact that Oromo have not had an officially recognised system of

writing until recently can arguably be taken as the reason why their origin

and their contribution to Ethiopian civilization have not been correctly

represented. Alexander Bulatovich (2000: 68) explains about the gada and

notes, “the peaceful free way of life, which could have become the ideal for

philosophers and writers of the eighteenth century, if they had known it, was

completely changed. Their peaceful way of life is broken; freedom is lost; and

the independent, freedom loving ‘Oromos’ find themselves under the severe

authority of the Abyssinian conquerors”.

15
Representing the Oromo people in a negative way and ignoring their culture

and history as if they had not existed had been the common practice of almost

every writer on Ethiopia up until 1974, when a military group, the Derg, came

to power in a revolution with the aim of implementing a socialist system of

government. Indeed, it was hard to find any author in the literature on

Ethiopia before 1974 who had questioned the validity of Ullendorff’s claim

that the Oromo “had nothing to contribute to the civilization of Ethiopia” to

see if this assertion was based on any kind of historical or scientific evidence

and analysis. In fact, a number of Ethiopian scholars re-inforced this negative

attitude about the Oromo people by making unsubstantiated comments. For

example, Mesfin Woldemariam, a renowned Ethiopian scholar, made a

similar negative comment about the Oromo people when he said: “If the

Amharas in Gojjam and Dembia and the Tigrians did not confront them (the

Oromos) with sufficient strength and stop them, the Gallas like a flooding

river, would have spilled over Egypt” (cited in Asmerom Legesse, 2000:5).

Mesfin Woldemariam’s analogy of a flooding river to the Oromo people

(which is based on possibly hearsay rather than scientific or historical

evidence) can only depict his fear of the strength of the Oromo people.

In another source, Patrick Gilkes (1994:2) states that: “In the 16th century the

Oromo overran much of the highland areas of the Amhara and the Tigrayan

peoples”. Such statements were made to convince readers that the Oromo

16
came to central and north Ethiopia in the 16th century and had nothing to do

with civilization of the country. While such negative opinions about the

Oromo by Amhara-Tigrayan and Ethiopianist writers are prevalent, what is

missing in the currently available literature on Ethiopian politics, history,

geography, anthropology and linguistics, is a true and detailed discussion of

how and when the Amharas and all the other peoples in the Ethiopian Empire

arrived in the regions they currently inhabit and what contributions they

actually made to the development of their civilization and culture. However,

recently a few Oromo scholars have refuted such wrong assumptions about

the Oromo (see Melba 1988; Hassen, 1990; Holcomb and Ibsa 1990; Jalata,

1993).

Nevertheless, documents that suggest a different point of view to that of

Ethiopianist scholars about the origin and time of arrival of Oromo in

Ethiopia are rare and sporadic. Margery Perham (1947:10), for example, states

that the Oromo are one of the earliest peoples to have lived in the Horn of

Africa. Furthermore, she goes on to say that the Oromo “are a very ancient

race, the indigenous stock, perhaps, on which most other peoples in this part

of eastern Africa (the Horn of Africa), had been grafted”. Perham also

indirectly challenges the Abyssinian misconception that they were the

original inhabitants of the region by saying that “The emigrant Semites

landed in a continent of which the north-eastern part appears to have been

17
inhabited…” She asserts that various peoples frequently classified as Cushitic,

included Oromos Somalis, Danakils, and Kaffas, inhabited the area before the

Abyssinians. Perham’s views are supported by Albertine Gaur (1987:100) who

states that the “indigenous language of Ethiopia (or Abyssinia, as it is often

called) was non-Semitic, belonging to the Cushitic group of languages”.

Mohammed Hassen (1994) is one of the Oromo scholars who have refuted the

general misconception in Ethiopia that claims that the Oromo were immigrant

invaders who moved into a country today called Ethiopia at the beginning of

the sixteenth century. Although he does not provide specific evidence for

rejecting this notion, he presents his argument by making reference to the

previous works of Bates (1979), Haberland (1963), and his own PhD thesis

(1983). Mohammed Hassen (1994: xii-xiii) writes:

… here it would suffice to say that the

historical wisdom that was accepted for a
long time and which claims that the Oromo
arrived in the Christian kingdom only in
the sixteenth century is incorrect for the
following three reasons among others. First,
it is incorrect because it is based on an
inaccurate historical premise, which seeks
to establish the origin of the Oromo as
outside the present boundaries of Ethiopia
thus making them “newcomers” to the
country.

18
Mohammed Hassen (ibid) further refuted the claim that the Oromo arrived in

the Ethiopia region in the sixteenth century and states that the premise is

based on the assumption that all Oromo were nomads before and during the

sixteenth-century. He argued that the premise was wrong because it

stipulated that all the Oromo people lived in one place before their sixteenth-

century migration. Mohammed Hassen (1994:xiii) emphasized that: “In

reality, a group of pastoral Oromo lived in what is today the administrative

region of Sidamo, while others lived in what is now the administrative region

of Bale”.

In a workshop3 that was organized in London on 4th July 2009, Professor

Mekuria Bulcha of Malardalen University, Sweden, presented a paper under

the title: “The Militarization of the Gadaa Institution in the 16th & 17th

Centuries: Critical Reflections on the Historical Location of the Centre of

Oromo Expansion and Direction of their Movement”. This presentation was

detailed and provided evidenced account of the Oromo people in Ethiopia.

The contents presented at this workshop by Professor Mekuria Bulcha were

expanded and included in his latest book (Mekuria Bulcha, 2011). In his

presentation at the workshop and in his book, Professor Bulcha rejects the

3 This was the 3rd workshop organised by some Oromo individuals at City University,
London, under the title of “London International Oromo Culture and History
Workshop – 4th July 2009”.The proceedings from the workshop are not available but
the information is included in his recent book (Mekuria Bulcha, 2011).

19
assertion that the Oromo people migrated to the area they presently inhabit

beginning in the 16th Century. By triangulating information he collected

through various sources and methods (such as analyising names of places,

and conflict episodes), Mekuria Bulcha argued that there is no doubt Oromo

were living in the Southern Plateau or Shawa (Central Ethiopia) during the

medieval period.

Another interesting analysis concerning the origin and time of arrival of the

Oromo in the Horn of Africa is proposed in Ulrich Braukämper (1986). In this

article Braukämper concludes that the country of origin of the Oromo people

included Walabu, Mormor and Liban, all in the southern part of Ethiopia, and

he goes on to say that there is no solid basis for the argument that the Oromo

came from outside of Africa. All of these analyses and works indicate that the

Oromo did not come into the Ethiopian Empire but have lived and moved

from place to place within the region.

Described as Cushitic, the Oromo people today inhabit an area that extends

from the highlands of Ethiopia in the north, to northern Kenya in the south,

20
and from Ogaden and Somalia in the east, to the Sudan in the west (see

Appendix I)4.

Reliable censuses are difficult to come by in Ethiopia, but it is widely believed

that the Oromo people form the majority group among the seventy or so

ethnonational groups that live in the Ethiopian state. Estimates of the exact

number of the Oromo people, however, vary greatly. A number of writers (for

example, Christopher Clapham (1969), Mohammed Hassen (1986), Gada

Melba (1988), and Holcomb and Sisai Ibsa (1990)) argue that the Oromo

people constitute at least fifty per cent of the Ethiopian population. A study

by Feyissa Demie (1996) indicates that the Oromo people accounted for over

50 per cent of Ethiopia’s total population of 54 million. Asafa Jalata (1993:12)

believes that for political reasons, the Ethiopian rulers do not want the actual

number of the Oromo population to be known; however, he claims that the

Oromo are the largest ethnonational group in the Ethiopian Empire and the

Horn of Africa.

A World Bank Study (2005:3) estimated the population of Ethiopia to be 67

million in 2002, of which the two largest are Oromo and the Amhara

comprising 40 and 30 percent respectively. A population census undertaken

4
However, this remains a politically contentious issue with the boundaries around the
land in which the Oromo live being depicted by official Government figures as a
much smaller area (see Appendix II).

21
by the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia (CSAE) in 2007, and released

through its own website - [Link] - declared that the Ethiopian

population was a staggering 74 million with a projected annual growth rate of

2.6 million people. This estimate of the total population of the country seems

to be conservative when compared to The Economist Pocket World in Figures

(2009), which indicates that the population of Ethiopia in 2006 was actually

over 79 million. What is interesting in the latest 2007 population census of

Ethiopia is that the number of the Oromo people is said to be only 25.5

million, which equates to approximately 34.5 percent of the total population

of the country. This latest census and all the other figures given above by

various people are not consistent with each other and, as a result, are likely to

be unreliable even though they all demonstrate that the Oromo are by far the

largest ethnonational group in terms of population numbers in Ethiopia.

Gada Melba (1988) claims that the Oromo people in Ethiopia live in all

regions except the Gondar region as defined during the Derg. He further

asserts that they also make up a large proportion of the population of the

regions, which have been known as Illu Ababor, Arsi, Baale, Shawa, Sidamo

and Kafa. The land, which is inhabited predominantly by the Oromo, is now

officially known as the Oromia region.

22
The Oromo also live in Kenya where they are named according to their

extended clan families: Borana, Orma, Gabra, Sakuye, Ajuraan, Munyo, and

Waata (Stroomer, 1995). The Oromo in Kenya are estimated to be around

200,000 and they live in three provinces, namely, the Eastern Province, the

Northern Province and the Tana River District of the Coast Province.

In Ethiopia, about 88% of the Oromo people live in rural areas and only 12%

live in urban areas or towns of about 2,000 inhabitants or more (Feyissa

Demie, ibid). The Oromo are primarily farmers and pastoralists. Their land is

usually fertile and they grow different types of grains such as wheat, barley,

maize, tef or (taafii), sorghum, beans, and lentils and in many areas cash crops

such as coffee and chat (a stimulant shrub). They are also known as cattle

herders (Huntingford, 1955), and keep cows, sheep, goats, donkeys, mules,

horses, camels, and chicken. Minerals such as gold, silver, iron, etc. are said to

be abundant in various regions of Oromia (Gada Melba 1988).

Oromia encompasses a number of major and minor rivers such as the Blue

Nile, the Awash, Gannalle, Wabee, Gibe, Baroo, Dhidhesa rivers, and many

others. Lakes such as Qoqaa, Abbaya, Bishoftu, and Langano are also found in

Oromia. A wide variety of bushes, trees, and wild animals are abundantly

found all over the Oromo land.

23
In conclusion, the Oromo are an indigenous African people who, despite over

a century-long suppression of their culture and of their Gada democracy

(Asmerom Legesse, 1973; 2000), have kept their identity. Influenced by the

proximity of and exposure to various foreign groups, some of the Oromo

people today are of the Christian faith while a substantial number are

Muslims. Yet, there are also a great number of the Oromo people who practise

the Oromo indigenous religion known as Waqeeffata. This religion was

associated with the Gada system and, as the Oromo word [wa:k’a] (God)

indicates, it simply means believing in God. Having discussed the Oromo

people and the geographical areas where they inhabit, it is appropriate to

examine their language, Oromo, in the following section.

2.2. The Oromo language

Afaan Oromo (literally Oromo mouth) or the Oromo language, belongs to the

Cushitic branch of Afroasiatic language phylum (see Figure 1, languages of

Africa), which is reckoned to be divided into six major branches or families

(Hayward, 2000:75). The Cushitic branch itself is divided into a further four

groups of North, Central, South and East and Afaan Oromo is one of the

languages of Lowland groups within the East Cushitic group (Figure 1).

According to Gene Gragg (1982), Afaan Oromo is probably the third-most

widely spoken Afroasiatic language in the world, after Arabic and Hausa. In

24
Ethiopia, Afaan Oromo is used as a lingua franca and as a day–to-day means

of communication by a great many people of various ethnonational groups

other than its native speakers (Bulcha, 1993).

Detailed comparative phonological, morphological and lexical studies of the

dialects of Oromo have not been available and are interesting areas for future

investigation. The existence of a detailed study or knowledge on the degree of

the differences between the Oromo dialects would be beneficial for the

development and standardization of the writing system. Nevertheless, brief,

but useful accounts on the divisions within the Oromo language have been

made at different times by some scholars. For example, B.W. Andrzejewski

(1957) explains that the Oromo language in Ethiopia has many divisions,

though it is not clear just how many of these divisions really are differences in

speech and how many of them are simply geographical. B. W. Andrzejewski

(ibid) does not say whether these divisions in any way hinder communication

between the speakers.

Much earlier on, Enrico Cerulli (1922) divided the Oromo language into three

major dialects: Macha, Tulama, and the Eastern Oromo. Bender, et al. (1976)

25
have, however, divided Oromo into five major dialects, namely, (1) Macha5

(western); (2) Tulama (central); (3) Wollo, Raya (both northern); (4) Eastern;

and (5) Arsi, Guji, and Boran (the last three southern). Gragg (1976) stresses

our current ignorance in the area of dialect differentiation of Oromo, but he

notes that Oromo dialects fall into three large groups: Western (including

Wallaga), Eastern (especially Harar) and Southern (e.g. Borana), with a large

transitional area in the centre (Shawa). Gragg (1976:173) lists features that he

believes distinguish northern dialects from southern ones:

1) a simplification of the system; 2)

replacement of a grammatical by a natural
gender system; 3) simplification of noun
plural marking system; 4) disappearance of
feminine (“t”) series in the demonstratives
(no tana “this” as opposed to “kana”) and
possessive pronouns (no -tee “your”, -
teenna “our”, etc. as opposed to -kee, -
kenna).

It would be supportive of this to point out that features 2), 3) and 4) are still

used in Southern dialects. Both Stroomer (1987) and Andrzejewski (1957)

describe the ‘fuller’ systems of the Southern Oromo varieties. Andrzejewski

(1957) presents Borana forms, and also his 1966 paper in Africa 30, pp62 - 75,

5
Macha is also written as Matcha or Macca dialect, of which the present writer
is a native speaker.

26
and also pp88-98 in Proceedings of the Third International Congress of Ethiopian

Studies. Andrzejewski’s comments on tone in The Proceedings of the Third

Congress are greatly expanded by Owens (1980).in African Language Studies 17,

pp141 -196. Gemetchu Megerssa and Hayward show how simplified this

tonal system has become in Western Oromo (see pp21 – 36 in Hayward and

Lewis (eds.) 1996).

In any case, as one travels from one Oromo location to another, one can

clearly observes variations in some words and in pronunciation and lexicon.

A good example of work looking at the differences in the lexis of some Oromo

dialects is the compilation English-Oromo Vocabulary by Yon Leus (1992),

which presents some 7,700 English words with their approximations in the

Macha (Western), Guji and the Borana (Southern) dialects. The definitions of

the following English words (Table 1) taken from Yon Leus (1992)

demonstrate that one Oromo dialect is not so much different from the other.

For example, “land” in (fatherland) below is given as “biyya” in Macha and

Guji dialects, and “lafa” in Borana dialect. “lafa” also means (land) in all

Oromo dialects thus preventing a chance of misunderstanding by various

dialect users6.

6
All transcriptions throughout this thesis are in Qubee unless otherwise indicated. For
further discussion of the Qubee writing system see Chapter IX.

27
Figure 1 The Afro-asiatic language family

Afroasiatic

Chadic Berber Egyptian Semeti Cushitic Omotic

ec n c

North Central South East

Highland Werizoid Lowland

d d

Somali Saho Afar Arbore

Burji Oromo
Dasenech
Deleba
Boni
Rendille

Eastern Southern Northern Central Western

Source: My own diagram based on the information compiled by Hayward,

2000, pp74-81 and Bender, et al. 1976

28
Table 1. Examples of Oromo dialects with minor word variations

English Macha Guji Borana

fatherland (n) biyya abba ofi biyya abbaa lafa ufi
fear (n) soda, shakki sodaa sodaa, naasu,
giddi
lie soba, kijiba, dhara soba, kijiba dhara, soba
middle giddu, walaka jiddu, wodakka Jiddu, wadaka
honey damma, nadhi damma damma
sheep hoolaa hoole hoola
milk annan aanan anani
Source: Collated by the author based on Yon Leus (1992)

There are a few cases, however, when some items or concepts in various

Oromo dialects have unrelated words (Table 2).

Table 2. Examples of Oromo dialects with major word variation

English Macha Borana Tullama

egg hanqaaquu kille bupha
married man subo goomara nama dubra
fudhe
porridge marqaa, mooqa bulluqa uji
tent dunkaana lukkassa, daase waro
chicken Handanqo lukku lukku

Source: Compiled by the author

Despite these occurrences of word variations and some differences in

pronunciation, it needs to be underlined that all Oromo varieties are mutually

intelligible, and all Oromo people understand one another without great

29
difficulty. There is a general misconception in Ethiopia that the Oromo

language spoken by different Oromo people from different localities is

unrelated. This is a misconception because there is no evidence to support

that the varieties of Oromo spoken in different areas are not related. Contrary

to this assertion, the Oromo language has become a bond and a symbol of

unity for the Oromo and has continued to survive and thrive as one language

without having an unqualified institutional and government support, for the

Ethiopian governments, especially those of the Haile Sellasie and the Derg

regimes, have tried to suppress Afaan Oromo and replace it with the Amharic

language (see Chapter V). It was due to the Oromo national struggle (Mekuria

Bulcha, 1993:15) that it has been allowed to write and teach in the Oromo

language since 1991; and it is likely to continue to thrive, even without

adequate support from the government, as long as the people have the desire

and will to use it in writing.

Undoubtedly, there are variations in the Oromo language as there are

variations in any other language, including, for example, English, which has

been written for centuries and has been used widely in the media of radio,

television and the press, all of which can help to standardise or reduce

variations in pronunciation or vocabulary. In Ethiopia itself, there are

pronunciation, lexical and syntactic differences between Amharic speakers,

and it is not difficult to distinguish the Amharic of Gojjam (northern region)

30
from that of Shewa, also spelled Shawa or Shoa (central region), for example.

The dialectal variations in the Oromo language are relatively negligible given

the fact that it is spoken over a large geographical area and it had not been

written or used for official purposes until recently. As it was observed a long

time ago by A.W. Hodson and C.H. Walker (1922:9):

The uniformity of the dialects (of Oromo) is

under the circumstances striking, separated
as are the tribes by the most formidable
natural barriers of mountain, river, forest or
desert. These physical obstacles are
immense and are intensified by the
administration which makes it almost
impossible to pass from district to district
without written permits.

Even though speakers of all branches of Oromo understand one another

without much difficulty and the Oromo varieties have the same phonemic

inventory of consonants and vowels, and have a common denominator in

many phonological and morphological rules, there are some dialect

differences which cannot be underestimated especially with regard to the

development of Oromo writing system. This is because a writing system,

unlike the spoken form of a language, needs to be standarised in order to

foster, among other things, political and cultural unity. A standard written

form also facilitates communication and is beneficial in education. The

process and implications of this are discussed in Chapter X.

31
2.3 Phonemic inventory and phonology of Oromo

An understanding of the phonemic inventory and phonology of a language is

vital in the discussion of a writing system. This section discusses briefly

phonemic and phonological aspects of the Oromo language.

2.3.1. The Oromo consonants

Tables 3 and 4 below show the twenty-six phonemes that comprise the

Oromo consonant system. For the purpose of this study I will employ the

letters listed below in Table 4 on the left-hand side in the column labelled

‘phoneme’ when writing Oromo words. I will also use colon marks (:) after a

consonant or a vowel to denote a consonant is geminate or a vowel is long.

Note that Oromo examples given under Tables 1 and 2, and some Oromo

words cited earlier have been written with double consonants and double

vowels to denote gemination and long vowels, respectively. For the

remainder of this chapter, colon marks (:) are used to denote gemination and

long vowels.

32
Table 3. Consonant phoneme chart

Stops Lab. Alv.- Pal. Vel. Laryn.

den.

voiceless (p)* t tS k ?

voiced b d (z) dJ g

ejectives p‘ t‘ tS’ k‘

implosive d

spirants f s Ø

nasals m n ù h

sonorants r l

glides w j

()* segments in parentheses appear in loanwords.

Source: Gragg (1982:xviii)

33
Table 4. Examples of realisation of principal allophones

Phonemes Realisation of Examples in Oromo Examples in Gloss

Principal Phonetic Transcription Oromo Qubee
Allophones Transcription
1 /p/ [p] po:lisi: poolisii police
2 /p’/ [p’] p’ap’ari: phapharii kidney beans
3 /b/ [b] ba:du: baaduu cottage
cheese
4 /d/ [d9] dam:a dam:a honey
5 /d/ [d] dada: dhadhaa butter
6 /t/ [t9] tok:o tokko one
7 /t’/ [t’] t’iy:a: xiyaa bow
8 /tS/ [tS] atSi achi there
9 /dJ/ [dJ] dJa:ma: jaamaa blind
10 /tS’/ [tS’] tS’ab:i: cabbii snow
11 /k/ [k] kan:i:sa kanniisa bee
12 /k’/ [k’] k’aw:e: qawwe gun
13 /g/ [g] ga:la gaala camel
14 /¢/ [¢] do¢i: Do’i: watching
15 /f/ [f] farda farda horse
16 /s/ [s] soda: sodaa fear
17 /Ø/ [Ø] Øan shan five
18 /z/ [z] zabaù:a: zabanya: guard
19 /h/ [h] har:e: harree donkey
20 /m/ [m] mana mana house
21 /n/ [n] nama nama person
22 /ù/ [ù] ùa:ra: nyaaraa eyebrow
23 /w/ [w] Wa:k’a Waakaa God
24 /l/ [l] lo:mi: loomii lemon
25 /r/ [É] rafu: rafuu to sleep
26 /j/ [y] yero: yeroo time
Source: collated by the author

34
2.3.2. Loan phonemes/consonants

The two loan segments (/ p / and / z /) are becoming more and more common

in the Oromo vocabulary especially since 1991 as a result of mainly of the

process of modernisation of the language. For example, in his Oromo

dictionary, published in 1982, Gragg has three words beginning with /p/

whereas Galmee Jechoota Afaan Oromoo, another dictionary published in (1996)

enters nine words beginning with / p /. Gragg (ibid) has no entry for / z / at

the beginning of a word while Galmee Jechoota Afaan Oromoo (ibid) cites nine

words with a / z / sound in an initial position. However, / z / is not usually

pronounced by those Oromo who have not been exposed to Amharic or other

foreign languages; they have the sound as / s / or / Ø /.

Figure 2 / p / and / z / in loanwords.

/z/ [ zabaù:a ] guard's man (from Amharic)

/z/ [ zama:tSa: ] campaign (from Amharic)

/z/ [ muzik’a: ] music (from English)

/z/ [ mu:zi: ] banana (from Arabic)

/p/ [ po:lisi: ] police (from English)

/p/ [ ispo:rti: ] sport (from English)

/p/ [ ripo:rteri: ] reporter (from English)

35
The segment / p / also occurs as an allophone of /b/ when it is followed by

/ s /.

Figure 3 [ b ]→ [ p ]

[ obse:] → [ o[p]se: ] patience or a person's (female) name

[ tS’absa ] → [ tS’a[p]sa ] I break

[ k’abso: ]→ [ k’a[p]so: ] struggle

2.3.3. The glottals /h/ and / ʔ /

The Oromo language has two glottal segments, the fricative / h / and the stop

/ ? /, both of which occur only single. This feature makes the Oromo glottal

segments different from the other consonants, which generally occur both in

single and geminate forms. The Oromo segment / h / is believed by Maria-

Rosa Lloret-Romanyach (1988) to occur only word-initially but examples

contrary to this can be found in the language (Figure 4).

36
Figure 4 Examples of Oromo / h / occurring word medially (phonetic and
Qubee transcriptions)

[ baha: ] “bahaa” or [ ba?a: ] “ba’aa” get out (plural or respect)

[baha] “baha” or [ ba?a]] “ba’a” east, for example, as in sun rise

[ baha bi:ftu: ] (‘baha biiftuu’)

[ daho: ] “daho” or [ da?o: ] ( da’oo ) hiding place

In word-initial position, in some but not all words, / h / can be dropped

without any defined conditioning (Stroomer 1987:16) (Figure 5).

Figure 5 Dropping of / h / at word initial position (phonetic transcription)

[ humna ]→ [ umna ] energy [ hu:ru: ] →[ u:ru:] mouth area

[hiy:e:sa ]→[ iy:e:sa ] poor [hindJir:n ]→[ indJira:n ] lice

The glottal stop / ? / is known in Oromo as [ huda: ] “choke” and more often

appears word-medial than word-initially. There are very few examples of

entries (Figure 6) in Galmee Jechoota Oromoo (1996) where / ? / appears at the

start of a word.

37
Figure 6 Examples of / ? / at the beginning of a word

[?o?isa:] 7
re-heat (plural or respect)

[?o:la:] sheep

[?o:gana] raw, unprocessed butter

The glottal stop is realised as an allophone of the implosive / d / when

immediately following / l / (Figure 7).

Figure 7 / d / → / ? /

[faldana]→ [fal?ana] (spoon)

[waldana:] → [wal?ana:] (look after (plural or respect))

The glottal stop / ʔ /, in spite of its common occurrence in the Oromo

language, has only relatively recently been represented in the writing system

as a distinct letter by Oromo writers (see Chapters III and VI). However, its

7
Note that in Macha Oromo the initial / ?/ is dropped or replaced by / h /
resulting the above being as:

[(h)o?isa:] re-heat (plural or respect)

[(h)o:la:] sheep
[(h)o:gana] raw, unprocessed butter

38
phonemic significance as shown above cannot be doubted. In Figure 8, the

addition of the glottal stop in the second word results in a completely

different syllabic structure, pronunciation and meaning from the first word.

Figure 8 Example of a glottal stop as a phoneme

[bala:] hazard ↔ [bal?a:] wide

Furthermore, the glottal stop occurs very often as a cluster with / r / and

/ l / (Figure 9).

Figure 9 The glottal stop as a cluster with / r / and / l /

[har?a] today [dil?u:] afterbirth

[gur?u:] udder [ja:?le] friend, comrade

[hir?u:] not full [jal?a] bent, not straight

The glottal stop in the Oromo language has an important phonological

function in separating two consecutive vowels which are either qualitatively

different because of length or due to other phonetical features. This particular

phonological behaviour helps to explain why diphtongs or sequences of

qualitatively different short or long vowels, or sequences of two long vowels

39
are not permited (Figure 10). This phonological fuction of the Oromo glottal

stop seems to have been neglected by Bender, M.L. ([Link]), 1976:131, when

they wrongly stated that sequences of non-identical vowels could occur in

Oromo and listed examples which included fe:u “to saddle”; mariu “to

advise”; and jia “moon”. In reality, there is a glottal stop between each of

these so called sequences of non-identical vowels and the words would have

been written as fe’u [ fe?u ], mari’u [ mari?u ], and ji’a [ ji?a ] respectively.

Figure 10 Other phonological functions of the glottal stop

(1) [ka?a:] get up (plural or respect) (2) [ka:?a:] store (plural or

respect) it

(3) [bua:] profit (4) [bu?a:] profit

In Figure 10, the medial vowel in (1) and (2) is [a], short and long. It is because

length, the first being short and the second long, that [?] was required. In the

same Figure, example three is not permited, and [?] is required to separate the

vowels as in (4) in Figure 10.

40
2.3.4. Ejective and implosive sounds

/ p’ /, / t’./, / tS’ /, / k’ /, and / d /

Among the ejective and implosive sounds, the ejective series / p’/ is very

limited in its occurrence in word-initial position but is common in word-

medial position. Gragg (1982) asserts that this segment does not at all occur in

initial position in the Macha dialect whereas Tilahun Gamta (1989) lists three

words (Figure 11) beginning with / p’/. The author of this thesis was able to to

find another word beginning with / p’/, [p’arp’arsa] “coward”, to add to the

list.

Figure 11 Examples of words beginning with / p’ /

[p’ap’ari:] kidney bean

[p’iri:] kind of worm
[p’alp’al dJetS:u:] to shine

The remaining ejectives, / t’ /, / tS’ /, / k’ /, commonly occur word-initially and

word-medially. The Oromo language is peculiar in that it has ejective / p'/ and

voiced / b / but lacks the voiceless / p /. Gamkrelidze, (cited in Lloret-

Romanyach, 1988), believes that one would expect the absence of the ejective

series, which usually are functionally weaker than the simple plosive series,

41
as is usually the case with most languages. Lloret-Romanyach (1988) also

thinks that the fact that the Oromo language has ejective / t' / and the

implosive / d / makes the language peculiar as most East Cushitic languages

have only one glottalised coronal stop, either / t’/ or / /d/. / t’ / is a dental

ejective and is common in the language at word-initial as well as word-medial

positions. (Figure 12).

Figure 12 / t’ / at word-initial and word-medial positions

[t’aba tSu:] playing [hat’a:ri:] shrewd (person)

[t’a:?o:] fertilizer [k’ut’i:su:] younger

/ tS’/ is phonologically glotalised (ejective) palatal (see Table 3) but it appears

to this writer to be alveolo-palatal affricate phonetically, and it occurs

commonly in word-initial and word-medial position (Figure 13).

Figure 13 / tS’ / at word-initial and word-medial positions

[ tS’ab:i: ] snow [ k’otS’o: ] yam

[ tS’id’a ] party, wedding [ ba:tS’a ] joke

42
/ k’ / is a glotalized (an ejective) velar (Table 3) and occurs in both word-initial

and word-medial positions (Figure 14).

Figure 14 / k’ / at word-initial and word-medial positions

[ k’aw:e: ] gun [ wa:k’a ] God

[ k’oma ] chest [ mak’a: ] name

2.3.5. The implosive / ɗ /

The Oromo / d/ is described as 'glottalized' by Tilahun Gamta (1988) but as

'implosive/glottalised’ by Lloret-Romanyach (1988). Impressionistically, /d/,

as produced by this writer using laryngography8 at the School of Oriental and

African Studies phonetics laboratory, seems implosive when geminate but

more like a palatal lateral approximant [ Ȝ ] with an accompanying glottal

stop or simply laryngealised voicing when single. Whether / d / as a rule is

voiced or voiceless, is not clear. However, it can be argued that / d / is

generally9 voiceless since a laryngyographic printout (Appendix IV) shows a

8
For detailed information on the application of laryngography please refer to Fourcin,
1974; Catford,1988.
9
The qualification ‘generally’ is added because electropalatographic (EPG) printout
(as produced by the researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies phonetics
laboratory) of geminate / ɗ / appears to be voiceless while single / ɗ / is realised as
voiced. For further information about EPG, see 3.3.8. below.

43
waveform whose peak to valley curve was diminished indicating that the

vocal folds are kept tightly together, with hardly any vibrations, for a

considerable amount of time.

In the Macha dialect the segment /d/ is sometimes pronounced as / ? / by

some speakers, thus removing the question of whether the segment is voiced

or voiceless. The examples given under Figure 7 above also demonstrate that

/ d / when occurring as a cluster with / l / can be in free variation with the

glottal stop (/ ? /).

2.3.6. Consonant clusters

The Oromo language allows a maximum sequence of two different single

consonants within a word, but never at the beginning of a word. Consonant

clusters occur as part of root word (Figure 15) or arise as a result of inflections

(Figure 16).

Figure 15 Examples of consonant clusters as part of root word

[ farda ] horse

[ hantu:ta ] mouse

44
Figure 16 Consonant clusters resulting from inflections

[ raf+na ]→ [ rafna ] we will sleep

[ kan+isa ] → [ kansa ]: his

If a sequence of more than two consonants were likely to appear in a word, a

vowel would be inserted to limit the maximum sequence in a word to two

consonants. For example, the suffix [ -na ] was attached to the verb [ raf ]

(sleep) to make it [ rafna ] (we will sleep) but in a word where the base has an

apparent final consonant cluster (c.f. shadow vowels below) the same rule

does not apply. Thus, in Figure 17 the vowel / i / is employed to avoid three

consonants occurring in sequence.

Figure 17 The vowel / i /

[ar:abs] swear at→ [ar:absina] we will swear at him, her, etc.

[tS’abs] break →[tS’absina] we will break

The fricatives / f / and / s / are in free variation when they are immediately

followed by a suffix beginning with a nasal sound.

45
Figure 18 / s / and / f / (free variation)

[ ba:s ] [ ba:sna ] →[ ba:fna ] [ ba:sne] →[ba:fne] reveal

(command)
[ aj:e:s ] [ aj:e:sna ]→ aj:e:fna [aj:esne ]→[aj:efne] kill
(command)

Consonant clusters are not permitted in word-initial position and it is because

of this rule that borrowed words with initial clusters such as [sp] in "sport”

are written in Oromo as [ ispo:rti:].

Consonant clusters are in general allowed only word medially. The sonorant

segments / l /, / m /, / n /, or / r / are usually the first element of a cluster in a

morpheme as shown in Figure 19. Note that the translations of the words are

loose as there are no equivalent English words for terms such as [mart’o:].

46
Figure 19 Examples of consonant clusters where / l /, / m /, / n /, and / r / are
the first elements

Second
Consonant
l m n r

albu: anklet simbo: charm sirba dance b

anc’o:te: akind of sorc’a: c’
potatoe reminant
jalde:sa monkey gundo: flat farda horse d
basket
wald’a:nu: look after hand’u:ra navel d’
kolfu: to laugh danfu: boil arfa:sa: f
winter
galgala evening hinjira:n lice urji: star j
halkan night morki: k
contention
k’ulk’ul:u: clean ank’a:k’u: egg mark’a: k’
porridge
silmi: tick humna energy harma breast m
(parasite)
salp’a: light, not p’
heavy
adamsu: hunt gansi:su: betray gorsu: advice s
mi:lto: companion intala girl t
k’ilt’mi: bone mart’o: apron t’

It must be noted that geminate segments do not usually come immediately

after or before another consonant to form a cluster. However, there are some

exceptions where the segment / tS /, which has been described as a geminate

by Lloret-Romanyach (1988), occasionally occurs (see Figure 20) as a cluster

with a sonorant.

47
Figure 20 Examples of / tS / as a consonanat cluster

[ bultSa: ] administrator

[ galtSa: ] make them enter, for example, cows into pens

[ bak:altSa:] morning star

2.3.7. Gemination

Gemination is an important area that needs to be considered in the

development of Oromo writing system. Unless gemination is appropriately

represented in the writing system, a word can assume a different and an

unexpected meaning thus resulting in confusion. Hence, a selection or

development of a system of writing for Oromo needs to consider that the

system allows gemination to be clearly represented. Here, it is worth noting

Haddis Alamayyahu’s (1990) claim that the Ge’ez script has a deficiency in

effectively representing gemination in Amharic. From this it is not too hard to

deduce that the Ge’ez script would not be the most effective to represent

Oromo, a language known for its common feature of gemination (see Lloret-

Romanyach (1988).

48
All Oromo consonants except / h / and / ʔ/ have geminate forms. In the Oromo

literature, geminates are commonly known as [dJaba:] (strong) while the

single consonants are referred to as [ la:fa: ] (soft). Oromo geminates seem to

differ from their single forms in physical qualities such as voicing and place of

articulation. For example, an elecropalatographic (EPG)10 recording at the

School of Oriental and African Studies phonetics laboratory by the author

showed that the position of parts of the tongue in the oral cavity is more front

during the articulation of geminate coronal stops than during the production

of their counterpart single segments. This research looked at the four Oromo

coronal stops (/ t /, / d /, / t’ / and / d /) both in plain and geminate forms by

choosing two words in which each sound was the penultimate syllable. In all

cases the sounds were preceded by a short vowel and followed by long / a /,

and to limit the influence of intonation, [dJ eda:] (say, plural/respect

imperative), was articulated after each of the words. The EPG investigation

was to enable the author to determine the place of articulation of the stops. It

was also a useful way to compare and contrast the sounds against each other

and the single forms against the geminate not only in terms of their place of

10
In an EPG, the subject wears a thin acrylic palate which, in the author’s case, has 62
silver electrodes mounted on the surface. A low voltage signal, derived from an
oscillator, passes through the subject’s body; when the tongue contacts one of the
electrodes, a circuit is completed, and a signal conducted via lead-out wires to an
electronic processing unit, in this case an IBM personal computer. The computer
processes the signals and records the timing and location of the tongue and the palate
in speech. For full description of how EPG is used the reader is referred to Hardcastle
(1984).

49
articulation but also in terms of their duration of articulation. In this case the

study revealed that geminate segments required comparatively more time

and area of tongue contact in their occlusion process than the single segments.

Some geminates also appeared to differ from their single counter parts in the

voicing quality. An example here is the implosive / d / which was voiceless

when geminate and voiced when single.

Like long vowels, Oromo geminates have phonemic value and, as can be seen

from the following example (Figure 21) the minimal pairs are the result of the

middle consonant being single in the first and geminate in the second set of

words.

50
Figure 21 Minimal pairs resulted from geminates

[ samu: ] (to rot) [ sam:u: ] (brain)

[ soda: ] (fright) [ sod:a: ] (in-law)

[ ro:bi: ] (Wednesday) [ ro:b:i: ] (hippopotamus)

[ hatu:] (to steal/ [ hat:u: ] (thief)

[ bada: ] Highland [ bad:a: ] (run away)

Gemination in Oromo also commonly occurs through assimilation (regressive

and progressive) as can be seen in the examples below.

2.3.8. Assimilation

Assimilation is a common phonological process in Oromo. The following

tables provide some examples:

[Link]. Regressive assimilation

/l - n/→/l:/ / tS’a:l -na/ → / tS’a:l:a/ we exceed

/m-n/→/m/ /nam - ni/ → /nam:i/ the man
/d - t/→/d:/ /bad - ta/ → /bad:a/ you get lost
/t’- t/→/t’:/ /lit’ -ta/ → /lit’:a/ you enter
/r -n/→/r:/ /bar -na/ → /bar:a/ we learn
/j -t/→/j:/ /fadJadJ -ta/ → /fadJadJ:a/ dull

51
[Link]. Progressive assimilation

/t-n/→ /n:/ [ gud:at-na ] → [ gud:an:a ] we will grow

/d-n/→/n:/ [ bad-na ] → [ ban:a ] we get lost/run away

/g-n/→/n:/ [ dug-na ] → [ dun:a ] we drink

/q-n/→/n:/ [ dak’-na ] → [ dan:a ] we go

It must be noted that progressive assimilation does not always result in

gemination. In 2.3.10, lack of gemination is compensated for by the

lengthening of the vowel.

2.3.9. Gemination – compensation

/ d-n / [ god-na ] [ go:na ] we will do

/ ?-n / [ ha?-na ] / ha:na ] we will play a
game of ‘hockey’

2.4 The vowels

Phonemically, Oromo has five short and five long vowels (Figure 22), which

can occur word-initially, medially or finally. A description of the present

writer’s articulatory impression of Oromo vowels in medial environment

(Figure 22) is as follows:

52
/ i / The Oromo / i / coincides with the high-front cardinal vowel. It is the

closest vowel with no obvious rounding of the lip.

/ e / appears to be lower and more open as compared to cardinal vowel 2.

/ a / Repeated visual and auditory perception of this vowel reveals that / a / is

not as open as cardinal vowel number 4; and is apparently not either as front

as cardinal 4 nor is it as back as cardinal 5. The short form of / a / sounds like

/í/while the longer one is relatively more open.

/o/ There is a degree of lip rounding in the articulation of /o/ and the tongue

position is between that of the cardinal vowels 6 and 7.

/u/ is more or less like cardinal vowel 8 with its qualities of high back tongue-

position and the rounding of the lips.

Figure 22 Short and long vowels in word medial position

/i/ [ bira ] nearby [ bi:raa ] beer

/e/ [ kel:a: ] fence [ ke:l:o: ] wild grass
/a/ [ rafu: ] sleep [ ra:fu: ] cabbage
/o/ [ boru ] tomorrow [ bo:ru: ] unclean water
/u/ [ muka ] wood [ tu:ta ] crowd

53
Except for / a /, mentioned above, the short and long forms of the vowels

seem to be similar with regard to tongue and lip position and the Oromo

vowel chart can be seen below.

Figure 23 The Oromo vowel chart

Short Long

i u High i: u:

e o Mid e: o:

a Low a:

All Oromo vowels, both short and long, can occur word initially, medially or

finally, though the rounded vowels (/ o / and / u /) only rarely occur in short

form in word final position (Figure 24):

54
Figure 24 Examples of short and long Oromo vowels in various positions in
a word

word-initial word-medial

Short Vowels [abdJu:] dream [mana] house nama person

[in:i] he,obj. [da:kij:e] duck [ka'i] get up
[eda] last night [jede] he said [dJede] he said
[odu:] news [bok’ol:o] sweet [tok:o] one
corn
[urdJi:] star [buna] coffee [soromu:]
become rich

word-initial word-medial
Long Vowels

[a:da:] culture [aj:a:ntu:] [busa:] malaria

graceful
* [di:ma:] red [abdi:] hope
[e:ge:] tail le:t’a: single [on:e:] heart
[o:gana] raw butter k’o:da portion [k’o:nk’o:]
throat
[u:ma:] creation [lak:u:] twin

*Gragg (1982) has two words that have long / i / word initially. The first one

is an exclamation “ii!” and the second is “iitoo”, which in fact could also have

been written as [di:to:] or dhiitoo (boil) in qubee.

Oromo vowels, at least the Macha dialect, do not exhibit diphthongization,

even though Hodson and Walker (1922:11) wrongly indicated the opposite by

writing [ei] as in kaleissa (yesterday). In Figure 10 earlier examples were given

55
of how the glottal stop was employed to separate two different vowels, in

either short or long form, so they did not immediately follow each other.

Lloret-Romanyach (1988), quite rightly, proposes that Oromo, at least that of

the Macha dialect, does not allow long vowels in two successive syllables,

unless the second is also word final. This is a useful point to be taken into

consideration in the development of the writing system. Another important

phonological aspect is that while all Oromo words, at least underlyingly, end

in a vowel, this does not always seem to be apparent. This is because of the

qualitative change in which, depending on their environment, vowels get not

only reduced in length but also glottalised or become voiceless especially

prepausally. These tendencies are schematised by Lloret-Romanyach (ibid) as

in Figure 25.

Figure 25 Lloret-Romanyach’s scheme showing qualitative changes of

Oromo vowels at word-final position

C[+voice] — #
C[-voice] — #

Reduced [v] > [v̥ ]

[v̥ ] > [v]

Short [v] > [v̥ ] [v] > [v̥ ]

Source: Lloret-Romanyach, 1988: 97.

56
Her scheme shows that Oromo vowels in word-final position change quality

by becoming either devoiced or reduced in length. This means that short

vowels become devoiced, long vowels become short, and The examples given

under Figure 17 [ ar:abs ] (swear at)→ [ ar:absina ] (we will swear at him, her,

etc.) and [ tS’abs ] (break) → [ tS’absina ] (we will break) indicate that the / i /,

at a word final position, is unrecognisable to the ear and consequently as a

result it has not been graphically represented. While all the Oromo vowels

reduce their length or change their quality at word final position by, for

example, becoming voiceless, / i / gets reduced more than any one of the

others to the extent that it is inaudible and only is a shadow of itself. This

does not mean that the vowel / i / is totally absent at word final position; what

it means is that it becomes short and voiceless. The implication for Oromo

writing system is that these ‘shadow vowels’, despite their length or

prominence to the ear, need to be recognized and represented, in some cases,

as in galatoomi (Thank you) and ajjeesi (Kill).

57
2.5 Tone

Tone in Oromo has not been given due attention by scholars who have

studied the language. However, it has been long recognized that tone exists at

morphological and syntactical levels in Oromo. For example, Owens, (1980;

1985); Hayward and Gemetchu Megersa (1996); and Lloret-Romanyach

(1988)) make references to tone in Oromo without asserting the language to be

tonal with a significant number of minimal pairs resulting from tone. Among

these writers, Lloret-Romanyach (ibid: 28) claims that “tone in Oromo has a

phonemic status because it distinguishes different words and morphemes as

well as different grammatical relationships”. It cannot be concluded from this

that Oromo is not ‘strongly tonal language’ although the southern dialects

make much more use of tone than Macha, or other central, western and

northern varieties and this does not hinder comprehension between the

varieties. However, there is evidence that ‘minimal pairs’ are effected by

tones. The minimal pairs, in Figure 26, belong to different lexical classes

(noun, verb, etc.) so the role of tone for differentiating words is very slight.

58
Figure 26 Examples of tone having a phonemic value in Oromo

gógáa (dry) g ògáa (skin)

mák’áa (name) màk’áa (change route)

fáy: áa (wellbeing) fày: áa (get well)

The implications of tone representation in Oromo writing will be discussed in

Chapter VIII.

In summary, the Oromo people in Ethiopia form the majority of the

population and inhabit a large geographical area of the country. Their

language is divided into four main dialects but all varieties are mutually

intelligible.

The next chapter now discusses the history of how this language then

gradually progressed into a written form.

59
Chapter III

3. The early history of Oromo writing

This chapter will discuss the early history of the Oromo writing system. In

order to understand how this system has developed, we will firstly discuss a

brief overview of the reforms and adaptation of scripts in general, and then

apply this to how it has unfolded in the experience of Oromo. This will then

enable us to contextualise why it became imperative for Oromo to adopt a

written form.

3.1 Reforms and adaptation of scripts

Language first developed as a written form so that humans could represent

their ideas in a graphic form. The terms script, orthography and writing

system are often used interchangeably in ordinary conversations, and are

often easily misunderstood. These terms have technical definitions and are

quite distinctive from one another. A script is defined as “a set of distinct

marks conventionally used to represent the written form of one or more

languages” (Sproat, 2000:13). From this definition it is clear that a script is not

tied to any one language but, if needs be, can be used with two or more

languages. The Roman script, as can be seen in Table 5, is used for writing a

number of languages in North and South America and Africa. Table 5 also

60
shows that the Arabic alphabet is used in many Asian and African countries.

Wellisch (1978) states that the Hangul script is unique to the Korean language.

Orthography, on the other hand, is defined as “a set of rules intended to serve

the general purposes of written communication for the literate members of a

language community” (Wellisch, 1978:4). He elaborates that this set of rules is

uniform, integrated, and standardized. It is possible that a written language

can have more than one orthography based on the same or different scripts at

the same time. Wellisch (ibid.) discusses various kinds of orthographies and

gives Hebrew and Serbo-Crotian as examples of languages that have two

standard orthographies. A standard orthography consists of a set of rules of

proper spelling, punctuation, layout and numeric symbols (Mountford,

1996:630). Meanwhile, a writing system is “a set of conventions used to

represent a language in writing”. It is a system of “rules governing the

recording of words and sentences of a language by means of conventional

graphic signs” (Wellisch, 1978:13). Wellisch elaborates on this further by

stating that a writing system is entirely abstract and generic, and it is neutral

as to function or typology. Each written language has its own writing system

by the virtue of its unique phonology and morphology. In other words,

writing systems are “arbitrary inventions, accepted and observed by those

who wish to communicate in writing in a certain language” (Wellisch, 1978:

14).

61
It is important to note that a writing system, despite being unique to a certain

language, can have wholly or partly the same script, letters, or signs,

punctuation marks or other elements as other writing systems. A writing

system does not necessarily use all the available marks in particular scripts

but only chooses those distinctive marks or graphs in the script that suit the

purpose of a given language. This means that some graphic marks may be

omitted in a writing system of a language that has adapted a particular script.

For example, if the Oromo language (as spoken in the Horn of Africa) were to

adopt the Roman Alphabet or Ge’ez script, the symbols ቨ and (/v/ and //

([ts]), respectively, would become redundant as Oromo does not have sounds

corresponding to these graphemes. Similarly, a writing system may need to

make modifications to existing graphs or may need to create new letters for

some of the sounds for which there are no equivalent symbols in the script to

be adapted. For example, the Oromo language has a phoneme (/d/), which

does not have an equivalent symbol in the Ge’ez or the Roman script and if

one of the scripts were to be adopted, a new symbol would be needed to

represent the phoneme. Wellisch (1978, pp46-47) lists five most frequently

used methods of adaptation as follows:

62
 1) The use of letters that are redundant in in Latin to differentiate

between phonemes for which there is no equivalent in Latin. (For

example, the Polish and Czech languages use ‘c’ for the phoneme

[ ʧ ]).

2) The combination of two or more letters to represent a single

phoneme.

3) The addition of letters from other alphabets

4) The invention of entirely new letters(for example, N, O, Œ) to

represent specific sounds of some African languages that adopted

the Roman script, and

5) The addition of diacritical marks to the basic letters of an alphabet

(for example, ‘ñ’ in Spanish).

Writing systems can be classified according to their respective sociolinguistic

functions: orthography, stenography, cryptography, paedography,

technography, and machinography (see Wellisch, 197811, and Mountford,

11
Wellisch (1978) also defines the other classifications of a writing system:
Stenographies are writing systems devised for the purpose of the fast
recording of (mainly spoken) language. They follow standardized rules that are
normally available to anybody interested in using these writing systems.
Cryptographies are writing systems whose primary purpose is secrecy. They
also follow standard rules but these are not available to members of the language
community in general.
Paedographies are mainly intended for language teaching.
Techonographies are close to paedographies but more aimed at specialists.
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is an example.

63
1996). On the basis of these definitions, it can be arguably inferred that a

script can be borrowed fully or partially to write a language for which it had

not been originally invented or developed. Orthography and a writing

system, on the other hand, are specific to a language for which they are

developed. Indeed, most languages are written in a script which had not been

primarily invented for them, but each one of them has a system of writing or

orthography known to and accepted by its users. As has been illustrated in

Table 5, below, there are a limited number of scripts in which quite a number

of languages are written.

Table 5. Scipts used in different continents – numbers in the matrix refer to

the number of countries where the given scripts were being used by
1976

Continents Roman Arabic Cyrillic Ge’ez*12

South America 12 0 0 0
Africa 36 7 0 1
North and Central America 15 0 0 0
Asia 7 16 0 0
Europe 25 0 3 0
Total 95 23 3 1

Source: Wellisch, 1978, 235-238

Machinographies are writing systems specially adapted for the direct and
automatic use by machines, such as Morse telegraph keys or the printout devices of
computers.

12
The Ge’ez script, also in some literature referred to as the Ethiopic script, has been
used to write Amharic, Ge’ez, Tigrinya, Tigre, and various of the Gurage languages in
Ethiopia.

64
Wellisch (1978:42) discusses examples of reforms, adaptations and

impositions of scripts on various languages, and he describes how the Roman

alphabet followed the Roman Catholic Church throughout Europe and later

to the colonies established by European powers in Africa, Asia, and the

Americas.

Similarly, Gaur (1987) discusses the Cyrillic alphabet, which she argues

followed the Patriarchal cross of the Eastern Orthodox Church throughout the

Russian empire and across a large part of the Balkans. She goes on to state

that during the Soviet era, Cyrillic became the main script as it replaced all

other scripts in the European as well as the Russian part of the Soviet Union

(Gaur, 1987: 126). According to Wellisch (ibid) the Arabic script followed the

faith of Islam and was used by Muslims in Africa, Europe, Middle East and

Asia to write their own particular languages.

However (as pointed out above), there are other factors that may also

influence the spread or adoption of a script. One of these would be for

political reasons. For example, the imposition of the Cyrillic script on many

previously written and unwritten languages in the Soviet Union, prior to the

collapse of socialism in the late 1980’s, was imposed by the government on its

citizens. This decision was politically motivated, because it was generally

65
believed by those in power, that this would enable the country to achieve

“unity” through the use of one script (see Wellisch, 1978). In a similar way,

the Roman script was adopted in Albania and Turkey, instead of the Arabic

script which was previously in use in these countries. This decision was

mainly politically motivated by the people in power who wanted to promote

their own political beliefs and move away from strong historical Islamic

influences associated with the use of the Arabic script and the promotion of

Arabic culture.

In an ideal situation, according to Wellisch (ibid), the need to adopt a script to

create a new writing system or to reform an existing one ought to be driven

by reasons specific to a social group which seeks for that language to be

written and used. Such a scenario could only occur in an environment where

the people and the government have the foresight and understanding to

intellectualise the implications of their decisions to reform their language.

However, even in this kind of ideal situation, a writing system does not

develop smoothly and quickly. By and large, in most cases, where the

developments of writing systems had been planned, they generally took place

gradually over a long period of time and with some challenges (see for

example, Gregersen, 1977). If we take the English writing system, too, we can

observe that it is only through use and the efforts of large groups of people

over a period of many years that it has reached the current stage of its

66
development. Indeed the development of a language or its writing system can

never be said to be complete as it is an evolving and dynamic process. Even

after centuries of intensive use in publication, education and written

communication, it is true to state that the English spelling system is today

neither perfect nor easy to use. This is despite the significant improvements

that were likely to have been made through its continuous and wider use over

many centuries.

A fundamental difficulty with the graphic representations of spoken

languages is that the graphemes or symbols and the way they are arranged in

the language change less than the spoken form. Pronunciation may vary not

only through time but also across space between classes within a given time

span. Some of the discrepancies in the English spelling system can be

accounted for by the fact that the pronunciation of the words may have

changed over time, while their written representations did not similarly

evolve and the original forms were retained. A simple illustration of this is a

consideration of the silent letters in words such as knee, know, knight, folk,

would and alms which, according to Bryson (1990:119), are “shadows” of a

former pronunciation and clearly show that the spellings of these words have

remained as they had been whereas their pronunciation has changed.

67
As stated earlier, in some countries reform of a script has been largely

influenced by political factors. For example, according to Wellisch (ibid) two

different scripts, the Roman alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet, were used to

write the same language (Serbo-Croat) in Croatia and Serbia. These two

countries were formerly part of Yugoslavia. The use of two scripts for the

same language was a political decision rather than a linguistic one. Script in

some situations is considered to be a symbol of oppression. The case of

Turkey is an interesting one as it illustrates how where the cultural and

linguistic identity of the people took priority over the religious identity where

the choice of the script was concerned. This, arguably, could also be based on

the decision to reform Turkey and make it a secular state, and in this case it

could be said to have been a political decision.

The Turkish language has been written in Cyrillic, Arabic, Greek and Roman

at different periods over the long period of its development (Gelb, 1963). The

most surprising aspect in the conversion of a script in 1928 in Turkey was the

fact that the writing system was changed from the Arabic (a script associated

with Islam) to Roman (a script mainly used in countries practising

Christianity), and this took place in a predominantly Muslim country.

Surprised by this outcome, Palmer (1930:3) commented: “When a country

half-Christian, half-Mahammedan took such a step, it showed that in the

68
opinion of the leaders, religion and alphabet were not necessarily two sides of

the same thing”.

Further similar examples are Somali and Hausa, which are African languages

spoken in Somalia and Nigeria respectively. These were previously both

written in Arabic but later changed to the Roman alphabet. Just as with

Turkey, these scripts were also changed from the Arabic script to the Roman

alphabet despite Islam being the religion of the overwhelming majority of the

people speaking the languages in both countries. Yet another example is

Indonesia, where Bahasa Indonesia, usually referred to as the language of

“national unity”, is written with the Roman alphabet, despite the long Islamic

religious practice in the country. One reason for this could be the relative

unsuitability of the Arabic script to represent vowels of these languages.

However, there are instances where religion has been the major (though not

the only) factor driving the choice of script. King in Coulmas (2003:23) cites

the example of the case of the Urdu and Hindi languages which are both

widely spoken in India. Urdu is a similar and related dialect of Hindi, and

was written in Perso-Arabic script because it was brought to India by Muslim

invaders (Coulmas, ibid). In contrast, Hindi, which is similar to Urdu in its

spoken form, is written in Devanagari script. This clearly demonstrates how

two languages that are so similar in their spoken forms and which can be

69
classified as near dialects of the same language are still very different in the

way that they are written because of the influences of their origins.

The fact that a single script has been used to write different languages (for

instance the Roman alphabet is used for writing most European languages) as

shown above in Table 5 demonstrates that most of the world’s languages have

adapted their writing systems from scripts that were not originally designed

for them. This includes English, French, Spanish and indeed all those

languages in Europe, Africa, America and Asia which use the Roman

alphabet for their written form. In Ethiopia, the Ge’ez script, which was and is

used to write Amharic, was not only an adaptation from the Sabean script

(Getachew Haile, 1996) but was also initially used to write the now non-

spoken (except by the clergy in the Ethiopian Orthodox church) Ge’ez

language. Hence, the adaptation of a script in the development of a writing

system is not a phenomenon unique to any one language or nation, and

indeed, as Gelb (1963) contends, no writing system can ever be considered as

“pure” as there is no such thing as a “pure” language just as there can

arguably be no such thing as a pure race. A simple example which can

elaborate this can be the use of what is generally called Arabic numbers,

which are used across many writing systems based on various scripts

including the Arabic script, Roman alphabet and the Ge’ez script.

70
3.1.1. Criteria for the adaptation of scripts

The terms adoption and adaptation are used to mean slightly different things

in this thesis. Adoption is used in the sense that a script, that had not been

originally designed for writing a language, has been chosen as a basis for its

orthography. For example, the Roman Alphabet, not the Arabic script or the

Ge’ez syllabary, may be adopted for writing a language. However, in order

for the Roman Alphabet to represent the phonological and other aspects of

the language in writing, some changes or adaptations would need to be made.

Adaptation, therefore, refers to the process of the changes made to a chosen

script for writing a language.

As Table 5 above shows, a limited number of scripts have been adapted or

converted to write languages spoken by people who often live geographically

far away from each other in different continents. Even those languages that

are used by people living near to each other in the same continent or the same

country are different by virtue of simply being separate and independent

languages, any script adapted to write them needs to be crafted and adjusted

to become suitable to the purposes of each of the “target” languages for which

it is chosen. It is important here to note that the discussion at this point is

restricted to the adaptation of alphabetic scripts in general and to the Roman

alphabet in particular.

71
Despite the prevalence of adoptions or adaptations of scripts across the world

for centuries, there is a dearth in the information currently available regarding

criteria that have been employed in the conversion of a script. Since a script is

independent of a language and, indeed, since theoretically, any script can be

extended to write any language other than that for which it had not been

designed, questions need to be asked regarding the process of its adoption

and adaptation. Gregerson (1977:174) points out that “more than one script

can be used for the graphization of any single language”. This statement then

begs three questions:

a) how is the decision about the suitability or otherwise of a script made

when adapting it for writing a language?

b) who decides which script to use?

c) what are the driving factors?

The answers to these legitimate questions are not always readily available.

This researcher has not come across any case where the adoption or

adaptation of a script has taken place on the basis of pre-defined criteria.

However, Wellisch (1978) and Berry (1968) suggest that there are some

parameters that ought to be (and generally have been) considered during the

process of adoption or adaptation of a script. These parameters involve the

72
consideration of 1) technical or linguistic issues (that is the graphic

representation of the phonological system of the target language) and 2) non-

linguistic issues. These two issues are briefly discussed below.

[Link]. Linguistic Criteria

As described above, a script may be adopted and be used to write any

language. This does not, however, mean that a script can simply be adopted

as it is for writing a previously unwritten language. This is because each

language has its own distinguishing features and these need due

consideration. Indeed the decision as to which script will be chosen and

which system can be adapted can be made after a reflection on factors such as

linguistic, social and cultural requirements. In addition to these factors, it is

useful to think about how easy, complex or difficult a script is for learning

and using when adopting it. Understandably, it is difficult to speculate that a

particular script is easier than another one in learning or using it in writing.

Venezky (1977:37), in his discussion about the goals involved in designing a

new writing system to bring about literacy or to replace an existing writing

system, argues that each of the goals requires unique considerations that

relate to the more general problems of developing an orthography so that it is

mechanically suited to the language it is to reflect. He also suggests that there

are five other factors that ought to be considered before the adoption or

adaptation of a script. According to Venezky, these are:

73
a) accuracy: i.e., no phoneme is left unsymbolized.
b) economy: i.e., only phonemes are symbolized.
c) consistency: i.e., letters are mutually exclusive.
d) monography: i.e., one letter per phoneme.
e) sufficiency: i.e., no phoneme-letter value is dependent on any other.

It is notable in the above list that the criteria proposed seem to have mainly

alphabetic writing in mind as they underline the importance of representing a

phoneme with a letter. This indicates the fact we have already discussed

above that alphabetic writing systems are the most commonly adapted

systems compared to syllabic or logographic systems. It also offers useful

guiding principles to be considered when adapting a script for writing

another language.

Gregersen (1977) supports Venezky’s idea of the factors to be considered

when developing a new orthography (Venezky’s, ibid) and states that a good

writing system is one that is easy to acquire; easy to write; easy to read;

essentially phonemic and at least able to include the basic repertoire of

phonemes. If the goal of introducing a writing system for an unwritten

language or of adapting a new script for a written language is largely to

promote literacy and thereby to catalyse and facilitate social and economic

development, etc., then all the above factors are critical and fundamental

considerations that those responsible for making the decision about which

74
script to adapt should bear in mind, alongside whatever other agenda they

may have.

[Link]. Non linguistic considerations

Having looked at the linguistic factors, it is also important to consider non-

linguistic issues that might affect the choice of script. Indeed, it is arguable

that however suitable a new orthography is to the linguistic features of the

language, its success also depends on other various factors such as the

following:

a) The involvement in and support of the people who use the system. This

factor is as crucial for the success of the system as the choice of the script and

design of the orthography. A system that is not endorsed or accepted by the

people for whom it is intended would most definitely not be successful as

they would not take ownership of it. Hence, it is imperative from the outset to

obtain the endorsement of the users so they become active participants in the

use, if not the choice, design and development, of the system. It is in line with

this that Kemal, the Turkish leader (quoted in Wellisch (1977:56)) appealed to

his people “to learn the new Turkish writing system quickly; to teach it to

their compatriots, to women and men, to porters and boatmen”.

75
b) Equally important for the success of a new writing system is the existence

or availability of a favourable political climate to give the writing system legal

authority as it becomes the platform for the formulation of reforms, policies

and managing resources for development. Somalia’s modern writing system

is a good example as it was initiated and resourced by the government in 1972

in order to make the system a success (see, Caney, 1985). In contrast, it can be

argued that the success of a new writing system would be doubtful in an

environment where there is no political will to provide support and

encourage its widespread usage by citizens across the country or in the mass

media of radio, television and press, as well as in day-to-day official use and

in schools.

76
3.1.2. Standardisation

Standardisation, according to Ferguson (1961), is a single, widely accepted

norm, used with only minor modifications or variation for all purposes of

language use. Ferguson explicitly distinguishes between this general notion of

“standard” and the degree of native literacy (“writing”) in a speech

community. The maximum degree of native literacy is manifested within a

speech community when original scientific research is published regularly. At

the top of the standardization scale there are communities in which there is

minimal variation of form in both the spoken and the written language.

Following Ferguson's definition, standardization should thus be regarded as

the process of language unification in a given community, affecting written as

well as oral communication. Ray (1963) is not as strict with respect to the

possibility of a co-existence of varieties or different vernaculars within the

speech community, alongside the “standard”. The standard itself, however, is

considered to be a language variety the use of which is unified in writing,

grammar and the lexicon. The need for a normative language usage

correlates, according to Haugen (1966), with the function of writing as the

medium of communication between speakers separated in time and space

and unable to rely upon prosodic, extra-linguistic or even plain linguistic

77
explanatory strategies in order to smooth out misinterpretation. Haugen

(ibid) goes on to elaborate language standardization and planning by stating

that they involve preparing normative rules for the guidance of writers and

speakers especially in non-homogeneous speech communities. A “standard”

is thus a set of widely accepted rules serving as a norm primarily in writing.

Its emergence and distribution is dependent upon several phases, the first of

which is defined as “norm selection” or the choice of the variety that is to

become the standard. The second, “codification” (developing a writing

system), presupposes norm selection. Once both these steps are fulfilled, the

“stabilization” of the norm can begin. Most unification efforts may actually be

inserted into this slot for it is during this phase that the production of

dictionaries, grammars, style manuals and other normative instruments is

most important. Haugen (1966) goes on to state that the future of the standard

written variety of a language will depend on its “implementation”, i.e. its

acceptance by institutions, writers, publications and especially mass-media

communication.

An important question that comes to mind here is to ask why is it necessary

for a community to standardize its language, especially when this would

mean that varieties or dialects are undermined when a standardized form is

developed? Since dialects, like languages, are important to individuals and

communities in representing their socio-cultural identities and constitute an

78
integral part of their rights, the functions of standardisation need to be clearly

identified, and the approaches to be followed carefully considered. In a

presentation made to the 2nd International Congress of the Catalan Language

at Palma de Mallorca, Balearic Islands, P.L. Garvin (1993: 47-48) outlines

standardization of a language as having five important functions for a

linguistic community:

1) unifying function - this is the function of

a standard language to service as a unifying
bond in spite of dialectical and other
differences;

2) separatist function - this is the function of

a standard language to affirm the separate
identity of speech community in the face of
other speech communities;

3) prestige function - this is the function

that confers a certain prestige on a speech
community that possesses a standard
language and on an individual that masters
it;

4) participatory function - this is the

function of a standard language to allow a
speech community to use its own language
in order to participate in the cultural,
scientific, and other developments of the
modern world;

5) frame-of-reference function - this is the

function of a standard language to service
as a frame of reference primarily in matters
of language correctness but also in other
aspects.

79
Among these functions, the unifying link is “the most widely developed

standard language function in the great speech communities of Europe where

traditionally the differences between dialects have constituted a barrier to

understanding” (Garvin, ibid). A standard variety serves as a means of

communication and a unifying bond in communities where there are

dialectical differences. Furthermore, in most cases it is the standard language,

not a local dialect, which serves as a means of national identification with

respect to foreigners. In explaining the separatist function of a standard

language, Garvin (ibid) states that “it is by developing its own standard

language that a speech community moves from the status of being a dialect

community to the status of being a language community, thus distinguishing

itself from another language that may be related and/or politically dominant”.

Achieving a degree of standardisation in language, and indeed in writing is

not an easy process with a simple formula. Different developed countries

with standardised languages are not known to have achieved this goal

overnight or through one defined procedure. For example, the

standardisation of the English writing system, which had been achieved

without having to an established language academy (unlike Italian and

French13), took centuries and still its spelling system continues to be a subject

13
According to Wikipidia the Accademia della Crusca (Academy of the Bran), was
founded in Florence in 1583, and was the oldest linguistic academy in the world, and

80
of debate (Bryson, 1990). In Africa, Swahili is one of the languages that have

been going through the process of standardisation. Mhina, George A (1976),

citing W. H. Whitely (1959), observes how a standardisation of a language

and orthography could be a lengthy and complex undertaking when he

discusses the standardisation of Swahili. He reveals that the Inter-Territorial

(Kiswahili) Language Committee of East Africa, which comprised

governments from four British territories (Kenya, Uganda, Tanganika and

Zanizibar), played a significant role but the standardisation of Swahili is still

an ongoing process. While this indicates how a challenging a task it is to

achieve standardisation of a writing system, it also demonstrates that a lack of

standardisation is not as such a critical or detrimental factor to a writing

system, because the fact that there are some differences in the spelling of

British and American English have not created huge communication

problems. In fact, language, as it is, is dynamic with characteristics of

variations in pronunciation, vocabulary and syntax as a result of time and

place. Although, in addition to its functions that are discussed above, a

standard language is a necessary precondition for the use of the language in a

modern, literate society and for an elimination or reduction of confusion in

communication in writing, the procedures to follow to achieve it can be

difficult or controversial even an established language academy. Selecting one

the most important institution responsible for regulating the Italian language.
Meanwhile, L'Académie française or the French Academy was established in 1635 to
regulate matters relating to the French language.

81
variety amongst several other dialects of a language can alienate the people

whose dialects are not chosen. Therefore, it is imperative that a conscious and

informed approach is followed by those people responsible for the

development of a writing system when embarking on a standardization of a

language. Each linguistic and community context must be taken into account,

without ignoring the political implications, cost benefit analysis, and the

rights of individuals and communities, when standardizing a language and

its writing system.

Applying this in the context of Oromo we will now discuss an overview of the

early history of the development of Oromo as a written form.

3.2. An overview the early history of writing Oromo

This section discusses the early history of Oromo writing. It also analyses how

different early Oromo writers used the Roman alphabet to represent aspects

of the language.

Oromo is widely believed to have not been written until the early 1840’s14 -

and indeed the first available evidence for written Oromo is a book on the

elements of the language, which was written by Krapf in 1840. Another book,

Vocabulary of the Galla Language, followed this immediately in 1842 by the

14
However there were other forms of communication used as a precursor to the
written system, such as messages conveyed via knots tied in a piece of a rope or
rituals incorporating the use of footprints left by hunters, etc.

82
same author, who lived and travelled extensively as a missionary among the

Oromo people in Ethiopia. Before the end of the 19th century other notable

writers such as Tutschek (1844; 1845); Massaia (1867), Viterbo (1892), and

Onesimus Nesib (1894, 1899) wrote or translated various books (but mainly

parts of the Bible) into the Oromo language.

By and large, it was the European missionaries, scholars and diplomats, who

were responsible for making pioneering efforts to translate Oromo into

written from the 19th century. The Europeans’ interest in the Oromo language

was mainly driven by their motivation to spread the Word of God amongst

the Oromo people as well as their desire to teach the language to their fellow

Europeans. In his preface to Krapf’s book (1842:i), C. W. Isenberg explains the

reason why the author was engaged in collecting Oromo vocabulary:

I think it proper to observe, that Mr. Krapf

sent this vocabulary last summer from
Shoa; having prepared it in Galla and
German, not with a view to have it printed,
but only to communicate it into those who
might probably be sent to his assistance, in
order to aid them in preparing themselves
for their work.

Foot, a British Diplomat, who wrote in Oromo some seventy years after

Krapf, had a similar purpose for his efforts. Foot (1913: VI) writes:

83
 I venture to publish this book in the hope
that it may prove of service to those of my
country men whose duties, official or other,
may call them to have dealings with Gallas.

Even though the interests and objectives of the early Oromo writers have been

primarily to facilitate the teaching-learning of the language to their fellow

Europeans and to spread the Word of God, their efforts in writing the

language have undoubtedly contributed to the development of Oromo

writing. For example, it can be claimed that the works of early Oromo writers

have become a foundation or a stepping stone for subsequent Oromo study

and writing. It was not an easy undertaking for the early Oromo writers to

write a language that had never been written. Their salient contribution lay

primarily not in their accurate, effective, or otherwise representation of the

aspects of the language, but in their mere attempt to write in a language that

had previously not been written. This had an obvious symbolic significance

for the Oromo because it would play a role in making the Oromo people

believe that their language could be written just like other languages, such as

Amharic, which they would be probably aware of as having a written form.

The other point worth mentioning here is that the early Oromo writers did

not shy away from writing in Oromo despite the difficult and challenging

political circumstances that existed in Ethiopia (see Chapter V).

84
The possible motivational and inspirational role of the early Oromo writers

for the latter Oromo generations becomes clearer when the history of Oromo

writing system is considered as a whole. This entails looking at the works of

prominent Oromo writers and an investigation of how the official Oromo

writing system evolved. Of particular note here is Onesimus Nesib, an Oromo

person known primarily for his translation into Oromo of the Bible. Even

though all of Onesimus Nesib’s works were written in the Ge’ez script, his

subjects and presentation were similar to that of the Oromo pioneer writers,

such as Krapf. Just like Krapf, Onesimus Nesib wrote a dictionary, The Galla

Spelling Book and translated a faith book, the Bible, into Oromo. Both writers

chose similar subjects to translate or write in Oromo. Although Onesimus

Nesib did not give a reason for his use of the Ge’ez script in his Oromo

writing, it might be the case that he was inspired by Krapf in his translation of

the Bible because Krapf’s Oromo translation of The Gospel according to St John

had already been written in the Ge’ez script.

Since most of the early Oromo writers were foreigners with limited Oromo

knowledge in addition to the prevailing unfavourable political conditions

which discouraged the promotion of Oromo, their task of learning and

writing in Oromo was clearly demanding. The lack of consistency in the

written representation of some Oromo sounds could be a manifestation of the

writers’ limited knowledge of the language and the absence of political

85
support in providing them the resources they would have required. The fact

that the early writers wrote in two different scripts, the Roman and the Ge’ez,

without a full commitment to one or the other, indicates the presence of

confusion in the choice of script for Oromo writing. This has been and, to

some extent, remains to be a subject of wide debate among some people in

Ethiopia (see Chapter VII).

A study of the works of the early Oromo writers reveals that the choice of a

script was a recognized issue by the writers; but it was not taken seriously by

any one person, for example, by way of presenting and following up a debate

for or against one or the other script. As stated above, Krapf did not offer the

reason why he had to use the Roman alphabet to write his Vocabulary of the

Galla language, and the Ge’ez script to write the Gospel According to St. John.

Hodson and Walker (1922) were similar to Krapf in using both the Roman

alphabet and the Ge’ez script. But they were different from Krapf in stating

their reason for their use of both scripts. Thus they write:

It was at one time intended to print all the

sentences in the Ge’ez or Amharic
characters as well as in Roman, but the idea
was abandoned as unpractical so far as the
more grammatical part of the work was
concerned. (Hodson and Walker (1922: 9)

86
Hodson and Walker (ibid) go on to explain the reason why they had to use

the Ge’ez script as being to “widen the utility and scope of the Grammar”.

According to Hodson and Walker (ibid) the use of the Ge’ez script would

assist an Oromo learner to gain access to the Works of Onesimus Nesib. They

also believed that there were a great number of Oromo people who could

already read and write in the Ge’ez script and who could benefit from their

book at that time.

There were some early Oromo writers who stated clearly the reason why they

chose the Roman alphabet for Oromo writing. For example, Tutschek (1945:1),

one of the earliest writers in Oromo in Roman alphabet, describes his reasons

for not using the Ge’ez script as follows:

If the Gallas have a written language, which

is rendered possible by recent accounts, it
must have a peculiar alphabet or
syllabarium, as more of those hitherto
known can express with exactness, all the
sounds that are found in it. Hence alone it
follows that the Galla cannot be written
with the Amharic syllabarium, as has been
attempted by the translator of the Canticles
in Bruce’s travels II-104, since
notwithstanding its richness that
syllabarium fails to convey many of the
sounds to be met with in Galla, and on the
other hand it contains not a few of which
no trace is to be found in the language. It
appears to me that the adaptation of Roman
characters to Galla sounds, as far as it is
possible, is the only way of making this
interesting language accessible, and it

87
 would lose nothing of its practical
usefulness even though a method of
writing peculiar to the language were to be
discovered and deciphered.

Another early Oromo writer who preferred the Roman alphabet to the Ge’ez

script in writing Oromo was Cerulli (1922:15):

The author or authors (of the Galla

Spelling Book) write the Galla in Ge’ez
characters; therefore, they are obliged to
use a very complicated transcription to
express the sounds of the Galla language
with the letters of the Ge’ez alphabet
which express very imperfectly even the
sounds of Ge’ez language.

As can be seen from the above quotations, neither Tutshcek nor Cerulli

provided a reason for choosing the Ge’ez script as a basis for Oromo writing

system. Both of these writers state that Oromo “cannot be written with the

Ge’ez script” (Tutschek, ibid) which is imperfect even in representing the

Ge’ez language (Cerulli, ibid). Despite of a lack of a convincing reason for

their choice of a script for Oromo writing, the influence of the early Oromo

writers on the immediate and latter generations has been in evidence by the

fact that Oromo has continued to be written in various scripts until the

beginning of 1990’s.

88
Tutschek (ibid) and Cerulli’s (ibid) comments that the Ge’ez script was not

suitable for Oromo writing have remained an important topic of discussion

and an issue of concern for academics and scholars in contemporary Ethiopia

(Chapter VII). Tutschek and Cerulli’s assertions, quoted above, raise not only

the debate as to whether the Ge’ez script or the Roman alphabet is more

suitable for Oromo writing (see Chapter VII), but encourage one consider

how best to use effectively any chosen script to represent aspects of a

language in writing. In this regard, despite their efforts and contributions to

Oromo writing, the early Oromo writers (see below) - and in particular those

writers who used the Roman alphabet - at best struggled to achieve

consistency and uniformity in representing the sounds of the language.

Below, selected works of four early Oromo writers (Krapf, Foot, Cerulli, and

Hodson and Walker) are examined with a view to analysing the

representation of some Oromo consonants, geminates and vowels in writing.

3.2.1. Consonant representations

The early Oromo writers who used the Roman alphabet were similar in their

representation of most of Oromo sounds. They differed, however, in their

representation of sounds such as affricates, ejectives and the glottal stop,

which had no equivalent graphemes or letters in the Roman alphabet. Table 6

89
gives a list of some sounds that had been represented in various ways by four

early Oromo writers.

Table 6. List of Oromo sounds differently represented by some early

Oromo writers

/ s’ / / k’ / / t’ / /tS/ / tS’/ / d’ / / dJ / / p’ / / n’ /
Krapf sh k t tsh tsh d tsh p gn
Foot sh k t ch ch d j p ny
Cerulli š q ṭ č č ̣5 ḍ ğ Ṗ ñ
Hodson š q ṭ č č̣ ḍ j p ñ
and
Walker

Source: Compiled by the author based on Krapf (1842), Foot (1913), Cerulli

(1922), Hodson and Walker (1922)

It is evident from the table above that Krapf used the same triagraph “tsh” to

represent three segments / tS /, / tS’/, / dJ /) which would make reading

confusing or difficult. The following words illustrate how Krapf used “tsh” to

represent three segments in his Vocabulary of the Galla language (Krapf, 1842).

Figure 27 Examples of Krapf’s use of “tsh” to represent different phonemes

ratsha [ ra:tSa] frog

mutsha [ mutS’a: ] child

hūtshi [ hudJi ] act, action

90
Foot (1913) used the diagraph, “ch”, to represent more than one sound:

Figure 28 Examples of “ch” representing two phonemes

racha [ ra:tSa] frog

mucha [ mutS’a: ] child

From Table 6 it is clear that Cerulli, and Hodson and Walker were similar in

their representation of many of the Oromo consonant segments. They

differed, however, in their representation of the phonemes / tS’ /, / dJ /, and

/ p’ /.

Unlike Cerulli, and Hodson and Walker, Krapf and Foot did not differentiate

glottalized and plain segments in their writings (see Table 6). This aspect

makes reading their works more confusing since, in effect, a character or a

symbol is used to represent two or more phonemes. It is also confusing

because unlike, for example, the English spelling system where a letter may

occasionally represent one or more sounds as in the letter ‘c ’ representing / s /

(‘city’) and / k / (‘cat’), Krapf and Foot’s systems of representing Oromo

phonemes continuously employ a letter or letters for writing two or more

distinct phonemes:

91
Figure 29 Examples of words from Krapf’s Vocabulary of the Galla
language where a letter has been used to represent glottalised and
plain segments

letters used as plain Gloss used as Glottalised Gloss

/ k / and / k’ / kulkullu [k’ulk’ul:u] pure bokaia [bok:a:] rain

/ d / and /d/ dagma [dam:a] honey der’da [dada:] butter

/ t / and /t’ / toko [tok:o] once taba [t’aba] joke

Figure 30 Examples of words from Foot’s Galla-English-Galla Dictionary

where a letter has been used to represent plain and glottalized
segments

Letters used as plain Gloss used as Glottalised Gloss

/ k /and / k’ / Kamisa [ kamisa ] Thursday kulkulu [k’ulk’ul¢u] pure

/ d / and /d/ damma [ da:ma ] honey dada [dada:] butter

/ t / and /t’ / toko [ tok:o ] one taba [t’aba] joke

Given the inconsistency in the representation of gemination in early Oromo

writing (see below), the representation of two or more sounds by the same

letter would make it more difficult to read books written by Krapf and Foot.

For example, in Figure 30, the letters / k / and / t / were used to represent the

92
ejective consonants in the words “kulkullu” (pure) and “t’aba” (joke)

respectively. Both words can assume different meanings if the letters / k / and

/ t / were pronounced as plain (/ k / and / t /), rather than ejective / k’ / and

/ t’ /. Thus the words would be:

kulkullu [ kulkul:u ] calling chicken

taba [ tab:a ]* hill, highland

*Here, note that the fact that / b / is geminate would not have made a

difference since gemination has not been consistently represented (see 4.3,

below).

Of the four early Oromo writers discussed here, Cerulli (1922) was unique in

identifying and representing the Oromo glottal stop by an apostrophe (/ ‘/)

mark. He was also different from the other early Oromo writers in trying to

deal with the problems of word division (i.e. whether or not (for example,

bound morphemes, possessive pronouns, conjunctions, and compound

words) should be written conjunctively (joined) or disjunctively separated). –

for further discussion see Chapter IX) especially when a word with an initial

vowel is preceded by a word with a final vowel in a sentence. For example,

Cerulli (1922:192) wrote the following:

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 Háarkā * bba tokkótti ibíddā qabú * nsodātánu

[harka abba tok:ot:i ibida k’abu: insoda:tanu]

(“One does not get frightened to touch a fire as long

as it is in someone else’s hand” - My translation).

3.2.2. Gemination representation

An examination of early Oromo writing shows that gemination as a feature

has been recognised and marked, albeit inconsistently, from the beginning by

Krapf and by some Oromo writers who used the Roman alphabet. Invariably,

the early Oromo writers who marked gemination did so by using double

letters as a mechanism of representing germination in writing. However, the

works of Hodson and Walker (1922) do not show a representation of

gemination as a feature either by way of doubling letters or by any other

means. While some writers have been meticulous and consistent in their

representation of gemination (for example, Cerulli (1922)), others have been

less consistent in identifying and representing geminates. Foot (1913) was the

most inconsistent writer in geminate representation as can be illustrated in

Figures 31, 32, and 33.

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Figure 31 Examples where double letters are used by Foot (1913) to
represent geminates

. chabbi [tS’ab:i:] snow

damma [dam:a] honey

happi [hap’:i:] thin

gudda [gud:a] large

abba [ab:a] father

Figure 32. Examples where Foot (1913) used double letters to represent
single sounds

Double letters Gloss

used to represent
a phoneme

laffe [lafe:] bone

horri [hori:] money

manna [mana] house

sarre [sare:] dog

malla [mala:] boil

kalle [kale:] kidney

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Figure 33. Examples where Foot (1913) used single letters to represent
geminate sounds

toko [tok:o] one

soda [sod:a] brother-in-law

bupa [bup’:a] egg

hari [har:i:] grey

koto k’ot:o: axe

waga [wag:a] year

In Vocabulary of the Galla language, Krapf marked gemination by using the

doubling of the letters (Figure 34):

Figure 34 Krapf’s representation of germination

dibba [dib:a] hundred

kulkullu [ku’lk’ul:u:] pure

adda [ad:a] brain

Just like Foot, Krapf was also not consistent in his use of doubling letters to

represent gemination. There have been a number of words in which he either

incorrectly used or omitted double letters to represent gemination.

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Figure 35. Examples of words where Krapf (1942) did not double letter(s) to
represent gemination

budena [bud:ena] bread

dukana [duk:ana] darkness

obolésa [ob:ole:sa] brother

Figure 36. Examples of words where Krapf (1942) used double letters

laffa [lafa] earth

lamma [lama] twice

madda [mada:] boil

manna [mana] house

3.2.3. Vowel representations

The five short Oromo vowels (/a, e, i, o, u/ have been represented by all the

early Oromo writers in a similar way. However, Oromo long vowels were

represented by the writers in different ways. It needs mentioning here that

none of the early Oromo writers used double vowels, as some did use double

letters to represent geminated (see above) to represent long vowels.

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Among the earlier writers of Oromo in the Roman alphabet, Cerulli (1922:18)

stands out in his use of twenty vowels differentiated by superscript, as

follows:

a, ā, ä, å, ī, e, ë, ie, ę, ē̦, ĭ, i, ī, o, ō, ŏ, u, ū, ŭ, ūō

Since Cerulli’s work dealt mainly with songs, proverbs, folktales, stories etc.,

and because he did not provide us with lists of words or examples as to how

or where these symbols were used to represent the “vowels”, it has not been

possible to present examples illustrating how each of the twenty vowels is

used. However, the following Oromo song is a quote to demonstrate how

Cerulli laboriously attempted to differentiate Oromo vowel quality the way

he perceived.

Sidâmā gárā č5ábsā [sida:ma gara: c’absa:]

durisa * mbullú mití [durisa imbulu miti]
ğimmiččâ kabâ galčâ [jim:č:a kaba: galč:a]

1. The Sidâmā with broken belly, 2. We will not dwell before him. 3. Let the
native of Ğimmā return to (his native) walls (Cerulli, 1922:51).

It can be noted in this example that Cerulli introduces (/ â /), a vowel he has

not used with the same diacritic mark, in addition to the twenty vowels listed

98
above. Despite Cerulli’s identification of twenty five vowels, this author

considers that there are only actually five short and long vowels and the

remaining fifteen are either non existent (for example, ie and ūō) or have no

phonemic value being simply allophones.

Foot (1913) was the only early writer in Oromo who has not made a

distinction between short and long vowels throughout his writing. For

example, Foot enters “lafa” and “kufa” twice in his book with different

meanings. However, each of the words can assume a different meaning if the

medial / a /and / u / are written differently. Thus:

“lafa” ([lafa]) with short medial / a / is “ground”, “land” or “earth”

‘lafa’ ([la:fa:]) with a long medial / a / has a meaning ‘soft’

‘kufa’ ([k’ufa]) with a short medial / u / has a meaning ‘cough’

‘kufa’ ([k’u:fa:]) with a long medial / u / has a meaning ‘rich’ or ‘wealth’

Similarly, Foot does not make any length distinction when he uses / e /, / i /

and / o /:

99
dera [de:ra:] long

demi [de:mi] go

diga [di:ga] blood

hinafa [hina:f:a:] envy

toko [toko] one

nora [no:ra:] chalk

Contrary to Foot, Krapf occasionally represented long vowels by using

various marks as can be seen in the following examples:

tshōma [tS’o:ma] fat

obolésa [obole:s:a] brother

dumésa [dume:s:a] cloud.

Hantūta [hantu:ta] mouse

arāra [ara:ra] peace

Although, unlike Foot (1913), Krapf had represented, albeit intermittently,

long vowels, an examination of his works shows that there has been no

distinction made between the short and long / i /. For example, Krapf (1942)

100
wrote ‘diga’ (blood), whereas it should have been written with a long / i: /, by

doubling the ‘i’ as in ‘diiga’ ([di:ga]). Similarly, Krapf wrote the Oromo word

for ‘sheep’ ([ho:la:]) with an ‘o’ even though it should have been written with

a double ‘o’ to indicate that the segment is a long vowel.

Hodson and Walker acknowledge and explain in their introduction to their

book that there were various vowel qualities in the Oromo language. They

identified five short and five long vowels. They also distinguish long vowels

by putting a horizontal line above the letters (see Table 7).

Table 7. Hodson and Walker’s (1922) Oromo vowel representation:

Short Vowel Long Vowels in words Gloss

a ā gāri [ga:ri:] good

i ī nīti [ni:ti:] wife

o ō dulōma [dulo:ma:] old

u ū gūtu [gu:tu:] full

Despite their explanation in their introduction to use a line above a symbol for

a short vowel, for example, / ē / to represent the long / e /, Hodson and Walker

invariably used / ei / to mark the segment within the text. A close examination

101
of their book, An Elementary and Practical Grammar of the Galla or Oromo

Language, shows that / ei /, not / ē /, has been consistently used to represent

long / e /.

Figure 37 Example of words where /ei / is used by Hodson and Walker to

mark long / e /

kaleisa [kale:sa] yesterday

gangei [ga:nge:] mule

gad5ei [gad’e:] bad

adeim [ade:m] go

boyei [bo:y:e:] pig

In contradiction to the proposition that Oromo does not allow diphthongs

(see Chapter II), Hodson and Walker (1922:11) claim that the Oromo language

employs the following diphthongs:

ai as in aisle or I ei as ei in eight

au as au in Mauser or o in how uo as uo in quorum

The author has searched for examples of Oromo words with ‘diphthongs’ that

have been used in Hodson and Walker (ibid) but has only been able to find

102
very few words with / ai /, / uo / and / au/. Some of the words found however

are listed below (Figure 38):

Figure 38..Examples of diphtongs in Hodson and Walker (1922)

jawei [dJ aw:e:] python

hintāu [hinta?u] it cannot be

faiya [fay:a] well

d5io [di?o] near

kuotu [kot:u] come

Except for / ei /, the other sequence of vowels have been rarely used by

Hodson and Walker. It has been noted earlier in this chapter that / ei / has in

fact been used as a representation of long /e/. This thesis claims that / ei / used

by these writers (at least based on the Macha [matS’:a:] dialect) represents a

long /e/ rather than a diphthong. Similarly, it can be claimed that one of the

two consecutive vowels in a word in Hodson and Walker (ibid) is either

redundant as in the first / a / and / u / in the words faiya ([faj:a]) “well” and

kuotu ([kot:u]) “come” or simply indicates an omission of the glottal stop, as

in hintāu ([hinta¢u]) “it cannot be” and “dhio” ([di¢o]) “near”. This

proposition can be substantiated by considering the Oromo word for “moon”

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which Hodson and Walker wrote as jia rather than [dJi¢a] with the glottal

stop.

In summary, the early history of Oromo writing is relatively a recent

phenomenon and dates back to 1840s. Except for Onesimus Nesib, an Oromo

national who used the Ge’ez script in his translation of the Bible to Oromo

and in his other writings such as the Galla Spelling Book, most of the early

Oromo writers were Europeans who, by and large, used the Roman alphabet

in their translation of parts the Bible into Oromo. It has been noted that the

writers did their best to represent the phonological aspects of the Oromo

language in writing. However, they were not always consistent in their

representation of some aspects of the Oromo language, in particular the

geminates, affricate consonants phonemes and long vowels.

It can be argued that Oromo as a written form has continued to evolve

through many stages from its earliest inception as a result of the country’s

transitional societal, political, religious and economic changes. The impact of

this now leads us onto a discussion of the use of non-Roman scripts in Oromo

writing.

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Chapter IV

4. Writing Oromo in non-Roman scripts

In addition to the Roman script, discussed above, Oromo has been written to

varying degrees in three other scripts: namely, the Ge’ez script, Arabic

alphabet and the Shaykh Bakri Sapalo orthography. Among these, the

Ethiopic (Ge’ez) script interests us most because it is widely used for writing

Amharic, the official language, and some other languages such as Gurage,

Tigrinya and Tigre in the country. Moreover, the Ge’ez script is believed by

many Amhara academicians (for example, Baye Yimam (1992) and Ayele

Bekerie (1997)) to be more suitable than the Roman alphabet for Oromo

writing. Before examining the extent to which this holds true, it is necessary

to look at the two other scripts (the Arabic alphabet and the Shaykh Bakri

Sapalo orthography) in which Oromo has also been written as a basis for

comparison.

4.1. The Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet is not widely recognised as a script that has been

extensively used to write Oromo. Apart from verbal confirmation of some

friends (Taha Abdi and Elemo Ali), the researcher has not come across Oromo

105
materials written in the Arabic alphabet. The two Oromo friends stated that

they had seen copies of parts of the Quran written in Oromo in the Arabic

alphabet in Harar, a city located in eastern part of Oromia. Professor Richard

Hayward of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, also

informed the author before his retirement that he had seen the Arabic

alphabet being used to write Oromo by Muslim Sheiks in Wollo in north

Ethiopia during one of his visits to the area. These opinions are supported by

Andrejewski (1980), who stated that the Arabic alphabet, (modified by a few

diacritical points), was used to write the Oromo language in both the Harar

and Bale regions. He further noted that the Oromo texts in the Arabic script

were used mainly for the transcription of religious materials, such as texts of

the poems used during the dhikr meetings of the Sufis, praise poems for the

saints and some religious instruction materials. These Oromo texts in the

Arabic scripts did not have a wide circulation and indeed, as far as the

researcher is aware, there are no existing collections of the manuscripts for

reference. Andrejewski (ibid) claims that he had difficulty in obtaining copies

of these documents or permission to photograph them, because of the

prevailing sensitivity of the issues relating to the Muslim community in

Ethiopia at that time.

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According to (Wellisch, 1978), the Arabic alphabet is believed to have evolved

in 4th Century A.D. and is generally considered as having been used to write

many other languages in the world besides the Arabic language itself. For

example, Turkish has been written in Arabic for centuries but only recently, in

1928, it was changed to the Roman alphabet following the presidential

declaration of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (Wellisch, ibid). Other languages that

were written in the Arabic alphabet included Croatian, Kashmir, Kazak,

Kurdish, Malay, Punjabi, Sindhi and Urdu. In Africa, Hausa, Somali and

Swahili are some of the languages that have been written in Arabic but all of

them later adopted the Roman alphabet. Despite the recent tendency of many

nations to abandon the Arabic script in favour of the Roman alphabet, the

Arabic script is still popular and is used to write some languages in non-

Arabic speaking countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iran, Israel

and China to write one or more of the official national languages, which

include Pashto, Punjabi, Urdu, Dari, Persian, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Uyghur

(Wellisch, 1978).

In comparison to the other scripts (such as the Roman alphabet) the Arabic

script was swift in its imposition on and adoption by a large number of people

across the Middle East, Asia and North Africa in a relatively short length of

time. This was achieved partly due to the association of the script to Islam and

107
due to the imposition on all Muslims to read and recite the Quran and other

liturgical and theological literature in no script other than Arabic (Wellisch,

1978).

The Arabic alphabet has twenty-eight letters many of which look similar but

they are able to be distinguished from one another by dots above or below

their central part. Most Arabic letters change form depending on whether they

appear at the beginning, middle or end of a word, or on their own (see Figure

40). There are also a number of vowel diacritic lines and points for short

vowels (see Figure 39) which are usually omitted in commonly written Arabic,

except in the Quran or in the text and grammar books. Consonant gemination

is also represented in the Arabic system by means of diacritic marks. The

Arabic system is written from right to left contrary to the present system of

writing from left to write in the Roman alphabet system. Furthermore, unlike

the Roman alphabet which has upper and lower cases, the Arabic Alphabet

has only one case. Another unique aspect of the Arabic script is that it is

always written in a cursive form whether printed or written by hand.

108
Figure 39 Arabic vowel diacritics and other symbols

Source: [Link]

Figure 40 Arabic consonants

Source: [Link]

109
The author has not been able to unearth in this study the details of any

changes that were required for the adoption of the Arabic alphabet to write

Oromo nor the names of the people or group of people who were originally

responsible for the use of Arabic Alphabet to write the Oromo language.

Hence, it has not been possible to comment on the effectiveness or otherwise

of the adoption of the Arabic alphabet in writing the Oromo language.

However, it can be deduced from the literature on the arabification of

languages and experiences of many other languages previously written in the

Arabic alphabet that the system has not been successfully used and in many

cases (for example, in the case of Turkish, Somali and Swahili) it was

discarded. The dogmatic application of the script to the other languages,

which often made writing and reading ambiguous, has been cited as being

one of the reasons for many societies to abandon the Arabic script (Wellisch,

1978). Of course some countries, for example, Turkey, according to Wellisch

(ibid.), have had political reasons for abandoning the Arabic script and opting

an alternative one (in this case the Roman alphabet).

The viability of the Arabic script for Oromo writing has not been widely

tested as the script has been reportedly used by very few people for limited

purposes. It can be argued, however, that the script can be adapted with the

addition of dots, and can be used to write Oromo as it has been done to write

many other languages. One problem that can be anticipated, though, is the

110
fact that the Arabic script is associated with Islam, a religion practised by a

significant percentage of the Oromo population. Since there are also Oromo

people with other religions including Christianity and Waaqefatta (Oromo

traditional religion), the use of Arabic for writing Oromo could be a reason for

misunderstanding and division among the Oromo. Fortunately for the

Oromo, neither the Arabic alphabet nor the Ge’ez script had been officially

and widely used enough for the people to have formed a bond with it. But it

is to be remembered that even in countries with a population of

predominantly Islamic religion believers (for example, Turkey and Somalia),

the allegiance of the people to the Arabic script and the division between

them had been limited. So we cannot stipulate one way or the other that the

Arabic script would have continued as a basis for Oromo writing system had

it been previously permitted and used for Oromo writing.

Political and religious factors aside, linguistically prima facie, it appears that

there would not be significant problems if the Arabic script were to be

adapted for writing Oromo, as it possesses the essential features such as the

representations of vowel length, geminates and glottal stop which are suited

for the writing and pronunciation of its words. The lack of these features in

the Ge’ez script is often presented by the proponents of the Qubee (the new

Oromo writing system) as the reason for not using the script (see Chapter VII)

for Oromo writing. This is not to claim (or recommend) at this point that the

111
Arabic script should be considered as a writing system for Oromo. Indeed, to

be in a position to make a suggestion like that would require an indepth study

on the advantages of the proposal as well as its feasibility and acceptability

amongst the people. It would be helpful to note that Shaykh Bakri Sapalo

(Hayward and Mohammed Hassen, 1981) and Sheekh M. Rashaad Kabir

(interview with Taha Abdi (one of the founders of the Oromo Liberation

Front), 19 February, 2005), who knew how to read and write in Arabic, did

not choose this script even though both men were very much concerned

about Oromo being an unwritten language. Shaykh Bakri Sapalo, who also

knew Ge’ez, preferred an alternative script to both Arabic and Ge’ez and

went on to invent a bespoke Oromo script that he believed would suit writing

the language better. The next section discusses Shaykh Bakri Sapalo’s script.

4.2. The Shaykh Bakri Sapalo script

The Shaykh Bakri Sapalo script (Figure 41) was an attempt by an Oromo

native speaker to create a fully-fledged “home born” writing system for the

Oromo language in the 1950’s (Hayward and Mohammed Hassen, 1981). Like

the use of the Arabic alphabet for Oromo writing, the use and existence of this

script had not been widely known to Oromo or Ethiopian writers until the

publication of an article by Hayward and Mohammed Hassen in the Bulletin

of the School of Oriental and African Studies, (Vol. XLIV, Part 3, 1981). Hayward

112
and Mohammed Hassen (ibid) offer a detailed explanation of the obstacles

Shaykh Bakri Sapalo encountered in the process of realising his effort to

develop a home-grown Oromo script. They claim that Shaykh Bakri Sapalo

was probably the first Oromo to see the problems inherent in trying to write

the Oromo language by means of scripts that had been devised primarily for

other languages. According to Hayward and Mohammed Hassen (1981),

Shaykh Bakri Sapalo was probably inspired and motivated to undertake this

exercise by strong nationalistic sentiments and convictions. They report that

he stated “…that a people such as the Oromo, possessing glorious historical

traditions and a uniquely democratic society, was nevertheless condemned to

obscurity without a means of writing” (Hayward and Mohammed Hassen,

(1981: 553). According to them, due to a negative reaction and intimidation by

the Amhara officials, Shaykh Bakri Sapalo was forced to flee Ethiopia to

Somalia, where he was able to develop and use his orthography and where he

finally died in 1980 at the age of 85.

After developing the alphabet, Shaykh Bakri Sapalo taught it to his students

and used it for writing poems and manuscripts, and copies of these are

reported to be in existence (Hayward and Mohammed Hassen, ibid: 553). It is

also claimed that there are still people in Oromia, who can use and are

familiar with the Shaykh Bakri Sapalo’s alphabet.

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The Figure below is a copy of Shaykh Bakri Sapalo’s core alphabet which has

been compiled by Hayward and Mohammed Hassen (1981:556) on the basis

of the Shaykh’s manuscripts. To the left of each row is written the consonant

letter corresponding to the consonant base for the forms of the row. There are

thirteen columns in Figure 41 and each one corresponds to a different

vocalization or other phonologically relevant feature added to the base.

Hayward and Mohammed Hassen (ibid: 564) conclude their article by saying

that the Shaykh’s alphabet will probably be of no practical use, it nevertheless

remains “on record as being a highly efficient way of writing the Oromo

language”. Apart from making this positive comment about the script, the

authors do not explain why it should or should not be considered to be

Oromo orthography. Indeed, we understand from the article of these writers

that Shaykh Bakri Sapalo was a person who studied both in the Ge’ez and

Arabic scripts in addition to the one he designed for Oromo. What can be

concluded from Shaykh Bakri Sapalo’s action in this regard is that he rejected

Ge’ez and Arabic scripts, which he was familiar with, believing that they were

not the most suitable scripts for Oromo writing. His decisions could as well be

based on his feeling of nationalism reflected in the above quotation “that a

people such as the Oromo, possessing glorious historical traditions and a

uniquely democratic society,” (Hayward and Mohammed Hassen, ibid)

rather than on linguistic, social, economic, etc. consideration. His contribution

114
and efforts to develop an indigenous Oromo writing are admirable and

would be a useful subject for further study.

115
Figure 41 The Shaykh Bakri Sapalo Syllabary

Source: Hayward, R. J., and Mohammed Hassen (1981). The Oromo Orthography of
Shaykh Bakri Sapalo. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 44.
pp550-66.

116
4.3. The Ge’ez writing system

The Ge’ez [gi:z] script (also referred to by western writers (see for example

Wellisch, 1978, and Daniels, 1996) as the Ethiopic script is primarily used to

write Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, and Tigrigna, another

Semitic language spoken in the north of the country and in Eritrea. The script

was originally used for writing Giiz (Geez), a language that is not used any

more except in the Orthodox Church and the Monasteries in Ethiopia. Despite

the Ethiopian governments’ policies of suppression of Oromo (see Chapter V),

the Ge’ez script has been used to write Oromo for many decades for different

purposes.

The origin of the script has been a subject of controversy with some scholars

such as Baye Yimam (unpublished) arguing that it is a home-grown writing

system, “…not an immigrant; it is indigenous” (see Baye Yimam,

unpublished.). A number of writers including, Diringer (1947), Mercer (1920),

and Bender (1976) believe that the Ge’ez or the Ethiopic script was brought to

Ethiopia from South Arabia. In their discussion on the origin of the Ge’ez,

Diringer (ibid: 231) state: “…South Arabian colonies established in Abyssinia

in the second half of the first Millennium B.C. introduced into the territory the

south Semitic speech and script”.

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The Ge’ez script is written from left to write and it consists of thirty-three

basic characters each of which is modified for six ‘orders’ of vowels (Table 8)

by way of an attachment of diacritic marks either to the right or left, or at the

top or bottom, or by shortening or lengthening one of the strokes. In addition

to these characters numbering 231, the system has forty characters (see Table

9) which represent special features such as labialization. Each character

represents a consonant and a vowel, which means that the vocalic element is

always attached to include the consonant element. The system has symbols

for the Roman equivalent vowels (see Table 11) but these stand on their own

in their own right and are not considered to be vowels. Thus, these symbols

and the orders that are used to represent the Amharic sounds, and , (/a/)

are actually not vowels. It is for this reason that Appleyard (1995:7) concludes:

“The Ethiopian script is not strictly speaking an alphabet, but is what is called

a syllabary.” The Ge’ez script, contrary to this generalization, does not show

characteristics whereby syllables and graphemes correspond to each other.

For example, the monosyllabic words ሰዉ (säw) ‘a person’ and አንድ (ānd) ‘one’

respectively contain two and three graphemes. From this we can deduce that

in most cases a grapheme represents a consonant and vowel but this does not

mean that, in writing, each grapheme necessarily represents a syllable.

118
The Ge’ez writing system also uses special numerals (see row 18, Table 8)

which Diringer (ibid) believes them to have been borrowed from the Ancient

Greeks. It is interesting to note that the Ethiopian numeral system does not

have a representation for “zero” (0) and is not convenient for arithmetic or

calculations. Hence, the numerals are mostly used for recording calendars or

page numbers in books. For accounting or mathematical purposes, the Arabic

numerals are used along with the Ge’ez script in Ethiopia.

119
 Table 8. The Ge’ez Script

Roman15 ä u i a e ï o
1 h
2 h
3 h
4 l ! ∀ # ∃ % & ∋
5 m ( ) ∗ + , − .
6 s / 0 1 2 3 4 5
7 r 6 7 8 9 : ; <
8 s = > ? ≅ Α Β Χ
9 s’ D Ε Φ Γ Η Ι ϑ
10 k’ Κ Λ Μ Ν Ο Π Θ
11 b Ρ Σ Τ Υ ς W Ξ
12 t Ψ Ζ [ ∴ ] ⊥ _
13 t’  α β χ δ ε φ
14 č γ η ι ϕ κ λ m
15 c’ ν ο π θ ρ σ τ
16 n υ ϖ ω ξ ψ ζ {
17 n’ | } ∼ • € • ‚
18 a ƒ „ … † ‡ ˆ
19 a ‰ Š ‹ Œ • Ž
20 k • • ‘ ’ “ ” •
21 h – — ˜ ™ š › œ
22 w • ž Ÿ € ϒ ′ ≤
23 z ¤ ∞ ƒ ♣ ♦ ♥ ♠
24 ğ ↔ ← ↑ → ↓ ° ±
25 y ″ ≥ × ∝ ∂ • ÷
26 d ≠ ≡ ≈ …   ↵
27 j ℵ ℑ ℜ ℘ ⊗ ⊕ ∅
28 g ∩ ∪ ⊃ ⊇ ⊄ ⊂ ⊆
29 → ∈ ∉ ∠ ∇  
30 →  ∏ √ ⋅ ¬ ∧ ∨
31 f ⇔ ⇐ ⇑ ⇒ ⇓ ◊ 〈
32 p    ∑   
33 p’       

15
The column ‘Roman’ is the researcher’s representation in Roman of Amharic
sounds. These letters are used when there is a need to transcribe Amharic sounds.

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Table 9. Characters representing special phonetic features such as
labialized Amharic sounds.

H ð
h 〉 ∫ ⌠  ⌡
l 
m 
s 
r 
s 
s’ 
k’   
b
t
t’
č
t’
n
n,
k
h
z
ğ
d
j
g
ˆ
f
p
P’

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Table 10. The Ethiopian numerals

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
! ∀ # ∃ % & ∋ ( )

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
∗ + , − . / 0 1 2 3

There have been concerns in Ethiopia as to whether or not the Ge’ez script

should be reformed in order to make it more efficient and user friendly for the

purpose of reading, writing, and learning Amharic. The most publicized

concern was that of Haddis Alamayyahu (1990), the author of fiqir eska

maqaabir, an Amharic novel. In his Introduction to the book, Haddis

Alamayyahu (1990: 7) writes:

ዛሬ፡ ለማንኛዉም፡ ነገር፡ አቁዋራጭ፡ መንገድና፡

ቅልጥፍና፡ በሚፈለግበት፡ ጊዜ፡ የፊደሎቻችን፡
ያለመጠን፡ መብዛት፡ ትምህርታችንንም፡ ሆነ፡
ስራችንን፡ ሳያስፈልግ፡ አስቸጋሪ፡ አድርጎብናል።

In this day and age, when simplicity and

efficiency are required, the existence of a
large number of characters in our writing
system has made our education and jobs
unnecessarily cumbersome (My
translation).

Haddis Alamayyahu recommended four points that ought to be considered in

modernising the Ge’ez script. Three of these dealt with the number of

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characters that the system had and how to manage especially the superfluous

symbols. Haddis Alamayyahu’s fourth concern was the obvious lack in the

Ge’ez system of distinguishing geminate and single sounds. By way of

implementing his ideas, Haddis Alamayyahu decided to use only one form

from each of the so called superfluous characters (such as the ones given in

rows number 1, 2, 3, and 21 (see Table 8)), all of which represent the sound

/ h /, in his novel, Fiqir eska maqaabir. It can be seen from Table 8 that the

phonemes / s / and / ts / are represented by two characters each = and /,

and ጸ and  respectively which Haddis Alamayyahu decided to use only one

from each and left out the others as redundant. In his effort to solve the lack

of geminate representation in the Ge’ez script, Haddis Alamayyahu used a

dot mark on top of a character that needed to be geminated. Thus he wrote ∩ξ

[gan:a:] with a dot above the character representing [n:a] (ξ) to make it

geminate, and omitted the dot when writing the same characters (∩ξ) so that

ξ was plain and consequently the words were distinguished and meant

“Christmas”; and “yet” or “still” respectively. Haddis Alamayyahu’s efforts

were considered by students and teachers of the time of the publication of the

book to be revolutionary as he creatively and courageously deviated from the

status quo and not only suggested but also implemented the reduction of the

superfluous characters and the representation of geminate sounds with a dot

on top of the relevant characters. Bender et al. (1976) support Haddis

Alamayyahu’s efforts by asserting that the problem of geminate

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representation in the Ge’ez script can be solved by putting dots ( ̈ ) on top of

a symbol to show that it is a geminate. Haddis Alamayyahu was consistent

throughout his book in using the same character in spite of the traditional

association of some of them to specified words or concepts. For example, he

used instead of which is traditionally used to write •+{⊥

[ha:ima:no:t ], “religion”.

The problems associated with the use of the Ge’ez script for writing Amharic

and the need for its reform was acknowledged and recognised well before the

publication of Haddis Alamayyehu’s Fiqir eska maqaabir. Abraham Demoz

(1983) presents a survey of efforts made to reform the Ge’ez script. According

to him the first effort goes back to the fourteenth or sixteenth century, about

two centuries after the ascendancy of Amharic as a court language in the

reign of Yekuno Amlak (1270 - 1285). Abraham Demoz (ibid) argues that this

reform involved the creation of palatal symbols by the addition of small

horizontal lines on the top of the symbols for the corresponding non-palatal

lines.

Abraham Demoz (1983) also discusses the endorsement by King Menelik

(1889 – 1913) of a new alphabet for writing Amharic. However, he did not

specify the details or background of this “new alphabet” except for stating

that this general reform was not actually ever implemented due to the

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opposition it received from the clergy who “regard the Ethiopian script as a

special gift from God not to be tampered with by mere mortals, at least not by

the laiety” (Abraham Demoz, 1983:394). He further goes on to discuss the

other reform efforts which he states included the wide discussion of issues of

using the Ge’ez script in early Amharic newspapers such as A’emero and

Berhanenna Selaam and the engagement in the modernization of the script by a

concerned group which called itself “Lovers of learning”. This group was

revolutionary in that it stressed that: “the idea of using Latin characters in an

auxiliary capacity to the unreformed Ethiopian script should be seriously

considered for implementation” (Abraham Demoz (ibid: 402)).

Five main points are presented here as reasons why the Ge’ez script ought to

be reformed:

a) Overabundance of symbols - As given in Tables 8 and 9 there are over

270 symbols and this is a major drawback because it makes the script

difficult to learn and cumbersome to use in machines.

b) Irregular vocalization – Although vocalization is indicated by the

addition of regular signs to the basic symbols, there are nevertheless

many exceptions, some of which are imposed by the shape of the basic

symbol itself. This is believed to make the script more difficult to learn

and more unwieldy for machines to use.

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c) The absence of a sign for gemination – There is no marking in the

system to show a sound is geminate. This causes some problems of

reading especially to non- native speakers of the language. Amharic

writing (which is based on the Ge’ez script) is affected by the lack of

gemination marker in the writing system. For example, the words for

‘still’ and ‘swimming’ ገና [gana:] and ዋና [wa:na:], both with single / n /,

can also respectively mean ‘Christmas’ and ‘chief’ or ‘main’ when the /

n / ‘ና’9/9in both words is geminate and the words are pronounced as

[gan:a:] and [wa:n:a:] respectively. The lack of gemination mark in the

Ge’ez system is relevant to the discussion of the choice of script for

Oromo as gemination is a common lexical and morphological feature

of the language. In Chapter II it was discussed that except / h / and / ? /

all Oromo consonants have single and geminate forms. / tS / is the only

consonant which always appears in a geminate form in Oromo

language. Bender et al. (ibid) suggest that the problem of gemination

marking can be alleviated by the possible use of some notational

device, for example by putting dots ( " ) on top of a symbol to show

that it is a geminate.

126
 d) The double value of the sixth order – The sign of the sixth order

indicates both a vowel-less consonant and a consonant with the high

central vowel. Therefore, this creates serious difficulties in reading.

e) The non-cursive nature of the script is a defect because it leads to slow

freehand writing.

In addition to this, when writing by hand, the Ge’ez characters almost always

require the writer to make different lines or shapes and join them. This means

that the writer has to separate a pen or pencil from paper at least two times

while writing even a basic or simple character such as የ [ ye ]. An extreme

example of a character where the pen would be needed to be separated from

the paper at least seven times is ጅ [ ȴi ]. No doubt, the system slows the

speed of writing by hand. Bender, et al., (1976) also believe that the Ge’ez

system slows down typing, as well as making the use of machines for writing

difficult to operate and expensive to manufacture. Another minor issue is that

the Ge’ez writing system does not have strict rules relating to the way

compound words should be written so much so that some compound words

and combinations of bisyllabic prepositions with nouns are written as a word

or separate words:

127
 eg: [wet’bet] can be written as ወጥቤት or ወጥ፡ ቤት

[wedebet] can be written as ወደቤት or ወደ፡ ቤት

Despite the recognition of the problems associated with the use of the Ge’ez

script for writing Amharic and in spite of the attempts made by individuals

and groups to reform the system, the script remains substantially unchanged

and, given the circumstances in the country, it is unlikely that any previous or

future reform propositions would be implemented, at least in the near

foreseeable future. This is mainly due to two reasons. Firstly, a strong

opposition to the reform of the script comes from the Orthodox Church as

highlighted by Abraham Demoz (1983) and it would be difficult for any

group or individual to overcome this force. Secondly, there are a number of

people in Ethiopia, mainly from the Amhara, who are opposed to the

reforming of the script in the belief that it is an indigenous script that needs to

be retained, not reformed or tampered with, regardless of any apparent

deficiencies.

4.4.1. The superfluous symbols

The sounds / a /, /h/, / ts / and / s / (as shown in Table 8) have more than one

representation in the Ge’ez script and some words are traditionally (at least in

128
Amharic) written with one rather than the other symbol. This system creates a

problem when the adaptation of it to another language is being considered,

unless a decision is made at the outset as to how the symbols would be used.

The study of the works of Krapf, Onesimus Nesib and indeed some Oromo

literature written in the Ge’ez script is evidence that there have been

inconsistencies regarding the use of the superfluous symbols. Before

attempting to analyse the works of few prominent individuals who used the

Ge’ez script to write Oromo, it would be useful to point out that in addition to

the Ge’ez superfluous characters, Oromo has some sounds for which the

script has no symbols as well as there are some symbols in the script for

which there are no equivalent sounds in Oromo.

As far as adaptation of the Ge’ez script for writing Oromo is concerned, the

latter would not be a problem as the “unwanted” symbols such as /ts/ and

/J/, for which there are no equivalent sounds in Oromo, can be left out

without having a clear impact on the writing system. However, the absence of

an equivalent symbol for the implosive /d’/, a lack of marks for representing

some long vowels and gemination would clearly pose challenges that would

need in-depth consideration if the Ge’ez script is to be adapted as a writing

system for Oromo.

129
The following examples from Krapf (1871) demonstrate how the symbols for

the sound / a /, አ and , (the initial symbols of the first and second words) are

used inconsistently without any apparent explanation:

አ and ዓ, አ ኒስ፡ ዓ ርጌ፡ ዱጋስ፡ ሂሜ፡ ካና፡ ኢልማ፡ ዋቃዮ፡ አ ካ፡ ተኤ።

↨ ↨ ↨
a a a

Similarly, it can be seen how the superfluous symbols, ሀ and ሐ (/ h /), and ሰ

and ሠ (/ s /) are interchangeably used to represent the same sound in Krapf’s

(1871:47) translation of The Gospel According to St. John:

የሱሲ፡ ዴቢሴ፡ ጀዴስ። ኩኒስ፡ ሂንሁብኔ፡ አባዎኒሳስ፡ ሂንሐማኔ። ሁጂ፡ ዋቃዮ፡ ኢቲ፡ ሣቀሙደፊ፡ መሌ።

(Jesus said in return. He did not understand. His father was not cruel. He

wanted to let him know the work of God).

In these sentences there are two symbols, with vowels attached, for / s / “ሰ”

and “ሠ”, and two for / h / “ሀ” and “ሐ”.

A close observation of Onesimus Nesib’s (1886) works reveals that the

superfluous characters representing / h / are occasionally used in specific

ways. For example, in the following words “ሀ” has been used with a short

vowel / o / and “ሐ”9has been used with long / o /.

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/ h / + [o] / h / + [o:]

ሆሪ [hori:] “money, wealth” ሖሪ [ho:ri:] “tartar, unclean teeth”

ሆማ [homa:] “nothing” ሖማ [ho:ma:] “mass of people, animals

Whether Onesimus Nesib purposefully decided to use ሀ and ሐ with short and

long vowels respectively or whether the symbols are simply used by

coincidence is a matter of speculation since there is no evidence to confirm the

intention of the author for his irregular use of the characters in the above

example and since the symbols are not in any case used consistently

throughout the book.

It is also interesting to observe how some of the superfluous characters are

differently used by Krapf (ibid) and Onesimus Nesib (1886) to represent the

same sound. An example of this is the name “Oromo” [oromo:] which is

written in two different symbols - that is the seventh order of / a /, as ዖሮሞ and

ኦሮሞ by Krapf and Onesimus Nesib respectively.

4.4.2. Gemination and the Ge’ez script

Single and geminate sounds have been written without a distinction by early

Oromo writers who used the Ge’ez script. This obviously makes reading

131
difficult for all people but especially for new learners of the language. In

Onesimus Nesib’s (1886) The Galla Spelling Book the following words have

been entered twice in exactly the same way using the same symbols. Notice

that each pair of words has been written exactly in the same way in the Ge’ez

script while actually the pairs in the second column are different from the first

both in their phonological structure and meaning. Thus, the penultimate

consonants of the words in the second column are geminate and have new

meanings.

ሀሬ [hare] “he cleaned” ሀሬ [har:e] “a donkey”

ዸላ [dala:] “female” ዸላ [dal:a:] “a boil”

ሮቢ [ro:bi:] “Wednesday” ሮቢ [ro:b:i:] “hippopotamus”

ሀቱ [hatu:] “to steal” ሀቱ [hat:u:] “thief”

Krapf also used no special marks to distinguish single and geminate sounds

in his book, The Gospel according to St John. For example, ማ / m / in ለማፋስ

[lam:af:asi] “secondly” should have been differentiated from ማ / m / in ነማ

[nama] “man” since the first ማ / m / is geminate and the second is single.

Krapf’s full sentence reads thus:

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 • ለማፋስ፡ ነማ፡ ጀማ፡ ተኤ፡ ሠን፡ ዋመኒ፡ ጀደኒንስ [lam:af:asi nama ja:ma: ta’e san

wa:mani: jedanis] (“Secondly, they called the blind man and told

him”).

Besides leading to confusion within the language, the absence of a mechanism

to distinguish single and geminate sounds when writing Oromo in the Ge’ez

script creates more complications and misunderstandings for people who also

read and write Amharic in the same script. The following Oromo words,

taken from Onesimus Nesib (1886) can be read as Amharic words with

different and sometimes unintended and “embarrassing” meanings:

Ge’ez Oromo pronunciation and Amharic Pronunciation and

representation Oromo meaning Amharic meaning

ቁላ [k’ul:a:] “naked” [k’ula:] “penis”

በዳ [bada:] “disappear” [bad:a] “had intercourse”

ደፋ [dafa:] “hurry up!” [daf:a:] “he threw away”

An example of an attempt to represent Oromo geminate sounds using the

Ge’ez script is found in Launhardt (1973). Here the writer tried to introduce

additional two dotes (¨) on top of a symbol to mark gemination. The

following examples illustrate how the ‘dotes’ were used above some Ge’ez

characters to represent Oromo geminate sounds (Launhardt, ibid: 221):

133
ኦሮሞኒ ፡ ኬሱማ፡ ባይዔ፡ ኡልፌሱ። ኬሱማዻፍሰ፡ ሐመ ፡ ደንደዐሜፍት፡ ኛተ፡ በኤሰ፡ ኬኑ፡ ጃለቱ።

[oromo:n:i: kes:m:a: bay’e: ulfe:s:u. kes:ma: da:fis ham:a danda’ame:fitiù a:ta

ba’e:s: ken:u: ja:latu] “The Oromo people respect guests. As much as they can,

they like to provide their guests with the best food”.

Note that due to problems with the font, I have used a sign rather than two

dotes as used by Launhardt. And also note that only two consonant symbols

have been distinguished with the two dotes above them in the Ge’ez script

version of Launhardt whereas there are actually five consonants that can be

identified as geminates with the colon marks (:) in my phonemic transcription

of the sentence.

Despite Launhardt’s intentions to distinguish Oromo geminate sounds when

using the Ge’ez script, no other example is available to suggest that the

method has been followed by other writers of Oromo in the same script.

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4.4.3. The implosive / ɗ / and the Ge’ez script

The implosive / ɗ / has no equivalent symbol or representation in the Ge’ez

script. It is probably because of this that Krapf (ibid) used the symbol ደ to

represent both / d / and / ɗ /. In the example given below the symbol ዴ

represents / d / in ዴቢሴ [debise] “return” and [ ɗ ] in ጀዴስ [jeɗesi] “said”.

“የሱሲ፡ ዴቢሴ፡ ጀዴስ። “ኩኒስ፡ “[yesu:s debise jeɗesi. kunis] (And Jesus replied. (and)

said, “This…”) .

However, Onesimus Nesib modified the symbol for /d/ ደ by adding a line on

top of it and using it to represent / ɗ / in some cases. The words ጄዼ [jeɗe]

“said” and ዸማፍናን [ɗama:fna:ni] “distressed” in the following sentences

demonstrate how Onesimus Nesib (1886:36) modified the Ge’ez symbol ደ to

represent / ɗ /:

“ጋፍቶኮ፡ ጫካ፡ ኬሰት፡ ወራቤሰኒፍ፡ ዋንጎን፡ ወልትዸ-ፈኒ። ወራቤስችስ፡ እሴ፡ ቀበቴ፡ ተከ፡ ብሳን፡ ናፍዲ፡
ተከ፡ እደ፡ ታዑምሳ፡ ናቶልቺ፡ ጄዼ፡ እሴ፡ ዸማፍናን፡ ጄቴኒ።” [“ga:ftok:o tS’a:k:a kes:ti
wara:besani:fi wa:ngo:n walit dfani. wara:besi tS’is ise: k’abate: tak:a bisan
na:fidi, tak:a id:o: ta:’umsa: na:tol tS’i jed’e: ise: dama:fna:n jet:eni:”].

135
(“Once upon a time a hyena and a fox met in a forest. The hyena distressed
the fox by ordering her to bring him water and by asking her to make him a
place to sleep. And the fox said”).

4.4.4. The glottal stop and the Ge’ez script

Krapf and Onesimus Nesib did their best to not only recognize but also try to

represent the Oromo glottal stop when using the Ge’ez script. Thus Krapf

used the Ge’ez characters የ or ያ (the symbols for / j / “y”) to represent the

Oromo glottal stop, while Onesimus Nesib used ዐ or ዓ (/a/ “a”) to represent

the same phoneme. Below are examples of possible glottal stop representation

by both these authors.

1. Krapf (1871)

ሂንደንደዩ። [hindanday:u] › [hindanda’u] “They cannot” page 13.

ደገያኒሲ [dagay:anisi:] ›[ daga’anisi:] ”If they listen” page 65.

2. Onesimus Nesib (1896)

በልዓ [bala:] [bal’a:] “wide” page 18.

ምዐኤ [miae:] [mi’a’e:] “became expensive” page 18.
እንዐረ [ina:ra] [ina’ra] “it smokes” page 67.

Despite the best efforts of these individuals, both methods have not been

known to have been followed by any Oromo writer in the Ge’ez script. Both

systems are also not effective in that they misrepresent the usage of the glottal

136
stop unnecessarily. This is because the glottal stop is different from both the

Ge’ez characters employed to represent it by Krapf and Onesimus Nesib.

In summary, the people who used the Ge’ez script to write Oromo have and

continue to face challenges (which were referred to by Abraham Demoz

(1983)) when using the script for writing Amharic. For example, the absence

of letters or marks for representing geminates and the glottal stop, and the

existence of superfluous letters in the Ge’ez script, which are used for writing,

were a few of the common problems for those people who use the script for

writing either Oromo or Amharic or indeed any other language which has

gemination and glottal stop as features. Additionally, Oromo has an

implosive / ɗ / (“dh” in qubee) for which there is no equivalent representation

in the Ge’ez script. Onesimus Nesib’s creativity to modify and use the Ge’ez

symbol ደ / d / for ዼ / ɗ / as in ጄዼ (he said) was a significant endeavour for any

of the people who used the Ge’ez script in writing the Oromo language.

4.4.5. The Oromo vowels and the Ge’ez script

Each consonant in the Ge’ez script is written with six vowels attached to it

and the system does not have representations for long /e/, /o/ and /u/ (see

Table 8) which, together with long / a / and / i /, are common in Oromo

morphology. In order to do justice to the graphical representation of the

137
Oromo long vowels, it is therefore necessary naturally for a Ge’ez script user

to make some changes to the system. If changes are not made to the symbols

to differentiate long and short vowels, confusion is inevitable and even

occasionally words can have unintended meaning, as this example from

Krapf (1871:5) shows:

ኩኒ፡ ዱጋደፍ፡ ዱፌ፡…[kuni ɗuga:ɗ afi ɗufe…] “This (Jesus) came for the truth…”

Since ዱ can be read as [ɗu], with short / u /, or [ɗu:], with long / u /, ዱፌ can

mean [ɗufe] “came” or [ɗu:fe] farted.

Unfortunately, literature dealing with vowel length as an issue in using the

Ge’ez script for writing Oromo, or indeed for writing Amharic, is not

available to the present writer. Also there is no evidence to indicate that

Oromo writers in the Ge’ez script have used special symbol(s) to distinguish

short and long vowels. However, in the examples given earlier I have noted

that Onesimus Nesib (1886) has used specific consonant symbol(s) with short

and long vowels. It was stated above that this may simply be a coincidence or

a deliberate attempt by the author to distinguish short from long vowels.

However, there is no evidence to prove or disprove whether Onesimus

Nesib’s use of the words given in the following example was part of his

attempt to distinguish short / o / from long / o: /.

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Example of short and long / o /differentiated by different symbols by
Onesimus Nesib (1886:7):

Short / o / used with ሆ ( / h /) Long / o / used with ሖ (/ h /)

ሆሪ [hori:] “money, wealth” ሖሪ [ho:ri:] “tartar, unclean teeth”

ሆማ [homa:] “nothing” ሖማ [ho:ma:] “mass of people, animals

Whilst Onesimus Nesib’s strategy is certainly feasible, it does not offer a

practical solution. This is because the Ge’ez script has superfluous symbols

for only a limited number of phonemes.

There is a marked difference between Onesimus Nesib’s and Krapf’s use of

the Ge’ez script in writing Oromo vowels. Krapf (probably due to his being a

foreign speaker of the language) tends to emphasize the vowels by constantly

using the long form even when they are short. Thus, whilst Krapf adequately

makes a vowel length distinction, he does not demarcate this correctly. These

are not the case with Onesimus Nesib’s use of the vowel representation in his

writing.

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Short vowels written as long by Vowels intended Gloss
Krapf

ኩኒ፡ [kuni:] ኩን: [kuni] “this”

ኢሳ፡ [i:sa:] እሳ: [isa:] “he”
ኢፋ: [i:fa:] እፋ: [ifa:] “light”
ኢሲኒ: [i:si:ni:] እስኒ: [isini:] “you”
(plural)
ገርቢቺ: [garbi:tSi:] ገርብች: [garbitSi] “slave”

It can be summarised from the above that except for the Bible (which was

translated by Onesimus Nesib) all the materials written in Oromo language

using the Ge’ez script during the Derg regime or prior to that had not been

widely enough circulated to have had a significant effect or benefit to the

Oromo people. It can also be claimed that the Oromo writers who used the

Ge’ez script during and prior to the Derg regime in Ethiopia had no

alternative but use the Ge’ez script to avoid political repercussions.

It can also be stated that Onesimus Nesib made a remarkable contribution to

early Oromo writing despite the challenges he faced with regard to the use of

the Ge’ez script for Oromo writing, which emanated from the fact that that

script does not have provisions for the representation of some features of the

language, such as gemination and long vowels. While the lack of

representation of gemination and long vowels is an obvious limitation of the

Ge’ez script, Onesimus was creative in using the script creatively, for example

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by employing the vowel / a / (ዐ or ዓ) to represent the Oromo glottal stop and

by selectively using the superfluous Ge’ez characters to represent short and

long vowels as given discussed above..

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Chapter V

5. The language policy of Ethiopia and its implications on the

development of the Oromo language and its writing system

5.1. The pre-1974 language policy

Like many developing countries in Africa, and indeed, like any multi-lingual

country, Ethiopia is faced with language planning and policy issues.

According to Tareke (1991), Ethiopia is a multilingual society of at least

seventy nationalities with as many languages and dialects. But the aspiration

of the Ethiopian government especially that of the Haile Sellassie regime, was

to create a new national identity through the promotion of one unifying

language (Perham, 1969; Cooper, 1978). Haile Sellassie’s policy was based on

the belief that the presence of many languages was as a major hindrance to

both the unity of the country and the development of one national unifying

language. For example, the war in Eritrea, which was led and fought by the

Eritrean people’s liberation front (EPLF) and lasted three decades before

culminating in a successful secession of Eritrea from Ethiopia in 1992, was

caused mainly because of the Ethiopian government’s language policy. It was

after the replacement of Tigrigna and Arabic with Amharic as a medium of

instruction in Eritrea (McNab, 1989) that forces opposed to the Haile Sellassie

regime were established in that region. Haile Sellassie’s action of replacing

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Tigrigna and Arabic with Amharic was a vain attempt to achieve unity

through the imposition of Amharic as a medium of instruction and an official

language. Greenfield (1965) reveals that the Haile Sellassie regime was clear

and determined from the outset in its intentions of imposing Amharic on the

Eritrean people. Greenfield refers to the event sponsored by the United

Nations to discuss the terms of Eritrea’s federation with Ethiopia and claims

that a disagreement ensued as to whether or not Eritrea’s official language

after federation with Ethiopia would be Amharic. Greenfield announced that

during this discussion, Aklilu Habtewold, who was representing Ethiopia,

“demanded that the Emperor be empowered to appoint (for Eritrea) not only

a governor general but all executive officials and to approve or reject all

legislation; that there be no Eritrean flag and that Amharic be the sole official

language …”(Greenfield, 1965: 302).

A person by the name of Matienzo, who was representing the UN at this

event, argued in vain against Aklilu Habtewold’s proposal of imposing

Amharic as a sole official language in Eritrea by stating that “Eritrea should

have a separate flag if it wished and should itself decide on its official

languages” (Greenfield, ibid).

The debate as to which language to use in schools and for official purposes

was at least openly entertained with regard to Eritrea, but the same did not

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take place in relation to the other nationalities including Oromia in Ethiopia.

However, the language practice was the same in all regions in Ethiopia as that

of Eritrea in that Amharic was the official language and medium of

instruction throughout the country.

Haile Sellasie’s language policy of using Amharic as a sole official language in

Ethiopia inevitably became an issue for non-Amharic speakers and various

liberation fronts such as the EPLF, OLF and TPLF which were set up with a

view to fighting against the central government and “liberating” their people

from the Ethiopian empire. For example, one of the objectives of the OLF was

to develop the Oromo language which had been degraded by the Ethiopian

empire (Mekuria Bulcha, 1993:15). This was paradoxical because the

government’s policy of imposing Amharic as the only official language

throughout the country resulted in many standing up to fight for their

language and develop it rather than accepting what was being imposed upon

them.

Naturally, people are resistant to imposition of any kind and the policy of

using a sole official language, without a provision for the other languages, in

a multilingual society can hardly be successful. This has been the case in

different multilingual countries where governments have tried to impose one

uniform language. Examples of this include the policy of Turkish government

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which forbade the use of Kurdish language (until the 1990’s); the legislation

enacted in Sri Lanka in 1956 which sought to make Sinhalese the only official

language and the linguistic Arabization policy of the Algerian government,

which provoked strong opposition from the Berbers, who are a minority

ethnic group in Kabylia (see: U.S. Library Congress (n.d.)

[Link] Yadov (1966:42) describes how the

adoption of Hindi as an official language in India after its independence from

colonialism was met with resistance from other linguistic groups. This clearly

demonstrates that people will not accept imposition regardless of where it

comes from.

The background of Haile Sellasie’s language policy is best illustrated by

looking at a brief history of Ethiopia. In the way that it exists today, Ethiopia

emerged only towards the end of the 19th century notably when Tewodros

and then Menelik II conquered the kings and warlords of various local

populations who until then lived independently. During the era of Tewodros,

Amharic replaced Ge’ez as the language in which the Royal Chronicles were

written and were promoted as part of the campaign to unify the country

(Cooper, 1976).

Parallel to the promotion of Amharic as a literary language from the outset of

the formation of the present Ethiopia, the other languages, including Oromo,

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in the country were systematically discouraged by the governments from

being used for official, religious or educational purposes. In this regard it is

relevant to examine why Krapf, a person considered to be the first to write in

Oromo (see Chapter III), was expelled from Ethiopia. It has been noted that

Krapf’s interest in Ethiopia was to teach and translate the gospel mainly into

the Oromo language. However, in the preface to his book, Krapf (1850:A2)

stated: “…when the author (Krapf) after involuntary relinquishment of the

Abyssinian Mission commenced his studies of the Swahili language on the

Island of Mombassa for the purpose of opening Missionary operations….”

Krapf does not specify whether his “(i)nvoluntary relinquishment of

(Abyssinia)” was due to his missionary activities or to the use of the Oromo

language or, indeed, due to any unexplained reasons in carrying out his

duties in Ethiopia. It is obvious, however, that his expulsion from Ethiopia

deprived the Oromo people of a very capable person who had the potential to

make a great contribution to the development of their language.

Other important evidence which suggests that Oromo and the other

languages in Ethiopia have been suppressed starting from the time of the

peoples’ conquests by the Abyssinian rulers is available from Ullendorff

(1960:155) who states: “… it was, however, King Theodore, who gave the

greatest impulse and encouragement to Amharic as a plank in his general

programme of imperial unification, and this has remained an aim of

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Ethiopian policy (with the short interval only of the Tigrean Emperor John IV)

to this day”. As an ardent supporter of the Ethiopian government and as a

person16 who had little respect for other people in Ethiopia, except the

Abyssinians, Ullendorff probably did not mean to criticize the Ethiopian

government’s agenda of using Amharic as a means of “imperial unification”

rather that of communication.

Further evidence for the suppression of the Oromo language by Ethiopian

governments from the time of the inception of the country is found in

Mekuria Bulcha’s works. Referring to the subjugation of Oromo by Menelik II,

Mekuria Bulcha (1993) asserts that Onesimus Nesib was prohibited from

carrying out his missionary tasks as well as teaching literacy in afaan Oromo

as these would have been to be contrary to the linguistic homogenization of

the Empire through the spread of Amharic.

Successive pre-1974 Ethiopian governments followed a similar approach of

promoting only Amharic and, as Cooper (1978:466) states, paradoxically,

“only under the Italians was an attempt made to use local vernacular in

education”. Even though Italy’s encouragement of the use of various local

languages in education is often construed as being a political tactic of

16
For example, Ullendorff (1965:76) refers to Oromo as people who “possessed no
material or intellectual culture, and their social organization was at a far lower stage
of development than that of the population [Abyssinians] among whom they settled”.

147
dividing and ruling the country (McNab, ibid) there is no doubt that for the

speakers of the other languages it was a rare accomplishment and a step

forward in the development of their languages.

A policy that encouraged the use of Amharic in education and in business

but discouraged the other languages from being developed and used for

schooling, religious or business purposes in Ethiopia was advocated

(Ginzeberg and Smith, 1967:11) on the premise that it would help “weld the

country into a more unified whole”. The first official and open influence of

languages in Ethiopia was a speech made by Haile Sellassie in which he said:

“…there was a great profit in being taught in Ge’ez and Amharic, the learning

of our own country, it will be necessary for all governors to provide this

education by setting up in their respective provinces schools for reading and

writing” (Tesfaye Shewaye and Taylor, 1976:372). What was interesting in

Haile Sellassie’s speech was not only that he declared the policy that Ge’ez

and Amharic were the official languages but he also boldly asserted that there

was a great profit in being taught in these languages. As it happened, people

who did not learn these languages were to be automatically excluded from

taking an active role in the economic, social and official roles in the country.

It was soon after the liberation of the country from Italy in 1941, however, that

Haile Sellassie passed a directive which declared that a) Amharic was the

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formal and official medium of instruction and b) the activities of foreign

missionaries were to be controlled. The directive read as follows: “The general

language of instruction throughout Ethiopia shall be the Amharic language,

which all Missionaries will be expected to learn”. Thus the country’s

education system became a tool primarily for expanding the use of the

Amharic language amongst the non-Amharic speaking population. The

government also insisted on Missionaries working in “open” areas, that is,

areas where the people were outside the influence of the Orthodox Church

which traditionally used Ge’ez or Amharic in its teachings (Article 14, Negarit

Gazeta, 1944). The government was aware that Amharic was not spoken in

these “open” areas, and by making it a requirement for the Missionaries to

learn and teach Amharic the government made the Missionaries the agents of

Amharization. For the government, the main objective of these schools was to

teach the Amharic and the Amhara culture so as to assimilate the learners.

The proclamation given by the Ministry of Education (MOE) in the National

Literacy Campaign of 1956 is a clear example of the intention of the Ethiopian

government to use education as a means of teaching Amharic to non-Amhara

people. The proclamation read: “We charge every illiterate Ethiopian between

the ages of 18 and 50 to learn the fundamental education as this will enable

him to know Amharic reading and writing”. Perham (1969:380) noted the

official reason for the government to expand Amharic through education was

149
to “reinforce the process of assimilation amongst the Gallas (Oromo) and the

other people”.

The status given to Amharic as a medium of instruction in 1944 was further

consolidated through the revised constitution of 1955, which stated that “the

official language of the Empire is Amharic” (cited in Cooper, 1976:188).

This was to create an attitude in the minds of non-Amharic speakers that

Amharic was an important and “superior” language which was spoken by

everyone in the country. In addition to the 1955 decree the government took

steps to facilitate the development of Amharic as a literary language. For

example, the Amharic Language Academy was established in 1972 and the

Haile Sellassie I Prize was introduced for Amharic literature in the 1960’s. All

these played a role in cementing the status of Amharic as the official language

of the country which people should accept, respect and aspire to learn.

Bokamba (1995:19) rightly points out that “the official language(s)

determine(s) the language policy in the public as well as private sector….”

Bokamba (ibid) further elaborates on this point by claiming that the policy of

having official language(s) helps elevate the status of the preferred

language(s) and diminishes that of the other languages. In Ethiopia, the

ability to speak (not even to write) in Amharic thus became the sign of

civilisation, modern life and education. Amharic almost became the

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“preferred” language of communication for people who had even a little

knowledge of it to be able to fluently or sufficiently express their ideas in it.

On the other hand, speaking in other languages was taken as a sign of

“backwardness, illiteracy” and a source of “embarrassment” to many non-

Amharic speakers. This led to some people changing their names, as

explained by Lemma Arity and cited in McNab (ibid:59): “Children from the

non-Amharic groups were not only ashamed to speak their languages in

public, but also changed their given names into Christian/Amhara names”.

The effects of the Ethiopian government’s language policy during the Haile

Sellassie regime on languages in Ethiopia in general and on the Oromo in

particular is summarised by Mekuria Bulcha (1993:9) who states that “The

Oromo language and culture were reduced to marks of illiteracy, shame and

backwardness as the school pressed Oromo children to conform to Amhara

culture”.

For the Ethiopian government the policy appeared to have partly achieved its

principal objective as some “educated” non-Amharic speakers considered

their language a sign of illiteracy and accepted Amharic as the language of

schooling, the office and of modern life. To be able to read and write Amharic

became an essential requirement in Ethiopia in order to apply for

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employment, even those jobs that were lowly paid. Knowledge of Amharic

also became a prerequisite for educational or political advancement as a pass

mark in Amharic in a school-leaving certificate (national examination) became

a compulsory requirement for entrance to the university or higher educational

institutions in the country and as Amharic was the official language in which

office and Parliament businesses were conducted during the Haile Sellassie

regime.

Whilst the government aimed at making Amharic the sole language of the

country, it did not endeavour to make special material or pedagogical

provisions in schools where it was taught to non-native speakers. The same

national curriculum was used throughout the country, and children for whom

Amharic was not a native language had to be taught from the same materials

as those for whom Amharic was their mother tongue. The contents and

methodology of teaching used in the schools were generally irrelevant and

not aimed at motivating children for whom Amharic was a second language.

The consequence of this was usually producing a “semi-literate” individual,

where the child was competent neither in the first nor in the second language.

The experiences of the author and of his peers from the Oromo people who

had to go through education in Ethiopia with Amharic as a medium of

instruction at the primary schools and a subject at secondary levels are not

different from this. They neither mastered the Amharic language nor did they

152
have the opportunity to learn and become fully literate in their first language.

For example, despite their strong nationalist sentiments and motivation to

develop their language, the Oromo Diaspora hardly use the language to

communicate with each other on cyberspace discussion forums or internet

based social media such as the Oromo-Net (O-Net). The reason for this is

probably due to their lack of confidence or for their feeling of being less able

to use it, rather than their passion (or preference) for using other languages in

postings of their correspondence online.

In conclusion, the pre-1974 Ethiopian language policy was oppressive and

divisive and was based on the idea of creating a unified country through the

imposition of one language, Amharic, on all the people throughout the

country. The policy was flawed because it disregarded the interests and rights

of non-Amharic speakers in Ethiopia to freely use and practise their

languages and cultures. The end result, as seen in 1974, was the uprisings and

struggle of those people who felt oppressed and the downfall of the

dictatorial monarchy through this.

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5.2. The language policy during the Marxist Derg regime

In 1974 a military government, popularly known as the Derg, assumed power

in Ethiopia and adopted Marxism-Leninism as its guiding ideology and

socialism as its political goal. One of the situations that allowed the Derg to

overthrow the previous regime of Haile Sellassie was the popular unrest that

followed the “inequality that was enhanced by the exclusive promotion of

Amharic during Haile Sellassie’s regime” (Cooper, 1989:23). Even though

economic dissatisfaction appears to have been the major reason for popular

uprisings in the 1970’s, there is little doubt that there was resentment against

the central government by those who felt that their language had been

marginalised. As Ross (1977:10) observes, “(language) is a symbol that is very

effective in fostering mass mobilisation on ethnic lines”.

In a similar vein, Mohammed Hassen argues that it was the language policy

of Ethiopia that led the people to reject the Ethiopian government and

demand self-determination. Mohammed Hassen (1996:77) thus writes:

…within seven years by 1974 its (Ethiopian

government’s) policy unwittingly
transformed Oromo politics beyond
recognition. The Association (Maccha-

154
 Tulama)17 demand for equality within
Ethiopia was transformed into the OLF’s
commitment to self-determination in
Oromia. The Association’s efforts to spread
literacy in the Amharic language and
Sabean script were transformed into
literacy in Afaan Oromoo using the Latin
alphabet: what was unthinkable in 1967
became feasible by 1974. In short,
Ethiopian government’s unwarranted
cruelty and brutality produced the Oromo
elite’s rejection of Ethiopian identity itself.

With the adoption of a Marxist-Leninist ideology, the Derg also tried to follow

the language policies of multi-national socialist countries such as The Union

of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) that advocated that all nationalities in the

Soviet Union had the right to education in their own language (Lewis, 1971).

Quite contrary to the policy of the Haile Sellassie regime, the Derg passed a

decree that recognised the equality of the cultures and languages of every

nationality in the country:

The right to self-determination of all

nationalities will be recognised and fully
respected. No nationality will dominate
another since the history, culture,
language, and religion of each nationality
will have equal recognition in accordance
with the spirit of socialism” (Ethiopian
Government, 1977).

“The People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia shall ensure the equality,

17

development and respectability of nationalities” (Article 2 Sub-article 5,

Constitution of Ethiopia 1987).

155
The Derg went a step further by launching a National Literacy Campaign in

July 1979 and stated that it would allow fourteen languages other than

Amharic to be used as vehicles for the campaign. These languages

(alphabetically listed) included Afar, Gedeo, Hadiya, Kaffa Mocha, Kambata,

Oromo, Saho, Sidma, Silti Gurage, Somali, Tigre, Tigrigna, and Walaita. For

the first time in Ethiopian history, the government had made (at least

theoretically if not in practice) a commitment to respect and develop the

languages of other nationalities (McNab, 1989). The Derg also allowed a one

hour daily radio broadcasting in Afaan Oromo, in addition to the already

existing radio programmes in Afar, Somali, Tigre, and Tigrigna. The first

Oromo newspaper, Bärisa (Dawn), which had been launched in 1975, was

nationalised in 1976 by the Ministry of Information and National Guidance.

Nevertheless, despite the Derg’s policy of recognizing the equality of cultures

and languages of every nationality, in reality this was practically limited to the

National Literacy Campaign, with the formal education language policy

remaining generally unchanged from the pre-Derg era of Amharic as a

medium of instruction at primary education level and an official language of

the country. All primary school children received instruction in Amharic

regardless of their mother tongue, and Amharic was taught as an examinable

subject in junior and secondary schools. Amharic’s status as an official

language was also reaffirmed: “Without prejudice to Article 2 Sub-Article 5 of

156
this Constitution, in the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia states

activities shall be conducted in the Amharic language”. Under the Derg, the

spread of Amharic in the country gained momentum due to the policy of rural

development, and resettlement programmes from the north to the south, both

of which resulted in more primary schools in remote areas, which in turn

brought more people in contact with Amharic (McNab, 1989).

It was often suspected and debated by many people that the Derg’s motive for

allowing the radios, newspapers and mass literacy in some local languages

was driven by its goal to counter-attack its opposition rather than by a desire

to promote the cultures and languages of nations other than that of the

Amhara. It was also aimed at the propagation of its Marxist-Leninist ideology

rather than from a genuine interest to promote languages other than Amharic.

It is argued, for example, by Bender (1985) that in substance the Derg’s

language policy was not much different to that of the old regime. Bender (ibid)

further notes that the contents of the media were mere translations of the

socialist propaganda of the government and literacy classes were often taught

in Amharic, contrary to the Derg’s propaganda of using local languages. The

Derg was very careful in its control of the contents and styles of the materials

produced and distributed to the people (Teferi Degeneh, 1989). Eide Øyvind

(2000:173) observes that the Derg “allowed publication and distribution in

157
(languages other than Amharic) as long as the material passed the censors and

conformed to the Ge’ez syllabic script”.

In general, non-Amharic speakers gained little from the Derg’s language policy

because Amharic remained the official language of the country and the ability

to speak and write in it was a requirement in government offices. The present

writer recalls that it was a common occurrence for people to be labeled as

narrow nationalists if they spoke in their own language, rather than in

Amharic, at public places during the Derg regime. The consequence of being

labeled a narrow nationalist for an individual was in the least a possible

exclusion from gaining key roles in the political, social and economic activities

of the country and, at worst, a possible imprisonment for several years

without trial.

5.3. The post-Derg language policy of Ethiopia

As stated earlier in this chapter that the imposition of Amharic as a sole

official language in Ethiopia led to the establishment of liberation fronts such

as the EPLF, OLF and TPLF. It was noted that the degradation of their

languages was one of the main reasons for these groups to establishing their

organisations and fighting against the central government. After several years

158
of war, the liberation fighters finally became victorious. In May 1991 the Derg

regime was overthrown and the liberation fighters seized power in Ethiopia

while the president, Mengistu Haile Mariam, fled the country. The main

partner among these fighters was the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)

which later formed and became the principal component of the subsequent

ruling party (the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)

that formed a government (Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE)) with

alliance with political movements and liberation fronts such as the Oromo

Liberation Front and the Sidama Liberation Front.

With Eritrea, led by EPLF, being effectively separated from Ethiopia,

Ethiopia’s geo-political map started to change. In October 1991 an agreement

was signed by representatives of the different nations in the Parliament to

accept a newly designed map of the regions. The map divided the country

into fourteen regions based on the distribution of the main language groups

spoken in each area. Later, five smaller regions in the south west joined

together to make a larger administrative area which have became known

collectively as the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region

(SNNRP). The coming together of the smaller regions in the south west

reduced the number of the regions and they soon formed administrative

[Link] new admintrative arrangement culminated in the formation in

1995 of a federal structure which comprised nine states - namely, Tigray, Afar,

159
Amhara, Oromo, Somali, Beni-Shangul, Gambela, the SNNRP, (Appendix II)

and the city of Harar. Addis Ababa (Finfinneee) was also granted

administrative rights as well as recognition as the capital city of the federal

state. The country had already adopted a new constititution in 1994, and this

constitition dealt with a number of issues and rights of nations and

nationalities. Under Article 39 Section 3, the Constitution provided:

Every Nation, Nationality and People in

Ethiopia has the right to a full measure of
self-government which includes the right to
establish institutions of government in the
territory that it inhabits and to an equitable
representation in the state assembly.

In Article 39 Section 5, the Constitution provided a definition for Nations,

Nationalities and Peoples:

A Nation, Nationality and People for

the purpose of this Constitution, is a
group of people who have or share
large measure of common culture or
customs, mutual intelligibility of
language, belief in a common or
related identities, a common
psychological make-up, and who
inhabit an identifiable,
predominantly contiguous territory.

Article 39 Section 2 of the Constitution underlined the linguistic rights of the

Nations, Nationalities and Peoples:

160
 Every Nation, Nationality and
People in Ethiopia has the right to
speak, to write, and develop its own
language; to express, to develop and
to promote its culture; and to
preserve its history.

The 1994 Constitution, Article 39. 4 (a), (b), (c), (d) and (e) gives the Nations,

Nationalities and Peoples a fundamental democratic right of cessesion, under

certain conditions, if they so wished:

The right to self determination up to secession of

nation, nationality and peoples may be exercised:-
(a) where the demand for secession is approved by
a two thirds (2/3rds) majority of the legislature of
the nation, nationality or people concerned.
(b) where the Federal Government within three
years upon receipt of the decision of the legislature
of the nation, nationality or people demanding
secession, organises a referendum for the nation,
nationality or people demanding secession.
(c) where the demand for secession is supported by
a simple majority vote in the referendum.
(d) where the Federal Government transfers power
to the parliament of the nation, nationality or
people which has opted for secession.
(e) where property is partitioned in accordance
with the law.

All these indicate that the collapse in 1991 of the Derg regime was the

beginning of the end of the century-old Amhara monoply of political power

in Ethiopia. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that the downfall of the

161
Derg itself was a result of opposition and sacrifices made by various

individuals, groups from different nationalities and nations in the country

against the political and economic oppression in general as well as the

suppression in particular of the cultures and languages of non Amharic

speakers in Ethiopia. The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, the Tigrean

People’s Liberation Front, and the Oromo Liberation Front could be

mentioned as being the main political organisations in the country which

made it clear that their goals were to enable their people to decide for

themselves their political destinies by removing the Amhara culture and

language which were imposed upon them by force.

To be true to its original objectives of getting rid of the centrally imposed

Amharic for official and education activities, the Transitional Government of

Ethiopia (which was established immediately after the downfall of the Derg)

had drafted an interim education and language policy and it underscored

three major themes:

a) Firstly, primary school education, in non-Amharic speaking areas was

to commence in local languages. Moreover, most languages were to

become working languages in their respective administrative zones.

b) The second was to maintain Amharic as an official language which was

also stated in Article 5 of the 1994 Constitution.

162
 c) Finally, English was to continue as the medium of instruction at

secondary school level and to be taught as a subject starting from

Grade One in all areas in the country (Ministry of Education, 1994).

For the first time in their history many nations and nationalities in Ethiopia

had the opportunity to use their language for education at primary school

level and for official purposes in their areas under the new government that

toppled the Derg regime. This was a great achievement because against all the

odds people got organised, struggled and attained their freedom to decide

which language to use for education and official purposes.

5.4. The Ethiopian language policies and the Oromo writing system

It can be inferred from the Ethiopian language policies discussed above, that

the direct or indirect steps taken by the Ethiopian regimes had negatively

affected the development of the Oromo writing system. For example, with its

policy of achieving unity of the country through one language policy, the

Haile Sellassie regime was against all local languages, except Amharic, being

officially used and written in the Ge’ez script. Trimingham (1952:145)

explains: “…it is because Amharic is a literary language that it must

eventually dominate the Empire. Hence, the government’s refusal to allow

any language other than Ge’ez and Amharic to be printed in the Ge’ez script.

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The Bible Society’s version of the Scriptures in Galla in this script is

proscribed”. This testifies why Onesimus Nesib, who used the Ge’ez script in

his translation of the Bible, was prohibited from teaching in Oromo. The

Ethiopian government’s policy to suppress and stop other languages from

using the Ge’ez script or having a writing system(s) of their own was not

surprising, “since common written language is an important factor in

integrating a political nation, and since the unity within encourages the speed

of any cultural pattern throughout a major political unit” (Gleeson, 1955:

161:427).

Besides the government’s goal of achieving unity of the country through the

promotion of Amharic, the process also gave the ruling nation a social,

cultural and economic advantage over the other nations who had to learn and

communicate through Amharic rather than through their first language.

Mohammed Hassen (1998:187) highlights this when he discusses how the

Ethiopian elites did everything possible to prevent Oromo nationalism by

destroying their religious and cultural institutions, “and most of all by

undermining the growth of the Oromo language and the flourishing of

written literature in that language”. The direct and indirect acts of political

aggravation against the pioneers of Oromo writing such as Krapf, Onesimus

Nesib and Shaykh Bakri Sapalo (all cited earlier), and the language policies

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during and before the Derg regime, did not help Oromo become a written

language in Ethiopia with its own orthography.

Whilst this can be taken as a possible reason for the absence of a fully fledged

writing system of Oromo during this and the last centuries, it is suggested

here that the people’s democratic way of life underpinned by the Gada system

(see chapter II) and their inclination to be nomadic pastoralists meant that

there was no pressing need for the Oromo to have a writing system. This is

not to mean that writing is not necessary in a democratic way of life. What is

meant here is that it is usually the case that, whether invented or adapted,

writing systems tend to be found amongst people with a settled way of life

and those who are organised hierarchically thus requiring recording and

accounting (Coulmas, 2003).

In summary, the language policies of the Ethiopian regimes until early 1990’s

have focused on forming a united country through the use of Amharic as an

official language. The Haile Sellassie regime, in particular, failed to recognize

even theoretically the existence and rights of nations who spoke languages

other than Amharic. The Derg, which passed various proclamations

advocating the rights of nations and nationalities to develop their cultures

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and languages, did not go far enough to implement its policies by allowing

and supporting the development of other languages including Afaan Oromo.

Even though the Haile Sellassie and the Derg regimes had different

philosophies based on aristocracy and socialism, respectively, their practice in

relation to the use of language was basically similar for both of them

promoted Amharic at the expense of the other languages; and have

considered it to be the language capable of unifying the country. Rather than

fostering unity and wielding “the country into a more unified one” as

confidently envisaged by Ginzeberg and Smith (1967:11), the promotion of

Amharic and the language policy, especially, of the Haile Sellassie regime

ironically became one of the causes for the formation of the liberation

movements which brought a political turmoil, war and economic devastation

in Ethiopia staring the early 1970’s.

Post-Derg Ethiopia has seen some progress in terms of the recognition and

promotion of a number of languages in Ethiopia, Afaan Oromo included. In

theory, and in practice, people are able to use their languages for official and

day-to-day purposes, without the requirement of using only Amharic in their

regions, beginning early 1990s. However, despite this progress, the Roman

script, in which Afaan Oromo is written, has become a subject of debate. This

will be further discussed in Chapter VI.

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In conclusion, the Ethiopian language policies need to be critically examined

from different perspectives. One perspective, for example is to look at the

experiences of some multilingual countries that use different scripts. For

example, in Asia, India is not only a multilingual country with as many as

eight hundred languages but also allows eleven different scripts for writing

some of these languages in addition to the Roman alphabet and the Chinese

script, which are used to write English and Chinese, two foreign languages

also used in the country (Das Gupta, 1969). In Europe, Switzerland (which is a

small country with a population of approximately seven million inhabitants

(Windisch, 1999)) uses four languages (German, French, Italian, and

Romansch) as its national languages and in Africa, for example, the

Democratic Republic of the Congo has four national languages. These

countries have encouraged diversity rather than trying to achieve “unity”

through linguistic coercion.

An examination of the literature of the conversion of scripts (Dringer, 1968;

Wellisch, 1978; Coulmas, 2003) also reveals that many countries (including

Japan and China) have seriously considered converting their scripts. It is clear

from the literature that countries such as Albania, Turkey, Indonesia, and

many more have changed their scripts at least once or more times for various

reasons (Das Gupta, 1969). In Africa, languages such as Somali, Swahili and

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Hausa, which were once written in the Arabic alphabet, have converted their

scripts to the Roman alphabet. These examples indicate that script conversion

or the adaptation of a script is neither new nor a cause for the disintegration

of a country. Contrary to leading to disintegration (a reason often given by the

proponents of the development of the Oromo writing system), the recognition

and support of peoples’ right to choose and develop their language in a way

that they think best suits them is often a condition for the realization of

reconciliation, trust and harmonization of multilingual societies. The policy to

use one language and one script to create a sense of patriotism and unity in a

multilingual society is definitely not the best option as this is little more than

dictatorship. And a long lasting political solution is rarely attainable through

imposition of policies without the consensus agreement of the target

population. In conclusion the use of the same script or language in a country

is not of importance as long it does not discriminate or impinge on the the

will of the people.

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Chapter VI

6. The recent history of Oromo writing

6.1. Introduction

The present Oromo writing system, the Qubee (see Chapter VII), is a by-

product of the recognised and unrecognised efforts of a number of

individuals and groups of people who wrote in the language on various

subjects for different reasons during a time when the language policies in

Ethiopia were not conducive (see Chapter V) to the promotion and

development of languages, other than Amharic for official purposes. Even

though it had been the official policies of the Ethiopian regimes to promote

Amharic by making it a compulsory medium of instruction and an official

language in the 1970’s and 1980’s, there were some individuals who were

engaged in writing in Oromo language. Most of the materials written during

the two regimes were not widely distributed or read by many people due to

the unfavourable political situations that existed under the regimes (Mekuria

Bulcha, 1993). Furthermore, the written Oromo materials in 1970’s and 1980’s

were limited in their contents with most of them concentrating on similar

themes such traditional Oromo way of life, and therefore, lacking depth and

variaety.

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These limitations by no means trivialise the efforts of the Oromo writers

during these periods, as they raised the aspirations of the Oromo people and

made them receptive to the idea of using of a new writing system. In fact, it

can be argued that each of the efforts that had been made previously, before

the official adoption of the Oromo writing system, had a significant role in the

development of the system. It is with in mind that this chapter presents a brief

survey of selected materials written in Afaan Oromo in Ethiopia in the 1970’s

and 1980’s. Since most of the Oromo materials written in Ethiopia in the

1970’s and 1980’s were in the Ge’ez script, this chapter attempts to provide an

analysis of the materials written in this script. The chapter also analyses three

materials written in the Roman alphabet by the OLF, Haile Fida and Tilahun

Gamta during both the Haile Sellassie and Derg regimes.

6.2. A general survey of Oromo writing in the 1970’s and 1980’s

In spite of the political situation that advocated the unity of the country

through the use Amharic, as the official and written language in Ethiopia in

the 1970’s and 1980’s (Chapter V), some Oromo individuals defied the status

quo and wrote in Oromo language. This was not a minor achievement for

Oromo in general and for the writers in particular because during the Haile

Sellassie and Derg regimes speaking in Oromo in public, let alone writing in

it, would have attracted negative attention with the consequence of the

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speaker at least being labeled as a “narrow nationalist”. In other words, that

was a time when speaking and writing any language other than Amharic was

discouraged. Furthermore, the literacy rate, even in this official language was

low and most of the people were unable to read or write. Another interesting

point in the 1970’s and 1980’s Oromo writing was that most of the writers

were Oromo nationals interested in advancing Oromo culture and language.

Unlike the works of early Oromo writers (who by and large focused on the

translation and teaching of the Bible (see Chapter III)) Oromo writers of the

1970’s and 1980’s spent a great deal of time on writing on the Oromo tradition

and language.

Even though the bulk of the materials written in Oromo in the 1970’s and

1980’s were in Ge’ez script, the three other scripts in which Oromo has been

known to have been written (see Chapter IV), were also used for writing

during this period. Of these three scripts, the Roman alphabet was by far the

most important not only because it was chosen as a basis for the Oromo

writing system but also due to the fact that the materials written in this script

were relatively widely available. The existence of the materials written in the

other two scripts - that is, the Shaykh Bakri Sapalo script (Hayward and

Mohammed Hassen, 1981) and the Arabic alphabet (Andrejewski 1980) -

during the Haile Sellassie and the Derg regimes were hardly known to the

wider Oromo population. However, despite not being available nor used by

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the wider Oromo population, both scripts had a historical significance in that

they were a manifestation of the Oromo people’s desire and determination to

have a writing system.

6.3. Some Oromo written materials in Ge’ez script in 1970’s and 1980’s

The Haile Sellassie regime was a period when the government adopted a

policy of “unifying” Ethiopia through Amharazation of the other nations and

nationalities in the country (see Chapter V). Through its language policy and

practice, the Haile Sellasie regime promoted Amharic while at the same time

discouraging the use and development the other languages in Ethiopia. This

meant that Oromo was not allowed to be written even in Ge’ez, a script in

which the official language, Amharic, was written. It was the removal from

power of the Haile Sellassie regime by the Derg (a military, socialist

government) in 1974 that provided Oromo with a limited opportunity of

being written.

Whilst most of the Oromo books during the Derg era were written by

individuals, there were some Oromo books commissioned and published by

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the government. For instance, in 1971 Ethiopian Calendar (E.C.)18 as part of its

fifth year commemoration of the foundation of the Ethiopian Revolution, the

Derg prepared some five books in Oromo and distributed them to its cadres

so they could ‘teach’ the people what Socialism meant and how it could

benefit them. It was obvious from the titles of some of these books (Seenaa

Dafqaan Bulaa Itoophiya Kaleeessaa Hanga Har’aatti (The History of Ethiopian

Workers from Yesterday (Past) to Today (Now); Waaraqsa Itophiyafi Loltoota

(The Ethiopian Revolution and the Military); Qabeenya Lafa Baadiyyaa Kaleessaa

Hanga Har’aatti (The Ownership of Rural Land from Past to Present)) that the

Derg’s intention to prepare the books was to disseminate its political ideology

among the people rather than a genuine interest in developing the Oromo

language and making it to a written language.

In 1973 E.C., a book entitled Biiftuu Diiramaa was written by Mengesha Rikitu.

Prepared in the Ge’ez script, Mengesha’s book dealt with the Oromo

traditional life in relation to health, culture, husbandry, poetry, language and

the like. Having moved to Europe in the late 1980’s, Mengesha went on to

write other books in Afaan Oromo using the Roman script. Most of

18The Ethiopian calendar (EC) is based on the Julian calendar and lags seven
years behind the western calendar between September 11th (12th in leap year)
to January 1st; or eight years behind between January 1st to September 11th
(12th in leap year) in western calendar. The Ethiopian calendar has 12 months
of 30 days and a short month of 5 or 6 days, depending whether it’s a leap
year.

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Mengesha’s books written in England discussed Oromo wisdom and culture

and are useful for present and future generations who may be interested in

having a broader insight into Oromo traditional life. Whilst living in Europe,

Mengesha also edited his first book, Biiftuu Diirmaa, and had it published in

the Roman script in the 1990’s.

Another prolific Oromo writer in the 1960’s and 1970’s (E.C.) was the

Reverend Dafaa Jammo, who wrote books in Oromo in the Ge’ez script. His

first book, Huursaa, was published in 1969 (E.C.). The aim of the book was to

increase awareness of, and reject some, unhelpful practices, such as gender

inequality and large dowries given to brides during marriage. He also wrote

four other books which covered topics such as culture, custom, language and

social life amongst others. All of these books were written in the Ge’ez script

but nevertheless they were not produced in enough quantities to be

distributed and reach the wider literate population of the era. The books were:

Aadaa Oromoo Wallaggaa, 1974 E.C., Gumbii Oduu, 1975 E.C., Kusaa Sagalee

Oromoo, 1980 E.C., and Safuu Biyyaa, 1983 E.C.

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6.4. Some Oromo materials written in the Roman alphabet in the
1970’s and 1980’s

The late 1970’s to early 1980’s was a crucial period in the history of the

development of Oromo writing system. This was because it was during this

time that a defined objective highlighting the development of the Oromo

language was set out by the Oromo Liberation Front (Mekuria Bulcha,

1993:15). It was also during this period that three main events - namely, the

publication of Haile Fida’s Oromo grammar book; the Cologne Working

Group; and the publication of Tilahun Gamta’s Oromo dictionary - took place.

Each of these events had an important impact on the development of Oromo

writing system, so we will look at this in more detail in the following sections.

However, before discussing these events, it is useful to also analyse one of the

first Oromo textbooks, which was published and used by the OLF in early

1980’s.

6.4.1. The Oromo Liberation Front and the Oromo writing system

Mekuria Bulcha (1993:15) noted that soon after its establishment, the OLF

taught reading and writing in Afaan Oromo to its cadres, fighters and Oromo

refugees in the neighbouring countries such as Somalia and the Sudan.

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Mekuria Bulcha (ibid) also explained that the OLF published and distributed

other materials to its supporters in the 1980’s. This section looks briefly at

Barmoota Afaan Oromoo, Barreeffama Lammaffa, a textbook the OLF prepared

and used for teaching Afaan Oromo in the 1980’s.

This book was published in 1980, some eleven years before the Roman

alphabet was officially adopted in Ethiopia, in 1991, as a script on which the

Oromo writing system was to be based. Bamooota Afaan Oromoo, Barreeffama

Lammaffa contained 104 pages and was aimed at children and beginners who

wanted to read and write Oromo words and simple sentences in Qubee. The

first five pages introduced the reader to the reading and writing of capital and

small letters, which were paired and arranged in an alphabetical order with

pictures of animals or things that contained a sound in question associated

with the letter. For example, the letter ‘A’ (‘a’) was written beside a picture of

an elephant because the Oromo word for the animal (Arba) begins with ‘a’. All

the other letters, including the digraphs used in the Oromo writing system,

were written in the same way with picture illustrations so that the readers

could link them to the Oromo sounds. The following example was taken from

page 6 of Barmoota Afaan Oromoo, Barreeffama Lammaffa.

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Source: Barmoota Afaan Oromoo, Barreeffama Lammaffa, 1980:6.

177
A very useful feature of the book was that it gave a graphic demonstration of

how the Roman alphabets were written by showing arrow marks where a pen

or pencil should start and finish when writing the alphabet on a writing

material, as was demonstrated in the example below:

Source: Barmoota Afaan Oromoo, Barreeffama Lammaffa, 1980:5.

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This was useful especially for those learners who had been introduced to the

Ge’ez script, which would be written differently from the way the Roman

alphabet was written. In the Ge’ez script, a writer would usually separate a

pen from the paper several times whilst writing a grapheme or letter. A short

unpublished study undertaken by the researcher found that most of the

subjects in Nekemte Teacher Training Institute, Ethiopia, wrote in English in a

similar way to that in Amharic, separating pen from the paper when writing a

letter (Teferi Degeneh, 1978 E. C., 13-26). The result of this was that the

subjects were slow in writing in English and had a handwriting which was

barely legible. The research concluded that it was useful for Ethiopian

primary school English language teachers to demonstrate to and help the

learner practise aspects of writing such as the appropriate position of the

body and grip of the pen when teaching them how to write the Roman

alphabets (capital, small and cursive forms).

Barmoota Afaan Oromoo, Barreeffama Lammaffa, was one of the earliest textbooks

prepared in the Roman alphabet for the distribution and teaching of Afaan

Oromo by the OLF. The book could be considered an achievement for the OLF

because of the presentation of the contents from relatively simple to difficult

stages. For example, learners were introduced to syllables, words, sentences,

paragraphs, and so on. Exercise activities were also arranged in such a way

179
that they progressed from easier to more difficult questions. A final point to

mention about this book is that the contents reflected Oromo names, places,

culture, language, etc., which enabled learners to understand more about

Oromo.

6.4.2. A brief account of Haile Fida’s contribution to the Oromo writing

system

Oromo students in the Diaspora, particularly those in Europe, started

learning how to read and write Oromo in the Roman script in the early 1970s.

As part of this initiative of learning how to read and write Oromo a person by

name of Haile Fida wrote a grammar book titled Hirmaata Dubbii Afaan

Oromoo (Oromo grammar book). This book was first published in 1973 and

reprinted in Germany in 1979 by Tokkummaa Ijaarsa Barattoota Oromoo Biyya

Awurooppaa (TIBOBA) or the Union of Oromo Students in Europe (UOSE).

Even though the book was written anonymously, I am reliably informed by

Professor R. J. Hayward of the School of Oriental and African Studies and (my

then supervisor), that the late Haile Fida was the actual author of this book.

Professor Hayward told the author that he had met Haile Fida at least once at

a conference in Europe and discussed with him various aspects of the Oromo

language. A book written by Andargachew Asegid (2000:288) on an Ethiopian

political movement (All Ethiopian Peoples’ Socialist Movement (Meison,

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Amharic acronym]) refers to Haile Fida as being the author of ‘the first’

Oromo grammar book.

Haile Fida’s book, Hirmaatadubbii Afaan Oromoo, was different from all the

Oromo books written before the 1970’s for at least three main reasons. The

first reason was that it was the first Oromo grammar book written by an

Oromo in the Roman script. Evidence is not available to suggest that a

grammar book had been written by an Oromo in the Roman script before the

early 1970’s. Almost all available Oromo grammar books in the Roman script

before the 1970’s were written by Europeans. The second reason, which made

Haile Fida’s book different from earlier Oromo books written in the Roman

script, was the fact that its objective was to make a contribution to the unity

and consciousness of the Oromo people and the development of their

language as opposed to the books written for the benefit of Missionaries, for

example Krapf (1842), or for the purpose of teaching Europeans (Foot, 1913)

and help them in their dealings with the Oromo people. In the introduction to

his book, (Haile Fida, 1979: iii-iv) writes:

Yaadnikeeñña akkasi:
Tokkoffa, Oromooni barumsa qaban, mačaafa kanaan
Oromoota biraa barsiisu hayaalani. Gaarii yookiis gađee
ta’uusaa hoojiiđaan ha’agarsiisan. ….
Lammaffaa, warri barumsa qaban kun sadii-afur ta’aanii
walqabatani biyya Oromoo hunda keessa naannaanii
hubatani, nama hagaggafatani, otuu hinnuffin

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 habarbaadani. Aadaađaaf hooda Oromoo, barsiisa đaloota
darbani walitti haqaban. Waan argatan hunda hačaAfaani.
Akkasitti afaankeeñña tokko goccuu, bal’isuu, qulleessuu
dandeeñña. Akkasitti nuy warri ija bananne saba Oromoo
yaada haaraađaaf jireeñña haaraa barsiisuu dandeeñña.
Yoo mačaafni kun hojiirra oolee Oromoota yartuulle
damaqssuu danda’e, yoo Oromoonni barumsa qaban
afaankeeñña ittiinčaAfaan, yoo kunis Oromoota
walittiđiyeessuuđaaf walittiqabuu jalqabe, yoo inni ija
banaccuuđaaf isaan gargaare, gammaccunkeeñña sona
hinargatu. Waan barbanne arganne jeccuu đa….

Roughly translates as:

Our objectives (of writing this book) are as follows:

First, educated Oromos should try to teach their fellow

Oromos using this book. They should prove in practice
whether or not this book is useful….

Second, those educated, without despair, should hold hands

in three’s or four’s and travel around to enquire, study and
do research. They should gather information relating to
Oromo culture, tradition and history. They should write
everything they find. In this way we can unify, develop and
purify our language. In this way we, who have opened our
eyes, can teach the Oromo people new ideas and new life.

If this book is put to use, and could raise the awareness of

even a few Oromos, if educated Oromos could write in our
language, if this could take the lead in bringing the Oromo
people closer to each other and start to organise them, if it
could help them to open their eyes, our delight will be
limitless. This means that we have achieved what we have
wanted (My translation).

But, most important, Hirmaataadubbii Afaan Oromoo is different from the other

Oromo books which preceded it in its analytical depth of the phonology,

morphology and syntax of the language. Haile Fida, in this book, describes

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various aspects of the language and painstakingly uses different marks and

notations to represent the systems in writing. Table 11 shows the system used

by the author in the book.

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Table 11. Representation of Oromo sounds in Hirmaataadubbii Afaan
Oromoo

No Letters Phonemes Examples in Gloss

(Hirmaataadubbii) Oromo
1 ‘ /¢/ taa’uu to sit
2 a /a/ harka hand
3 b /b/ eeboo spear
4 c /tS / acci there
5 č /tS’/ čabbii snow
6 d /d/ dargaggoo youth
7 d /d/ dagaa stone
8 e /e/ ergaa message
9 f /f/ fayyaa health
10 g /g/ guyyaa day
11 h /h/ haaraa new
12 i /i/ iddoo place
13 j /j/ jecca saying
14 k /k/ kennaa gift
15 l /l/ lama two
16 m /m/ mana house
17 n /n/ nama man
18 n¯ /ù / n¯aata food
19 o /o/ Oromoo Oromo
20*19 p /p/ poolisii police
21 pÞ /p’/ tapÞa game
22 q /k’/ marqaa porridge
23 r /r/ raafuu cabbage
24 s /s/ soquu to dig
25 š /Ø/ išee she
26* sr /sr/ sriigeeradaa rose
27 t /t/ hantuuta mouse
28 tr /t’/ fitruu to finish
29 u /u/ urjii star
30* v /v/ revolušinii revolution
31 w /w/ waggaa year
32* x /x/ ortodoxii orthodox
33 y /y/ wayyaa cloth
34* z /z/ zeeroo zero
35* ž /dJ/ -

19Note that in rows 20, 26, 30, 32, 34, and 35, Haile Fida uses letters
representing sounds which are foreign to Oromo but are increasingly being
used by way of borrowing from Amharic, Arabic, Italian and English.

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Besides his indepth analysis of the Oromo phonology, morphology and

syntax, Haile Fida coined many new words which helped modernise Oromo

language and demonstrated that it could be studied in its own right and

could also be used for official purposes. The term ‘Hirmaatadubbii’ (parts of

speech) was a good example for Haile Fida’s many newly coined words. His

main contribution to the development of the Oromo writing system was,

however, his use and recommendation of the Roman alphabet, rather than the

Ge’ez script, for Oromo writing. It can be claimed that the OLF, which is

commonly considered by Oromo people as being the organization responsible

for the adaptation of the Roman alphabet for Oromo writing, was inspired by

Haile Fida’s work because Hirmaataadubbii Afaan Oromoo had been written

prior to the formation of the OLF. According to Taha Abdi (in an interview, 19

February, 2005, London), the founders of the OLF had great respect for Haile

Fida so much so that they had invited him to a clandestine meeting in 1975 in

Addis Ababa at the residence of one of the OLF founders (Baaroo Tumsa).

Taha Abdi stated that Haile Fida was a leader of a political movement and an

advisor to Mengistu Hailemariam at that time. Taha Abdi said that Haile

Fida’s position at the time of the meeting was not to establish a political

organization for Oromo but to work within the framework of the political

organizations that operated in Ethiopia and to resolve the problems of

Oromo. Taha Abdi noted that Haile Fida’s viewpoint about not forming

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Oromo political organization was politely and respectfully listened to but was

not accepted by those present at the meeting.

Another area where the OLF parted course with Haile Fida was on the usage

of digraphs to represent some Oromo sounds in the writing system. As a rule,

unlike the OLF, Haile Fida had never used a diagraph to represent a sound

segment which had no equivalent in European languages such as English or

French. It is evident in Table 11 above that the sound segments in rows 4, 7,

18, 21 and 25 have all been represented by a plain character or with additional

marks above the character or symbols. For example, according to Haile Fida’s

Hirmaataadubbii Afaan Oromoo, the initial alphabets in the Oromo words for

‘snow’ and ‘stone’ would be “č” (/ tS’ /) and “d‰ (/ d /), and the words would be

written as čabbii and dagaa. The same words are written in Qubee as cabbii

and dhagaa. It should be noted the use of digraphs in the officially accepted

Oromo writing system lacked consistency for some sounds, such as / tS’/ and

/t’/ (‘c ’ and ‘x ’), which were represented by single characters as opposed to

organically similar sounds such as /tS/ and /p’/, which were represented with

digraphs (‘ch’ and ‘ph’). It can be argued that Haile Fida showed more

consistency in his choice of the Roman alphabet symbols (letters) to represent

the Oromo sounds than the current version or system of Oromo writing. This

will be examined further in Chapter VIII. However, for now it can be

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concluded that in spite of his way of writing Oromo in the Roman alphabet

not being fully adopted or endorsed (see Chapter VIII), Haile Fida’s

contribution to the development of Oromo writing system is worthy of

reference and recognition by anyone interested in this area.

6.4.3. Tilahun Gamta’s contributions to the development of Oromo writing

Tilahun Gamta, an Oromo scholar, is most popularly known for writing an

Oromo dictionary (1989), Oromo-English Dictionary, using the Roman

alphabet. He is not explicit in giving a reason for his choice of the Roman

alphabet in writing his book in Ethiopia at that time, when writing in Oromo

even in the Ge’ez script was not encouraged, except saying that the dictionary

was “designed primarily for those persons (with rudimentary knowledge of

Latin alphabet) who wish to learn English through Oromo or vice versa”

(Tilahun Gamta, 1989:1). This is understandable because it was not politically

safe for him when the Derg was in power in Ethiopia to recommend or

discuss which scripts should be used to write Oromo. Even though he did not

suggest a script choice in his dictionary, his personal preference was evident

from the fact that he wrote the dictionary in the Roman alphabet. It is also

clear from Tilahun Gamta’s argument on the Qubee (Chapter VII) that his

preference was to use the Roman alphabet for Oromo writing.

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Tilahun Gamta’s Oromo-English Dictionary had a great role in raising the

Oromo people’s consciousness with regard to the choice of script and in

preparing them to embrace the Roman alphabet as a script on which the

Oromo writing system was later to be based. This is because it was the first

time that such a book was written by a native speaker teaching in a university

and residing in Ethiopia. Tilahun Gamta’s Oromo dictionary was arguably

the first Oromo book of its kind to be published in Ethiopia in Roman script

and to be made widely available to the people. In addition to raising the

awareness of the people about their language, the Oromo-English Dictionary

was also a useful resource as it contains over 8000 Oromo-word entries and

500 idioms (Tilahun Gamta, 1989:ii).

With regard to Oromo writing and its phoneme representations, Tilahun

Gamta’s contribution was not as such a significant step forward as most of the

Oromo sounds (particularly the affricates) are not represented in the Qubee

system by the same characters as that of their representation in Tilahun

Gamta’s version (Figure 42).

188
Figure 42 Tilahun Gamta’s representation of affricates and glottals (in his
dictionary) compared against the qubee representation

No Phonemes Tilahun Qubee

Gamta’s
1 / tS / cc ch
2 / tS’/ C c
3 /d / D dh
4 /ù / N ny
5 / p’/ P ph
6 / s’/ Ø sh
7 / t’ / T x
8 / k’/ K q
9 /ö/ ö -
10 /¢ / ? ‘

As can be seen in Figure 42, Tilahun Gamta’s representation of Oromo

affricates and glottals was different from the way the sounds are represented

in the qubee system. In many cases, Tilahun Gamta uses the capital forms of

letters to represent the glottalised sounds, for example / tS’/ is represented by

C, / t’/ by T, /d/ by D and / k’/ is represented by K. One of the problems of

using a capital form of a letter to represent some glottalised, implosive and

nasal phonemes (/ tS’/, /t’/, / k’/, / p’/, /d/, and /ù /) is that it makes writing look

awkward with smaller letters mixed capital ones. Using the system also

complicates the use of capital letters at the beginning of a sentence or when

writing names or some proper nouns. The system would be more complicated

or confusing when it is required to write the whole word in capital letters as

189
in BUPPA ([ bup’a ]) “egg”, MAKAA ([mak’a:]) “name”and HAADA

([ha:da]) “mother”.

In conclusion, the 1970’s and 1980’s were confusing as well as defining

decades in the history of the development of Oromo writing. Confusing,

because these were the decades in which written materials in Oromo were

produced in four scripts; namely, the Shaykh Bakri Sapalo’s Orthography,

Arabic alphabet, Ge’ez script and the Roman alphabet. And yet also defining

because it was during this period the Oromo Liberation Front and some

concerned Oromo individuals such as, Haile Fida and Tilahun Gamta,

produced major Oromo linguistic publications in the Roman alphabet.

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Chapter VII

7.1. Arguments on the selection of a script for Oromo writing

Until 1991 (when the Roman alphabet was officially adopted as a script for

Oromo writing) the question of a script choice for Oromo writing had not

been a concern for most Ethiopian scholars. Indeed, the presence of the

dictatorial political situation that promoted one language (Amharic) at the

expense of the other languages in Ethiopia before the 1990’s (Chapter V)

meant that writing Ethiopian languages other than Amharic was

unimaginable to most people in the country during the Haile Sellassie and

Derg regimes. Except for a workshop in Cologne (see below, 7.2) there had not

been any formal debate on how and in which script Oromo should or should

not be written. It was after the adoption of the Roman Alphabet for the

Oromo language writing in 1991 that the selection of a script for writing the

language became a concern for many people in Ethiopia. This chapter

discusses the arguments that followed the official adoption of the Roman

Alphabet for Oromo writing. But before this it is useful to look briefly at the

Cologne Group, a workshop in which the choice of a script for Oromo writing

was discussed.

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7.2. The Cologne working group

In 1986, a workshop was convened in Cologne, Germany, to openly discuss

for the first time how Oromo should be written. This was a major advance in

the history of the development of the Oromo writing system because it broke

the “taboo” and debated openly the issue of not whether Oromo should be

written at all, but of how and in what script it should be written. Heine (1988)

describes this workshop stating that in 1986 nineteen well-known linguists

from different parts of the world participated in a working group20 and made

some observations that included:

1. The problem of which script or scripts to use for writing

Oromo was essentially a political one. The working group
was qualified only to look into some socio-linguistic
aspects of this problem.

2. In addition to the writing system used in Ethiopia,

which is based on the Ethiopian script, there was a need
for another system based on the Latin script to be used for
both practical and scientific purposes outside Ethiopia,
e.g., for the use of Oromo in education, literature and
other public media in Kenya (Heine, 1988:619).

20
Included in this working group were: Dr Giorgio Banti, Dr C El-Solami-Mewis,
Prof. Harold C Fleming, Mrs Makeda Äster Gäfgen, Prof. Bernd Heine, Prof. Robert
Hetzorn, Dr Mekonnen Argaw, Prof. Wilhelm J W Möhlig, Dr Mulugeta Eteffa, Prof.
Derek Nurse, Dr Gérard Philippson, Mr Franz Potyka, Dr Harry Stroomer, Dr Mauro
Tosco and Prof. Andrzej Zaborski.

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Despite its uniqueness in being a high profile working group comprised of

international scholars, the workshop was only a symbolic step forward and

had little impact on the direction of the development of the Oromo writing

system in Ethiopia. Firstly, the decision made by the group was not clear-cut

as the working group believed that a consideration of a script for Oromo

writing was a “political one” and outside its remit. Also, the report did not

offer a detailed explanation of the sociolinguistic aspects, except for briefly

mentioning that this was an issue within their remit. Thirdly, despite their

possible benefits or otherwise, some of the characters the working group

recommended for Oromo writing (Table 12) were not taken into account in

the qubee system (Chapter VIII). For example, the Cologne Working Group

suggested the digraphs “th” and “kh” to be used for representing the Oromo

phonemes / t’ / and / k’ / respectively but the same sounds are represented by

the characters “x” and “q” in the Qubee system.

A fourth point to note is the confusing remark made by the Working Group in

stating that in addition to writing Oromo based on the Ge’ez script in

Ethiopia, there was a need for another system based on the Latin script for

writing Oromo in Kenya for the use of Oromo in education, literature and

media (Heine, 1988). The Working Group did not elaborate on why or how

two scripts should be used to write Oromo in Ethiopia and Kenya. Also the

Group did not elaborate on the costs and benefits of using two scripts to write

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Oromo in Ethiopia and Kenya. In fact (as discussed earlier in Chapter III) and

elsewhere Oromo has been written by various people in different scripts

including in the Ge’ez and the Roman alphabet. But Oromo writing in

Ethiopia before 1991 was not official in the sense that the people were not

consulted regarding the scripts used, and also the language was neither

official nor a medium of instruction in Oromia, or the Oromo region. The

Cologne Group’s suggestion for Oromo to be written simultaneously in two

scripts for different purposes was rather unclear and unhelpful It would

appear that the Working Group (whose members included Ethiopians) did

not want to rock the boat by openly recommending the Roman alphabet for

Oromo writing in Ethiopia, even though that was exactly what came across

through its suggestions on which Roman characters should represent which

Oromo phonemes and whether or not modification of the characters by way

of macrons was appropriate. The reason for the Working Group’s unclear

suggestion could be inferred from its report which stated that a script choice

in Ethiopia was a political decision. This meant that the Working Group made

itself free from tampering with a decision that should essentially be made by

the politicians.

Despite its ambiguous and unhelpful recommendation, however, the

Working Group was explicit in its suggestion that diacritic marks should not

be employed if Oromo were to be written in the Roman alphabet. The reason

194
given for this was that financially it was cheaper and it was also more

effective if additional marks were avoided in writing when possible to do so.

As it turned out, the official Oromo writing, Qubee, did not use any diacritic

marks to represent aspects of the sounds in writing except the use of

leftwards facing raised commas to denote a glottal stop.

Another useful suggestion made by the Cologne Working Group (but was not

fully endorsed by the OLF and in the Qubee system) was the representation of

a group of sounds that had no equivalent characters in the Roman script. As

can be seen in Table 12 below, the group was consistent (except for the use of

“y” with “n” as in “ny”) in its representation of the digraphs by always using

‘h’ as a second character. In Qubee, these are all written differently without

consistency.

Table 12. Some letters recommended by the Group

IPA Transcription Recommended by the Group

tS c
tS} ch
ɗ dh
k‘ kh
P’ ph
t‘ th
ù ny

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In summary, despite its limited impact, the Cologne Working Group has

played a role in the development of Oromo writing by virtue of the fact that it

took the issue seriously and discussed how Oromo should be written. The

Group’s recommendations, particularly those relating to maintaining

consistency by adding the letter “h” to a character (as outlined in Table 12) are

worth examining.

7.3 Common and ongoing arguments on script selection for Oromo writing

It appears that the adoption of the Roman script or Qubee (See Chapter VIII)

for Oromo writing is a major issue for a great number of non-Oromo people,

especially for some Amharic speakers in Ethiopia. Kifle Djote (1993:20)

succinctly illustrates this:

“The number of those (Abyssinians) who are still fond of making malicious

slanders about the Latinization of Oromo literature is not small. In private

discussions and in official circles, the use of the Latin alphabet (Qubee Afaan

Oromoo) by the Oromo has become the most intensively discussed theme in

Ethiopian society”.

The same observation was made by Tilahun Gamta (1993) who stated that

people from various walks of life in Ethiopia were engaged in the discussion

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of the selection of a script for Oromo writing system. He also claimed that the

Oromo people were united in their acceptance of the Qubee for writing their

language (Tilahun Gamta, 1993). A personal experience of the author gained

through conversations with a number of Oromo people of various

educational and social backgrounds supports Tilahun Gamta’s assertion that

the Oromo people are united in accepting the Qubee. However, it cannot be

concluded from personal experience or from a conference attended by 1000 or

so people that all Oromo people support or accept the Qubee writing system.

It can be argued that the Ethiopian language policies, especially those of the

Haile Sellasie regime, not only degraded and hindered the development of

Oromo language but were key factors in creating a common denominator or a

common feeling of suppression, which fostered unity among the Oromo

people on the issue of the writing system for their language. Mohammed

Hassen (1996) was right in asserting that the Ethiopian language policies,

which emphasized the teaching of Amharic through the Ge’ez script, led the

Oromo to reject the “Sabean” script (Ge’ez script) and adopt the Latin

alphabet to write their language. It is likely that the association of the Ge’ez

script with a centrally imposed language (Amharic) only reinforced

opposition to it among the Oromo people. As stated elsewhere, Oromo had

been unofficially written in four different scripts (Arabic, Shaykh Bakri Sapalo

script, Ge’ez and the Roman alphabet) for different purposes at different

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times but the people were united in their acceptance of a writing system

based on the Roman alphabet.

Tilahun Gamta (1993:17) notes that the Oromo people were “unanimous” in

their decision to adapt the Roman alphabet as a script for writing. Indeed, this

author has not come across any Oromo opposed to the use of the Roman

script for writing Oromo. However, this has not stopped many non-Oromo

people from arguing against the Oromo writing system based on the Roman

alphabet. The interesting thing about the argument or debate on the Oromo

language by non-Oromos in Ethiopia at this time is not the question of

whether or not it should be written but what script it should be written in.

This is one step forward in itself by Ethiopia’s standard since the issue of

Oromo writing had not been a concern or an area of interest to non-Oromo

scholars prior to the 1990s. Now it is evident that people who had never

bothered themselves with the development of Oromo language before have at

least accepted the need for it to be written. While this could be considered a

welcome improvement given the historical background of the Ethiopian

language policies, it would appear to be a late, subjective, undemocratic and

desperate reaction. The arguments of some of these people are analysed

below. But before that, it is useful to note the reasons given from the Oromo

perspective. In this regard Tilahun Gamta (1991), who made a significant

contribution to the development of Oromo writing (discussed in Chapter VI)

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preferred the use of the Roman alphabet to the Ge’ez script for Oromo writing

for linguistic, pedagogic, and practical reasons, which he listed as follows:

• The Roman alphabet has 26 letters whereas the Ge’ez script has 231

characters.

• The Ge’ez script does not make provisions for gemination or for certain

long vowels.

• It is easier to use keyboards designed for the Roman alphabet than that

of the Ge’ez syllabary.

• Oromo in the Roman alphabet is more commonly and widely used

than the Ge’ez script.

• The Roman script is more commonly and widely used globally which

means that the use of it brought the Oromo closer to the world

community.

• Learning reading and writing in the Roman alphabet could offer an

advantage for Oromo children who later chose to study in other

foreign languages (such as English and French) which were also

written in the Roman alphabet.

During the course of this research, the author has not come across any Oromo

that advocated for the use of the Ge'ez script for Oromo writing or those

opposed against the adaptation of the Roman alphabet. The argument

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against, and the objection to, Oromo writing based on the Roman script

(Qubee) came invariably from Amharic speakers who had different social or

academic backgrounds and who put forward different reasons for their

dislike of the use of the Roman script for Oromo writing. The Ethiopian

Orthodox clergy were among those who were known for their objection to the

use of Qubee. For them, Qubee was tantamount to the “Devil’s script” and

there was a situation in Ethiopia when “an individual was excommunicated

and refused burial on Orthodox Church grounds for teaching the Oromo

language” (Mekuria Bulcha, (1993:111)). This is paradox for the Ethiopian

Orthodox church because associating a language with Christianity restricts

(rather than helps) the spread of the teachings of Christ among people who do

not speak Amharic. In fact the Bible, the Holy Book on which Christianity is

based, is translated into several languages and written in different scripts to

help spread the “Word of God”. Contrary to categorizing a system of writing

as the “devil’s script”, the Bible21 encourages and allows us to use various

scripts and languages.

For some politicians, the use of the qubee was seen as unnecessary endeavour

because it would lead Oromia to secede from Ethiopia. Moreover, these

21
For example, in the Bible (Esther, 1:22) it is stated: “King Xerxes sent dispatches to
all parts of the kingdom, to each province in its own script and to each people in their
own language…” This shows that, far from demonising, the Bible recognises and
accepts the use of various languages and scripts by different people.

200
people believed that there was no need to adopt a foreign, western script,

when there was already ‘an indigenous’ script in Ethiopia. Professor Asrat

Woldeys, a prominent Amhara political leader, is quoted (Mekuria Bulcha,

1994) as referring to the Oromo as agul ferenji (pretentious white person) only

because of the Oromo’s decision to adopt the Roman script for writing their

language. Still, for some writers, Qubee was part of a conspiracy by the enemy

which ought to be resisted at any cost. The following statement is interesting

in this regard:

…በጦር፡ ያላሸነፉን፡ ጠላቶቻችን፡ ዛሬ፡ በደካማ፡

ጎናችን፡ በኩል፡ ገብተዉ፡ የፊደላት፡ እናት፡
የሆነዉን፡ የግዕዝ፡ ፊደላችንን፡ ወደ፡ ላትን፡
ለመቀየር፡ ሲፈገመግሙ፡ እንመለከታለን፡፡

…our enemies, who failed to defeat

us at war, are taking advantage of
our weakness and are doing their
best to change our Ge’ez script, the
mother of scripts, to Latin script
(Laykun Birhanu, 2001:2). (My
translation)

Laykun Birhanu (2001) was rather at best naïve or an opportunist, and at

worst chauvinist for, amongst other things, making a generalized and

unproven claim that “Ge’ez is the mother of scripts”. But (as we will see

below) he was not alone in Ethiopia in making this unsubstantiated claim that

the Ge’ez script originated in Ethiopia and therefore it should be adapted to

write Oromo and the other languages in the country. What is implicitly

“positive” and progressive in Laykun Birhanu’s (2001) assertion is that he

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accepts the right of non-Amhara people to write their language but he denies

them their right to select a script for their writing system. Mekuria Bulcha

(1994) exposes the fact that a large number of non-Oromo people in Ethiopia

were opposed not to Oromo writing per se but to the newly adapted Oromo

writing system. Just like Laykun Birhanu (2001), these people tended to

believe that the Ge’ez script was not only superior to the Roman alphabet but

that it was also one that should be used to write all the languages in the

Ethiopian empire. They believed that all Ethiopians, regardless of nationality

or linguistic background, should be proud of the “indigenous” Ge’ez script.

Laykun Birhanu’s reference to Oromo as enemies embarked on changing the

Ge’ez script is not a helpful comment. It is not clear how Oromo could be

blamed for changing the Ge’ez script when they had not been using it

officially to write their language in any form under the Haile Sellassie or Derg

regimes. If what was being referred to by Laykun Birhanu was that the Ge’ez

script was replaced by the Roman alphabet for Oromo writing, one would

need to look back and consider that Oromo had never been allowed to

develop or to be written and used for education or official purposes by

governments in Ethiopia prior to 1990’s. Additionally, one would need to

look into the issue of which script to use from the point of view of the Oromo

people, who would be most affected by any decision regarding how Oromo

should be written. There is also the fundamental question of who should have

202
the right to decide how the language should be written. This legitimate

question is expected to be considered by people who are conscious of (or

concerned about) human rights and who believe in a democratic way of life.

Apart from this, it could be argued that Laykun Birhanu’s reference to Oromo

and the other populations in Ethiopia who preferred the Roman alphabet to

the Ge’ez script for writing their languages as enemies was misguided. This is

because the use of one script to write different languages in a country does not

necessarily make the speakers feel as though they belong to a unified country.

In other words, a script cannot be a primary pre-requisite for the unity of a

country. In fact, as seen by the example of Somalia, speaking one language, let

alone using one script, has not guaranteed unity, respect and affection

between its people. It is difficult to understand how people can be called

“enemies” for choosing a different script, which they believe would be more

suitable for them than the one imposed on them by the ruling class.

Qubee supporters contest that the opposition to the use of the Roman alphabet

for writing Oromo is unfounded and was based on an emotional attachment

of some people to the Ge’ez script. They claim that the people who oppose the

newly adapted Oromo writing are those who, deep in their hearts, were

dreaming of continued Amhara and Amharic domination (Cohen, 1998)

through the use of the Ge’ez script and Amharic language. What should have

203
been made clear was the fact that borrowing a script was not unique to Oromo

and, indeed, most of the world’s languages were, and continue to be, written

in scripts that had not been originally designed for them (see Diringer, 1962;

Bender, et al, 1976; Daniels, 1996). The Ge’ez script, which some people,

including Laykun Birhanu (2001), claim to be an indigenous script to Ethiopia,

is yet to be conclusively proved, as some (for example, Diringer, 1947; Mercer,

1920; and Bender 1976) attest to the contrary.

The worries of the opponents of Qubee for Oromo writing also emanated from

the rejection of some nationalities of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and

Peoples Region (SNNPR) of the Ge’ez script in favour of the Roman alphabet

for writing their languages. It is believed that out of a total of twenty-two22

languages taught in schools in Ethiopia in the year 2000, eleven were being

written in the Roman alphabet whilst the rest were in the Ge’ez script. It was

the fact that the other languages have become media of instruction and have

gained recognition to be used in the offices that would seem to worry those

opposed to the use of the Roman alphabet to write Oromo or the other

languages in Ethiopia. The main change, as far as the other languages in

Ethiopia were concerned, was arguably their status of being used for official

22
The number of languages used as a medium of instruction could increase over time.
Currently, the languages in Ethiopia whose writing systems are based on the Roman
alphabet include Oromo, Somali, Hadiyya, Kambata, Gedeo, Sidama, Afar, Walaitta,
Keficho, Dawro and Nuer. Eleven other languages are written in the Ge’ez script.

204
and academic purposes rather than the kind of script in which they were

written. This was in contradiction with the Ethiopian language policies and

practices of the Haile Sellassie and Derg regimes (see Chapter V), which used

the Amharic language as a tool for fostering unity and national identity

among the peoples. But as we have seen in Chapter V, the policies and

practices became a recipe for the demise of both regimes.

For some people in Ethiopia their opposition to Qubee was based on their

querulous concern for educational and economic opportunities for Oromo

children. These people would argue that the Qubee could negatively affect

Oromo children when they are introduced to Amharic which is written in the

Ge’ez script and which is still an important language in the education system,

as well as being widely used for many purposes in Ethiopian society (Cohen,

1998:104). This ‘concern’ continues to occur even after Qubee had been

officially accepted and used as an Oromo writing system for over a decade.

For example, an interviewer for the Walta Information Centre (an Ethiopian

government owned media organization) asked the following question on the

organisation’s website 23 on 10th January 2002:

Question: One area, where there has been a problem in

the past, is in the area of education, where reportedly
non-Oromo inhabitants have had no access to

23
This was posted on [Link]

205
 education in Amharic while many Oromo parents also
are said to have been forced to pursue education in
Oromifa against their desire to learn Amharic. This
denial is usually linked to a denial of better
opportunities in terms of employment and further
education elsewhere in the country, later in life. Has
your state government considered this issue as a
problem and the need for some sort of liberalization?

An Oromo interviewee responded to this question by stating that it was the

Oromo’s birthright to be able to learn and to teach in their language. He went

on to explain that as far as the Amharic speaking people in Oromia were

concerned, they could have their community school and teach their children in

their mother tongue. The interviewee also alluded to the economic issue by

saying that the Oromo people would like not only to learn and write in their

language, but also to work in it too. The interviewee did not comment on the

allegation that Oromo parents force their children against their will to learn in

Oromo.

However, contrary to this, a study by Boothe and Walker (1997:13) has

revealed that people were enthusiastic about being able to learn in their first

language. The study reveals:

Across the board, parent, student, and

teacher attitudes about using the
nationality languages were positive.
Children were excited that for the first time
they could legally use their mother tongue
in schools. Parents were pleased that they
could talk to school officials in the mother

206
 tongue rather than through an interpreter.
Teachers were encouraged by the students’
willingness to engage in class discussions
now that they could express themselves in
the language in which they were most
confident. (Boothe, K and R. Walker,
1997:13)

Mohammed Hassen (1994) asserts that the Ethiopian scholars deliberately

neglected the Oromo issue during the Haile Sellassie and Derg regimes but

have recently begun to concern themselves with the issue of the Oromo script.

Mohammed Hassen is correct in his assertion that the Oromo script was not of

interest to Ethiopian scholars because there is no evidence to show that

Ethiopian scholars and intelligentsia have argued for Oromo to be a written

language, let alone concern themselves with the issue of the choice of script. In

recent times, however, with the adoption of the Roman alphabet for Oromo

writing, a great many non-Oromo Scholars in Ethiopia have started to develop

an interest in discussing the merits and demerits of writing Oromo in a script

other than the Ge’ez.

Teshome Wagaw (1979), who has written extensively on the Ethiopian

education system, in his book Education in Ethiopia, did not seem to have any

interest in the pedagogical issues of teaching school subjects in Amharic to the

Oromo and non-Amharic speaking children without either adequate resources

or methods under the Haile Sellassie or Derg regimes. It was only after Afaan

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Oromo became a written language in Qubee and a medium of instruction in

Oromia that he concerned himself with the ‘harm that may be caused to the

Oromo children’ in the absence of necessary resource to facilitate teaching and

learning. He wrote:

(…) the use of Oromogna language is being

implemented in the schools, courts, and
other institutions. Neither the necessary
teaching skills nor materials have been
developed for this de facto movement, and I
fear that if they insist on implementation
before the necessary foundations are
properly laid down, more harm than good
will ensue, especially for the children and
youth in schools.

Teshome Wagaw did not elaborate how “more harm than good will ensue” if

the Oromo people used their mother tongue in Roman script except by

underlining a warning against the implementation of the use of Oromo in

schools. If the Oromo people did not use their language in schools, and for the

conduct of business, judicial, office, etc. and only out of fear of “more harm”,

they would be left with no option but to use the Amharic language and the

Ge’ez script for all their public communication requirements. Even though

Teshome Wagaw does not spell this out explicitly, his argument is that the

Oromo should learn in Amharic while they wait for materials and trained

teachers to become available to teach them in the Oromo language. What

Teshome Wagaw was clearly not concerned with was the extent to which the

Oromo children and other non-Amharic speakers were provided and

208
supported with the necessary conditions to learn in Amharic. His assertion

echoes an argument put forward by a Soviet Turcologist, Professor Baskakov,

who stated that the “adoption of the Russian script by most of the languages

has not only contributed to their development but has been of notable

assistance to the various nationalities of the Soviet Union in their successful

mastery of the Russian language and in the assimilation of Russian culture”

(Henze, 1977:381).

Others, who do not directly oppose the development of Oromo and Oromo

writing system on pedagogical or economic grounds, claim that the language

should be written in Ge’ez script which, they believe, is more suitable both

phonetically and phonologically to writing it. One such person, Ayele Bekerie

(1997:94-85), argues that

the Oromo language could find a sounder

script in the Ge’ez system, for the system
has already addressed the question of
explosive sounds that are found in most
Ethiopian languages, including Orominya
and Amarinya. The Latin script currently
used among some Oromo circles, in my
opinion, limits or compromises the rich and
varied polyrhythmic sounds of the Oromo
language.

Ayele Bekerie goes much further and suggests a modified version of the Ge’ez

script for Oromo writing (see Table 13). Ayele Bekerie proposes markings that

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could be used to reflect the tonality of the Oromo language but he does not

seem to suggest how gemination and the other Oromo vowels which are not

provided for in the Ge’ez system (Gragg, 1982) would be represented. In

Table 13 it can be observed that there are no fundamental changes or

improvements in Ayele Bekerie’s suggested Ge’ez script for Oromo writing as

compared to the versions used by earlier Oromo writers who had used the

same script. The main noticeable change or difference in Ayele Bekerie’s new

proposition in Table 13 is the ordering of the characters. However, he has not

clarified the logic behind the changes in his ordering of the characters in the

table or in the book.

Ayele Bekerie’s thesis is not different in its underlying intentions from others

(such as Teshome Wagaw (ibid) or Laykun Birhanu (ibid)) who would appear

to detest the use of Roman alphabet for writing Oromo. Their intentions are a

question of power, privilege, prestige, etc., all benefits that can be associated

with using one’s language. These intentions are not dissimilar from the case

of the Cyrillazation of the Soviet minority languages under Stalin. In this

regard Baskakov (quoted in Henze, 1977:377) stated that the Soviet Union

required Turkic languages to change their writing systems from Latin to

Cyrillic. Baskakov goes on to explain the reasons behind this by saying that

the Soviet Union’s explicit intention was to make it easier for the minorities to

learn Russian, and read the original writings of Stalin and Lenin. Henze

210
elaborates that cyrillicization was also intended to make it easier for the non-

Russian languages to assimilate Russian words. Ayele Bekerie’s preference of

the Ge’ez script to be the basis for the Oromo writing system does not seem to

follow from empirical study for it does not compare and contrast the

advantages and suitability or otherwise of using the Ge’ez script, not other

alternative scripts, for Oromo writing. His reason for the preference of the

Ge’ez script for Oromo writing, stated implicitly in his book, emanates from

his belief that the Ge’ez script originated in Ethiopia and, therefore, should be

used for writing any language in the country that needs to be written. It

seems unwise for him to make such a generalized recommendation in his

book without exploring whether or not the Ge’ez script is really the most

suitable script for Oromo or, indeed, for Amharic writing.

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Table 13. Ayele Bekerie’s (1997:96) “Suggested Syllographs for the Oromo
Language”

a u ï é o ä i
ሁ ሂ ሄ ሆ ሀ ህ h
ላ ሉ ሊ ሌ ሎ ለ ል l
ማ ሙ ሚ ሜ ሞ መ ም m
ራ ሩ ሪ ሬ ሮ ረ ር r
ሳ ሱ ሲ ሴ ሶ ሰ ስ s
ሻ ሹ ሺ ሼ ሾ ሸ ሽ sh
ቃ ቁ ቂ ቄ ቆ ቀ ቅ q
ባ ቡ ቢ ቤ ቦ በ ብ b
ቫ ቩ ቪ ቬ ቮ ቨ ቭ v
ታ ቱ ቲ ቴ ቶ ተ ት t
ቻ ቹ ቺ ቼ ቾ ቸ ች ch
ና ኑ ኒ ኔ ኖ ነ ን n
ኛ ኙ ኚ ኜ ኞ ኘ ኝ ny
ኣ ኡ ኢ ኤ ኦ አ እ a
ካ ኩ ኪ ኬ ኮ ከ ክ k
ዋ ዉ ዊ ዌ ዎ ወ ው w
ዛ ዙ ዚ ዜ ዞ ዘ ዝ z
ያ ዩ ዪ ዬ ዮ የ ይ y
ዳ ዱ ዲ ዴ ዶ ደ ድ d
ጃ ጁ ጂ ጄ ጆ ጀ ጅ j
ጋ ጉ ጊ ጌ ጎ ገ ግ g
ጣ ጡ ጢ ጤ ጦ ጠ ጥ x
ጫ ጩ ጪ ጬ ጮ ጨ ጭ c
ዻ ዸ ዺ ዼ ዾ ዸ ዽ ph
ዳ ዱ ዲ ዴ ዶ ደ ድ dh
ፃ ፁ ፂ ፄ ፆ ፀ ፅ ts
ፋ ፉ ፊ ፌ ፎ ፈ ፍ f
ፓ ፑ ፒ ፔ ፖ ፐ ፕ p

Source: Ayele Bekerie,1997:96

Another intellectual, Baye Yimam, (1992), who strongly prefers the Ge’ez as a

script for writing Oromo and other Ethiopian languages, declares that the

Ge’ez script, like the Latin script, cannot always exactly represent a word as

pronounced by the speaker and should therefore be used for Oromo writing.

212
He argues that, in his opinion, it is far more advantageous for Oromos to use

the former (the Ge’ez) rather than the latter script. Baye Yimam devoted an

entire article to responding to a television interview given by Tilahun Gamta

on an Oromo programme aired on the Ethiopian television on 7th November

1991, a few days after the official adoption of the Roman alphabet for Oromo

writing.

Baye Yimam (1992:37).declared that he would anticipate some problems

would result if the Roman alphabet were used for writing Oromo and other

nationality languages in Ethiopia. He went on to elaborate “these problems”,

as follows24:

- Anyone who is trained only in the

Latin script needs to learn how to read in
the Ge’ez script if he/she is to go and work
in the other parts of the country where the
Ge’ez script is used. As a result such a
person needs to become literate twice. In
terms of time and money, this will cause a
tremendous amount of difficulty and
inconvenience.
- Such a measure will also transform the
country from a multi-lingual one to a multi-
script one.
Any communication in correspondence
with the central government will no longer
be carried out in one writing system but,
possibly, in three.

24
My translation from Amharic (Baye Yimam (1992:37).

213
It was evident from Baye Yimam’s arguments that his opinion was based on

the perception that Ethiopia was a country where the people ought to have

only one official language, that being Amharic, and one script, the Ge’ez

script. It would appear he did not take into account the prevailing socio-

linguistic and political realities in the country. Baye Yimam’s analysis implied

that the political, social and economic disparities in the country could be

resolved only if Amharic language and the Ge’ez script were used by all the

citizens of the country, the futile policies of the Haile Sellassie and Derg

regimes. Baye Yimam’s implied assertion that the Oromo were effectively

becoming literate twice and were therefore wasting their time cannot hold

water for the Oromo had to learn the Roman alphabet regardless of whether

or not it was the basis for their writing system.

Baye Yimam asserts with conviction that he could, in the near future, prove

that the Ge’ez script was an indigenous one and that Ethiopians ought to be

proud of it and therefore adopt it for writing. It seems unreasonable to concur

with this proposition for many reasons. Firstly, it is more useful to consider

whether or not a script is suitable and effective for writing a language than

sticking to it only because it is indigenous to the country. Another reason is

that imposing a script on every nationality is tantamount to denying the

people the right to develop their language and culture in a way they choose.

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It is debatable whether Baye Yimam forgot, or rather deliberately omitted to

make clear his stand on the right of the peoples in Ethiopia to make a decision

on matters affecting their lives including the choice and use of a writing

system. No mention was made in his article on whether or not the Oromo

people had a right to make an informed decision with regard to the adoption

of a script for writing their language. Apart from stating that the Ge’ez was a

“home-grown” script, Baye Yimam did not discuss how suitable and effective

the script was for Oromo, or even for Amharic writing. What was also lacking

in the debate was any mention of the extent to which Oromo could benefit

from using their language for education, office, etc. through writing in the

Roman alphabet. It has been cited earlier that the existing literature shows a

dearth in Ethiopian research25 on the issue of people’s rights to use their

mother tongue and the co-relation of this to economic and professional

achievement.

Another Ethiopian academic, Getachew Haile (1996), makes an observation

that contradicts Baye Yimam by asserting that the Ge’ez script is an adoption

of the Sabean script. In fact Getachew Haile and a number of other scholars

25
This subject has, however, been of considerable debate in reference to other
countries. See for example, the UNESCO report (2011). Enhancing Learning of
Children From Diverse Language Backgrounds : Mother Tongue Based On Bilingual
Or Multilingual Education In Early Years.

215
argue that the Ge’ez script is ill-suited for representing Amharic (see Chapter

IV). From Getachew Haile’s claim it can be understood that the Ge’ez script is

not without problems in being used for Amharic writing and by the same

token it can’t be implied that it can be the most suitable script for writing

Oromo, a language which is phonologically, morphologically and

syntactically different from Amharic.

The following assertion by Getachew Haile (1996:574) is interesting:

For example, the system (Ge’ez writing

system) does not distinguish between
(sэbħa) ‘to be fat’ and (sэbbƏħa) ‘to praise’;
both are written ሰባ. To make this
distinction and to determine the presence
or absence of the vowel Ə, we must rely
primarily on oral transmission of the
language(s).

In conclusion it can be highlighted that the choice of script for Oromo writing

has become a matter of concern not only for Oromo but also for many other

peoples in Ethiopia. The reasons proposed for or against the use of Qubee (a

Roman alphabet based Oromo writing system) were predominantly

subjective and emotional rather than scientific. Reasons such as “there are not

suitable recourses” or “learning in Oromo (written in Roman alphabet) will

do more harm than good to Oromo people” are spurious rather than serious

ones because the people who come up with these had not been known to have

concerns for the welfare of Oromo children, for example, by investigating the

216
impact on their academic, social and economic success of being forced to use

Amharic. The claim that the Ge’ez script is an indigenous script that should

be used for writing all Ethiopian languages does not seem to hold water for

the very fact that it is the suitability of a script to writing a language that

matters rather than its origin. Even if we assume the origin of a script matters

in the process of selection, it is yet to be verified that the Ge’ez script really

originated in Ethiopia.

It would appear that the opponents of the new Oromo writing system were

concerned not for the Oromo people but primarily for themselves. According

to Coulmas (2003), this is because a writing system is a weapon which can

liberate individuals - and therefore a society - from oppression by the ruling

section whose language and culture are imposed by force. Coulmas (ibid) also

asserts that a writing system has not only the possibility of unifying its people

and creating national identity it also represents a source of political and

military power, which the opponents do not wish the ruled people to have.

Having a writing system and being able to read and write in one’s own

language may enable people to think more about their rights and challenge

the status quo. It was because of this very fact that, as far back as 1807, the

president of the Royal Society in Britain argued against general literacy which,

he said, would “teach (the poor) to despise their lot in life, instead of making

them good servants in agriculture, and other laborious employment to which

217
their rank in society had destined them.…”. (quoted in Oxenham, 1980:68). He

also went on to argue that “(literacy) would enable them to read seditious

pamphlets, vicious books, and publications against Christianity; it would

render them insolvent” (quoted in Oxenham, 1980:68). In general, by denying

the under privileged the opportunity to become literate (in their language or

any other language) they would continue to remain servants and

disadvantaged throughout their lives. Also it meant that those people who

were privileged by way of being able to read and write were reassured of not

being challenged because people without the skill of reading and writing

would be less likely to do so.

The president of the Royal Society’s assertion (as quoted in Oxenham, 1980) is

extreme and unacceptable in most of societies in the world today. However,

from our discussion above about the arguments of the Qubee and the

Ethiopian language policies, it is evident that the previous governments and

some scholars favoured the imposition of Amharic on everyone in the country.

The imposition of a language or a script on a multilingual and multicultural

society has the effect of giving the ruling elite a political, social, economic and

cultural advantage while at the same time keeping the under privileged

masses illiterate (similar (the president of the Royal Society in Britain’s

assertion, quoted in Oxenham, ibid) or at best semi-literate. Gelb cites

218
examples of situations where books were burnt in an attempt to deny citizens

their own writing system and thereby keeping them illiterate:

We thus understand why Cortez, having

conquered Mexico in 1520, ordered the
burning of all Aztec books which might
remind the native population of their
glorious past; why the Spanish Inquisition
sending the Jews to the Pyre, burned with
them their Talmud; why the modern Nazis,
anxious to destroy ideologies adverse to
their own, burned the books of their
opponents, and why the victorious allies
after the second World War ordered the
destruction of all Nazi tainted literature.
(Gelb, I. J, 1963: 235).

It would appear that the opponents of the Qubee were also concerned with the

‘imaginary’ consequences of the using of different scripts for writing various

languages in the country. This is not surprising because it has not been the

practice to write Ethiopian languages in a script other than Ge’ez and use

them for official purposes until early 1990s. People would think that the use

of different scripts would mean that the country would eventually break up

to form different countries based on languages and scripts. However, as seen

in the example of India where some eleven scripts are used scripts (Das

Gupta, 1969), having different scripts to write languages in a country does not

necessarily lead to secession. Similarly, using one script to write different

languages in a country is not the main reason for keeping that country united,

219
and if this were not the case Eritrea (which uses the Ge’ez script) would not

have seceded from Ethiopia and declared its independence.

However, the oponents of Qubee are right to question whether the Roman

alphabet is the most suitable in representing Oromo sounds and in being the

“perfect” writing system. Indeed, it cannot be claimed that a script fully

represents the sound system of a language and there is no perfect system of

writing. This means that theoretically and practically, the Ge’ez script can be

used for Oromo writing and indeed there are some possible merits which

would support to continued use of the script for Oromo writing. These would

include:

a) Using the Ge'ez script would enable people to have access to the materials

already written in the script. For example, The Oromo translation of The Bible

was first written in the Ge'ez script and there are also many other Oromo

books written in the Geez script.

b) The use of the Ge’ez script for Oromo writing would provide Oromo

people with the opportunity to learn it from early on in schools. This would

be useful especially when people learn Amharic, which is written in the Ge'ez

script and which people are required to learn because of its status of currently

being an official language of the country.

220
c) Lastly, the use of the Ge'ez script to write Oromo and all the other

Ethiopian languages would create a feeling of unified identity among the

people.

Admittedly, it is yet to be proven how effective Qubee can be for Oromo

writing. But regardless of the effectiveness or otherwise of the chosen script it

makes sense to accept and respect the choice of the speakers of the language.

What seems to have been omitted by the opponents of Qubee is the fact that

“writing systems generally grow out of the needs of native speakers, not

foreigners” (Bender, et al., 1976: 125:126). It is only a democratic principle and

legitimate that people who are most affected by any decision have the final

word.

Here, it is not to trivialise “effectiveness” as a criterion (presented by the

opponents of the Qubee) for the selection of a script as a basis for the Qubee

system. Indeed, this has been a fundamental issue for some Oromo writers

(for example, Tutschek, 1945:1; Cerulli, 1922:15) and for the OLF (see Chapter

VIII) who preferred the Latin to the Ge’ez script as a basis for the Oromo

writing system. It was also stated in Chapter III that a good writing system is

one which is essentially phonemic and at least able to include the basic

repertoire of phonemes. It is clear that the Latin alphabet is able to include all

221
the phonemes of Oromo including gemination and vowel length, aspects

which have inadequate provision in the Ge’ez writing system. Qubee’s

effectiveness as an Oromo writing system should also be measured by how

easy it is to learn to write and read in it. This is an area that certainly warrants

further study.

222
Chapter VIII

8. The adoption and development of the qubee alphabet as Oromo

writing system

8.1. What is Qubee?

Qubee as a term referring to an Oromo alphabet has been in use clandestinely

in Oromia and openly in the Diaspora at least since the 1970s. The exact date

and how it was coined, or the identity of the person or persons responsible for

coining the term, however, are not clear since relevant information is not

readily available. Popular Oromo dictionaries such as that of Gragg (1982)

and Tilahun Gamta (1989) define Qubee as ring and not as an alphabet of the

Oromo language. It was a dictionary called Jechoota Afaan Oromoo (1996)

which first entered Qubee as having two meanings of which the second is

stated as the alphabet of Oromo.

While the date and the year of the coinage and the person or group

responsible for coining the term Qubee remain unknown, the author assumes

that the term probably originated from two related Oromo words:

[ k’uba ] (finger) and [ k’abu: ] (to catch). This assumption is based on the

Oromo tradition that literally compares writing with “a foolish person who

never lets go of whatever he has got to grips with”, as writing indeed is often

223
considered verba volant, scripta manant (“the spoken word passes, the written

one remains”). Similarly, the Oromo in general, and the Macha Oromo in

particular, use references26 to [ k’uba ] (finger) when counting numbers or

teaching their offspring about different aspects of day-to-day life.

8.2. The Qubee – historical background

Until 1991, Qubee, a name which has become very popular and controversial

as an Oromo writing system in contemporary Oromia and Ethiopia, was

never previously an issue with politicians or intellectuals or the general

public. Except for a few brief remarks (Cerulli, 1922; Hodson and Walker,

1922; Gragg, 1982; Haile Fida, 1973), there is hardly any evidence to suggest

that the choice of a script had been an issue for Oromo writing in Oromia and

Ethiopia before the 1990s. As discussed in Chapter V, writing in Afaan Oromo

in any script in Ethiopia was prohibited or at least seriously discouraged until

the downfall of the Derg in 1991, and the use or choice of the Roman script for

writing in Afaan Oromo was not a concern for scholars or the public at large.

26
For example, there is a traditional game practised in Macha Oromo (which involves
the term qubee and is used for testing people’s memories). Here, a player is expected
to associate items to numbers starting from one and counting progressively upwards.
So, the game usually begins: “qubeen tokko; lamaan mucha reettii, qubeen tokko;
sadan gemjii abidda, lamaan mucha reettii, qubeen tokko; ….” (qubee is one; a goat
has two teats, qubee is one; there are three fire stones; a goat has two teats; qubee is
one…).

224
In 1973, when the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), an underground Oromo

liberation organisation was formed, it began to raise the rights of the Oromo

people as a political issue and to create an awareness of interests of the people

in the Oromo language in general and the Oromo writing in particular. The

OLF was very clear from the outset of its formation that the Oromo language

had been suppressed and that it was the responsibility of the Oromo people to

develop their language. The OLF stated one of its objectives as, ‘To develop

Oromo language and bring it out of neglect that colonisation has imposed

upon it’ (cited in Bulcha, 1993:15). In doing so, the OLF started using Afaan

Oromo for all its business and embarked on the task of developing a writing

system. It immediately adopted the Roman script and made it mandatory for

its officials, cadres, and fighters to learn and use it in all day-to-day business.

In an interview with the author at his home in London on 19 February, 2005,

Taha Abdi explained that the Front’s decision to choose the Roman script for

Oromo writing was reached after series of consultations with Oromo and

non-Oromo scholars both in Ethiopia and outside Ethiopia, and after due

consideration of its advantages and disadvantages. Taha Abdi informed the

author that a taskforce was established by the OLF with the mandate to gauge

views from various angles and compile a report for the Central Committee of

the Front.

225
Among the people consulted was an Oromo person by the name Sheekh M.

Rashaad Kabir who, according to Taha Abdi, lived in Somalia and wrote in

Afaan Oromo in three different scripts: Arabic, the Shaykh Bakri Sapalo

orthography (as discussed in Chapter IV) and the Roman script. On further

enquiry, the author was able to obtain a copy of a report prepared by Rashaad

Kabir on Oromo writing. After highlighting the need for the Oromo people to

have a writing system, the report provided recommendations to the taskforce

strongly advocating that the Roman alphabet was the most suitable script for

writing in Afaan Oromo because of its practicality.

Taha Abdi claimed that in addition to considering Rashaad Kabir’s report, the

OLF also drew lessons and experiences from other African languages such as

Somali, Hausa and Swahili which had already been written in the Roman

script. He also noted that the taskforce’s decision to adopt the Roman

alphabet was based on its conviction that the script met the purpose of the

language better than the Ge’ez or other scripts in which the language had

been written.

After making its decision, the OLF prepared teaching materials and

pamphlets in the Roman script and distributed them to Oromos in the areas it

controlled and to Oromo refugees who lived in neighbouring countries such

as the Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, and Kenya. The following sections look at

226
how Qubee was officially adopted and how certain systems such

representation of vowel length, geminates and word divisions were managed

and incorporated into the convention of the system.

8.3. The adoption of Qubee

Qubee became the official writing system for the Oromo language in 1991.

Tilahun Gamta (1993), who was at the conference convened to adopt the

Roman Alphabet or suggest an alternative script for Oromo writing system,

said that the speakers of Afaan Oromo met officially for the first time in the

heart of Oromia to discuss and decide the destiny of their language. He stated

that this historic meeting was convened on November 3, 1991 by the OLF, and

comprised of Oromo scholars. As Tilahun Gamta (1993:17) explains,”The

purpose of the meeting was to adopt the Latin script the OLF had been using

or suggest an alternative”. He further notes that after hours of discussions

and deliberations, over 1000 men and women who attended the meeting

unanimously decided for the Latin alphabet to be the script on which Oromo

writing system should be based.

Since then, Qubee became an official Oromo writing system adopted from the

Roman alphabet using the principle of writing through a one-to-one

correspondence between sound segments and graphemes or symbols of the

227
alphabet. Twenty-five letters of the Roman alphabet and the apostrophe mark

(‘) were adopted without making changes to their shapes or sizes (for

example, by way of diacritic marks) to represent Oromo sounds (see Table

14). The letter “v” is the only symbol from the Roman alphabet that is not

used in the Qubee system. Most of the Oromo phonemes, except the ejectives

such as /tS’/, /t’/, and /k’/, have a corresponding symbol in the Roman alphabet

and matching them has not proved to be difficult. However, the matching of

the ejectives, and the representation of other aspects, for example, gemination

and vowel length, have proved to be a challenging task especially in terms of

consistency and simplicity of the writing system. This will be explored below

by examining how gemination and vowel length are represented in the Qubee

system and what possible alternative ways are available in representing

Oromo ejectives, geminates and vowel length.

228
Table 14. The Qubee, Roman characters adopted for Oromo sound
representation

No Phonemes Qubee Examples in Oromo Gloss

1 /a/ A harka hand
2 /b/ B eeboo spear
3 / tS/ Ch achi there
4 /tS’/ C cabbii snow
5 /d/ D dargaggoo youth
6 /d/ Dh dhagaa stone
7 /e/ E ergaa message
8 /f/ F fayyaa health
9 /g/ G guyyaa day
10 /h/ H haaraa new
11 /i/ I Iddoo place
12 /dJ/ J jecca saying
13 /k/ K kennaa gift
14 /l/ L lama two
15 /m/ M mana house
16 /n/ N nama man
17 /ù / Ny nyaata food
18 /o/ O oromoo Oromo
19 /p/ P poolisii police
20 /p’/ P tapha game
21 /k’/ Q marqaa porridge
22 /r/ R raafuu cabbage
23 /s/ S soquu to dig
24 /Ø/ Sh ishee she
25 /t/ T hantuuta mouse
26 /t’/ X fixuu to finish
27 /u/ U urjii star
28 /w/ W waggaa year
29 /j/ Y wayyaa cloth
30 /z/ Z zeeroo zero
31 /¢/ ‘ taa’uu to sit

229
8.4. Represetation of some phonemes

Information about the procedures or criteria used for the selection and

matching of graphemes to represent each of the Oromo phonemes is lacking.

However, Mr Taha Abdi’s interview with the author provided an

understanding of the process used to represent the Oromo phonemes with the

Roman alphabet. In the interview, Mr Taha Abdi said that matching letters or

graphemes to represent the sounds was not I not as difficult as modernising

the vocabulary. He said that the taskforce benefitted from the series of

consultations it had carried out with informed Oromo people and from its

awareness of some already existing Oromo materials written in the Roman

alphabet.

A look at Table 14 shows that the representation of some sounds in the Qubee

version varies from the versions used in Hirmaatadubbii Afaan Oromoo (by

Haile Fida) (Table 11) or one which was proposed by the Cologne Working

Group (Table 12). It appears that in the Qubee version whilst most of the

Oromo consonants are represented by corresponding Roman letters, some

sounds with no equivalent letters have been represented ‘arbitrarily’ and

without consistency through symbols chosen without obvious reasoning. For

example, the reason behind using the digraph “ph” to represent / p’ / is

230
unclear when seen alongside the other ejectives which are represented by a

single symbol rather than a digraph. It would make more economic sense if

the Oromo sound / p’ / was represented by “p” since the plosive bilabial / p /

is a borrowed sound with very limited word entries.

On the other hand, it is unclear why the dento-alveolar ejective / t’/ and the

palatal ejective / tS’/ and the velar ejective / k’/ are assigned the letters “x”, “c”,

and “q” respectively when they could be represented by digraphs such as

“th”, “ch”, and “kh”. From the point of view of simplicity and economy one

would understand the reason for the preference of single symbols to digraphs

wherever possible. However, this preference needs to be balanced against

consistency and logic, which would potentially make the system easier to

learn or use. Among the ejectives written in single symbols, / t’ / is unique in

that the symbol that represents it (“x”) has no apparent or otherwise

relevance to it. One would expect / t’ / to be represented not by “x” but by the

digraph “th”, which is not used in the system, in line with organically similar

consonants such as /p’/ (ph), / d / (dh), /Ø/ (sh), and / ù / (ny). A further

inconsistency is the representation of the plosive / tS / with the digraph “ch”.

Even though the plosive / tS / is articulated in more or less the same way as in

other languages such as English, for example, as in “church”, in Oromo / tS /

is also always realised as a geminate consonant. Moreover, / tS / has an

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ejective (/ tS’ /) counterpart in Oromo and this makes it more challenging as to

which grapheme to choose to represent the consonant.

In this case it would be necessary to consider whether or not it would be

useful to use the digraph ‘ch’ for representing the Oromo plosive geminate

consonant or the corresponding ejective consonant. However, the advantage

of using the digraph “ch” to represent the plosive and geminate Oromo

phoneme (/ tS /) is clear at least for one reason. This is because of the fact that

a similar phoneme (/ tS / as in other languages; for example, in English [tSä: tS]

“church” is represented by the same digraph “ch”. This would mean that

Oromo people who would wish to learn English would not find reading or

writing words containing the phoneme unfamiliar. But care must be taken

here as the digraph “ch” may also represent totally a different phoneme in

other languages, for example, / k /, as in the English word “character”.

Similarly, the phoneme / tS / is not always expected to be represented by the

digraph “ch” in English, a language that Oromo students are most likely to

learn at schools. For example, the phoneme / tS / is sometimes represented by

a trigraph (“tch”) in English, such as in “batch”. Despite these issues of

inconsistency in English spelling, it is still helpful for an Oromo English

learner to transfer their knowledge of representing the Oromo / tS / by “ch”.

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The Cologne Working Group (Chapter VII) had proposed “c” and “ch” to be

used to represent the Oromo / tS / and / tS’/ (plosive and ejective) respectively

(Hein, 1986). Even though the Group did not specify a reason for their

proposal, it may be assumed that they were aiming to be consistent in

assigning the ejectives with a digraph with a symbol (letter) “h” as a second

component. If this proposal had been endorsed by the OLF language

taskforce, we would be writing:

Cologne qubee gloss

/ tS / Acci achi there
/ tS’/ Chabbii cabbii snow

Another peculiar but simple representation of an ejective sound in the Qubee

system is the case of / k’/. Following the above discussions, the expectation

and logic of writing /k’/ would be to use a digraph “kh”. However, the Qubee

system curiously uses “q”, a single letter which, together with “c”, is often

used to represent the sound / k /, as in “queen” in English. The use of “q” to

represent / k’/ in Oromo writing is not surprising because it has also been

utilized to represent an equivalent sound in the Somali system (a system that

was studied by the Oromo writing task force (Taha Aabdi, 19 February 2005,

London)). Haile Fida (1973) also used “q” to write / k’/ while the Cologne

Working Group (See Chapter VII) recommended “kh”. Although the digraph

“kh” appears to be generally logical for representing / k’ /, especially from the

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point of view of keeping consistency with the representation of other

phonetically similar phonemes (example, as in “dh”, “ph”, and “sh”), it seems

rather better to use “q” in this case because, otherwise, the symbol would be

superfluous in Oromo writing system and because it is simpler to use one

letter than a digraph to represent a sound in writing wherever it is possible.

A further irregularity in the Oromo representation of the sounds is the case of

/ ù / (the palatal nasal) which is assigned the digraph “ny”. For consistency

purposes, one would expect this consonant to be represented by “nh”

following the example of the representation of / ʧ-/, / p’/, / ʃ/, and / d/ with a

letter followed by an “h”. The use of “ny” may have been taken from the

traditional transcription in Ethiopia of /ù / as “ny” or “gn” or the

representation of a Somali equivalent sound with / ny /. The same sound is

represented with “ñ” as in mañana (tomorrow) in Spanish and “ nh “ amanhã

(tomorrow) in Portuguese. For Oromo, the Cologne Working Group (Heine,

1988) believe that the use of diacritic marks as in Spanish is probably not

recommendable for a reason of difficulty in writing, or due to the need to

make writing as simple as possible. The Portuguese way of representation of

/ù / with the digraph “nh” seems preferable simply because of the fact that

there are four other sounds (/ ʧ/, / p’/, /ɗ/, and /ʃ/) which are represented by

digraphs whose second component is “h”. The other advantage of

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representing /ù / with “nh” increases consistency in the system as all the

digraphs will have ‘h’ as their second component (“ch”, “ph”, “dh”, and

“sh”), and could also make learning writing easier.

8.5. Representation of gemination, vowel length and assimilation

In Chapter II it was stated that phonemically Oromo has five short and five

long vowels, which can occur word-initially, medially or finally. It was also

proposed that all Oromo consonants except / h / and / ¢ / have geminate

forms. We have seen in Chapter II that gemination in Oromo is not only

common but also has a phonemic value. This means that geminate sounds

need to be distinctively represented in writing so that they are not

misrepresented or confused with their plain counterparts. For example, the

words [samu:] (rot) (samuu) ‘rot’ and [sam:u:] (sammuu) “brain” (in Table 15)

are different because / m / is single in the first and geminate in the second set.

Similarly, each pair of the other words in Table 15 has different meanings

because / d /, / b /, / t / and / d / appear as single in the first column and as

geminate in the second.

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Table 15. Examples of germination and phonemic value

single phoneme vs geminate

[samu:] (samuu) to rot vs [sam:u:] (sammuu) brain

[soda:] (soda) fright vs [sod:a:] (soddaa) in-law

[ro:bi:] (roobii) Wednesday vs [ro:b:i:] (roobbii) skin fungus

[hatu:] (hatuu) to steal vs [hat:u:] (hattuu) thief

[bada:] (badaa) run away vs [bad:a:] (baddaa) Highland

The graphemes or the symbols in the Roman alphabet are doubled to

represent geminate consonants and long vowels in the Oromo writing system

(see Table 16 and 17). While this method is a way of differentiating geminate

sounds from plain consonants, and long vowels from short vowels, it would

appear that such a method would make writing more tedious. Also the use of

the system can be more complex especially when the geminate sound is one

which is represented by a digraph.

Table 16. Examples of the doubling of letters to represent germination

Phoneme Qubee IPA Qubee Gloss

representation
/b/ b [tS’ab:i:] cabbii snow
/d/ d [sod:a] soddaa in-law (brother/sister
/m/ m [dam:a] damma honey
/w/ n [gow:a] gowwaa fool

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Table 17. Examples of the doubling of letters to represent vowel length

Phoneme Qubee IPA Qubee Gloss

representation representation
/a/ a [a:da:] aadaa culture
/e/ e [e:bo:] eeboo spear
/o/ o [oromo:] Oromoo Oromo
/ī / i [ni:ti:] niitii wife
/ū/ u [gu:tu:] guutuu full

The representation of gemination and vowel length by doubling the letters or

symbols of the alphabet is a major undertaking for the Qubee since both

gemination and vowel length are phonemic in the Oromo language. This

feature of representing gemination and long vowels is an important aspect

that differentiates the Qubee from the Ge’ez script. It has been argued by the

proponents of the Qubee (for example, Tilahun Gamta) that the Oromo

phonology cannot be adequately represented by the Ge’ez script, which has

no facility to represent gemination or Oromo long vowels. Indeed, the

absence or lack of provision in the Ge’ez script to represent gemination and

vowel length (in particular, long / e /, / u / and / o /) has been discussed by

many writers including Ullendorff (1960) and Haddis Alamayyahu (1990)

who view it as a major shortcoming of the Ge’ez system in writing Amharic.

These problems have been discussed briefly earlier in sections 5.4.2 and 5.4.5.

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With regard to the representation of assimilation, an important step has

already been taken in that rules have already been set out Griefenow-Mewis

(2001:16). The following are a few of the rules and examples of their

realizations:

IPAtranscriptions
l+n → ll hin galle (hin [hin gal:e ] [hin
gal+ne) gal+ne]
r+n → rr jirra [dJir:a]
l+s → lch galche [galtSe]
g+t → gd dhugdi [dugdi]
b+t → bd dadhabde [dadabde]
q+t → qx dhaqxe [dak’t’e]
dh + t tt sodaatti [soda:t:i]
→
dh + n nn ni taphanna [ni tap’n:a]
→
t+n → nn binne [bin:e]
d+t → dd didde [did:e]
x+t → xx xuuxxe [t’t:t’:e]

Source: IPAtranscriptions added by the author.(Griefenow-Mewis, 2001:16).

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8.6. The digraphs

In the preceding sections was discussed how digraphs have been used to

represent some Oromo phonemes in writing. This section now develops this

by examining the use of digraphs in the Oromo writing system.

There are five phonemes (see Table 17) which are represented by digraphs in

the Qubee system. Three of these phonemes (/ d/, / p’/, and / ù /) have no

equivalent symbols in the Roman alphabet and the remaining two are

affricates (/ tS / (ch) and / S / (sh) as in [ra:cha] raacha (frog) and [bisha:n]

bishaan (water)), which are also represented by digraphs in other languages

such as English.

Table 18. Examples of the use of the digraphs in the representation of some
Oromo segments

Phoneme Qubee IPA Qubee Gloss

representation representation
/ tS / ch [ra:cha:] raachaa frog
/d/ dh [d’ad’a:] dhadhaa butter
/p’/ ph [p’a:p’aÉi:] phaapharii kidney bean
/ù/ ny [ù a:Éa] nyaara eyebrow
/S/ sh [biSa:n] bishaan water

It has been highlighted above that there has been inconsistency in the use of

digraphs in the Oromo writing system. For example, it is not clear why the

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Qubee system did not employ digraphs to represent the ejective sounds such

as / k’/ and / tS’/, which have no equivalent symbols in the Roman alphabet. It

has also been pointed out earlier that for consistency it is logical to expect the

phoneme /ù / to be represented by “nh” rather than “ny”. Having a

consistency in the representation of organically similar phonemes with similar

symbols, for example representing all ejectives with digraphs has an

advantage in making learning reading and writing easier because it is usually

easier to learn things when they are organised and less complex.

However, there are two issues that need to be discussed further in connection

with the use of digraphs in the Qubee system. The first issue is the problem of

using a digraph when a segment occurs in a geminate form, for example, is it

appropriate, efficient or economic to double both of the letters that constitute

the digraph or only one of the letters in the digraph to indicate it is a geminate

segment? Presently, there is a lack of standardisation especially in the use of

digraphs in representing geminate phonemes. Some Oromo writers, for

example Tilahun Gamta (1995), do not make a distinction between single and

geminate consonants when using digraphs. Tilahun Gamta (ibid, pp39-40),

writes buphaa ([bup’:a:]) “egg” and tapha ([tap’a]) “game” without making a

distinction even though / p’/ is geminate and single, respectively, in these

words. Other Oromo writers, for example, Abbiyu Galata (1996) and

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Mangasha Riqituu (1993 ), double the first letter of the components of the

digraph to mark gemination. Thus, the word ([bup’:a:]) “egg” is written by

these writers as bupphaa ([bup’:a:]), doubling only the first component of the

digraph. If the custom of doubling both components of a digraph were to be

accepted as a standard and to be used to represent gemination, the same word

would be written as buphphaa ([bup’:a:]). This would obviously make the

system unnecessarily inefficient and uneconomical from the point of view of

using comparatively more time and space to write the additional letters. Since

the issue of the representation of gemination has been one of the factors for

the decision to adopt the Roman alphabet for Oromo writing system, it is vital

that careful attention is given to it with a view to making it simpler and more

economic to use. The author suggests the following in relation to gemination

and the five digraphs used in the Qubee system:

• “ch” (/ tS / ) Since / tS / is always realised in geminate form (see

Chapter II), there is no need to distinguish the “single” from the

geminate form. Hence, the digraph “ch” represents the phoneme / tS /

regardless of where in the word it occurs or how it is articulated.

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 • For the remaining four phonemes (/d/, / p’ /, / ù /, /S /) that are

represented with a digraph, the author proposes that the first

component is of the digraph is repeated to indicate gemination as

given below:

Phonemes Wrong Recommended

with digraphs

“dh” (/ d /) hadhdhaa haddhaa [ had:a: ] poison

“ph” (/ p’ /) quruphphee quruupphee [ k’urup’e:] antelope

“ny” (/ ù /) funynyoo funnyoo [ fuùo: ], rope

“sh” (/ S** /) ashshamaa asshama [ aSama ] greetings

* / S* / rarely occurs in geminate form. Therefore, using “sh” (without repeating the
first component) is recommended as an exception to the above.

The second issue relating to the use of a digraph is capitalization. A digraph is

a sequence of two symbols representing a phoneme. So, in this case does it

mean that both components need to be capitalized or only one of them, when

a phoneme represented by a digraph occurs at the beginning of a sentence or

at the beginning of a proper noun? This author prefers to capitalize only the

first component of a digraph when capitalization is required such as in the

following examples:

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Dhadhaa nu biti (Buy us butter), and not DHadhaa nu biti

Shaashamanneeni magaala gaarii dha (Shaashamannee is a good town), and

not SHaamanneeni magaalaa garii dha.

8.7. Punctuation marks

The apostrophe mark (‘) in the Qubee is not used as a punctuation mark

denoting possessive, contraction or plural form of a word as it does in

English. It rather represents a glottal stop in the Qubee system as in bu'aa

(“profit”). All the other punctuation marks (including capitalization) are used

in a similar way as they are employed in writing English. The full stop,

exclamation mark and the question marks are used to end sentences or

questions. The coma, semicolon and colon are used between letters, words or

phrases as necessary, exactly in the same way as they are used in English.

Quotation marks are used when reporting what has been said or written by

someone else. Other differentiation devices such as italics, letter spacing and

boldface types are used for the purpose of emphasizing in the same way as

they are used, for example, in written English.

Capitalisation of letters is used to show the start of a sentence and common

names. Names or words which start with a capital letter in English, for

example, “Waaqaa” (God), and “Inni” (He) (when referring to God) are also

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capitalised. The system allows the first component of a digraph to be

capitalised when a word with a digraph occurs at the beginning of a sentence

or when the word refers to common names. For example, in the following

sentence, the first letter of the digraph (sh) is capitalised:

Shaggar bareedaa dha (Shaggar (Finfinneee) or (Addis Ababa) is

beautiful).

8.8. Abbreviations and acronyms

A number of abbreviations and acronyms are currently being used in the

Qubee writing system (see Appendix V). These abbreviations or acronyms are

used arbitrarily, with no defined rules or guidelines as to whether or not (for

example) a dot should be used between the letters or at the end of the

abbreviations.

8.9. Tone and Qubee

The issue of whether or not to identify tone in writing has been a subject of

much debate amongst scholars. For example, Baker, et al, (1982), Koffi (1994)

and Wiesmann (1989) submit that tone should be marked in writing, while

Bird (1998) discusses an experimental work on Dschang [a Bantu language of

Cameroon] which found that marking tone reduced fluency in reading.

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Quoting (Kashoki (1981:169), Bird (ibid) also presents a case against marking

tone in seven officially recognised indiginous languages of Zambia:

Tone, like vowel length, was accepted in all

the seven languages as an important
linguistic marker for signaling differences
in meaning between two otherwise
identical words. However, despite its
functional importance, all the seven
committees decided not to symbolize tone
in the autography. The basic argument
advanced against symbolisation was that
experience had shown that the diacritic
marks, where employed, generally
hindered rather than facilitated fluent
reading. It was further argued that
ordinarily, even without visual
representation, tone would be adequately
signaled by context.

Despite its phonemic significance (Chapter II), tone in Oromo has not been

analysed by scholars in detail. The author has not found information from

Taha Abdii (interview, 19 February, 2005, London) or from literature on

Oromo writing to suggest that tone has been considered in the adoption of

the Qubee. Hence, the words such as “gogaa” and “maqaa” (which have two

meanings each depending on the position of tone) are written without

differentiation as follows:

gógáa (dry) g ògáa (skin)

mák’áa (name) màk’áa (change route)

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While marking tone has an obvious advantage of reducing ambiguity in

reading, not representing it also has not been problematic in the Qubee. In

fact, the author purports that adding tonal representation would significantly

impede the fluency of reading and, therefore, should not be marked. Just like

stress in English, the reader can rely on the text to arrive at the correct tone in

Oromo.

8.10. Word division

It is often difficult in writing any language to decide whether some words and

sentences should be written connected or separated. Historically, according to

Gaur, “The majority of ancient scripts – Egyptian, the cuneiform script of

Mesopotamia, the syllabic script of the Aegean, at times also some Indian

scripts (especially the two classical of the sub-continent, Sanskrit and Tamil) –

did not divide words and/or sentences” (Gaur,1987:56). Accordingly, care

must be taken when a decision is being made as to how to divide words so

that they do not become confusingly long or they are not unnecessarily

broken up and become tedious for reading and writing. There is no easy rule

that can be employed to aid this concept; however, it makes sense to follow

the basic guideline that words which organically belong together are not

separated and those which are organically different are not joined when

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writing. It is a question of deciding which words should stand by themselves,

or should be pre- or suffixed, or hyphenated with others.

In the absence of formal and authoritative organizations or projects to provide

guidance in respect of division of words in writing, and in a situation where

most writers have been self taught, it is almost inevitable to have

inconsistencies in the way certain words in the Qubee are written. For example,

conjunctions such as ”fi” (and) and pronouns “ko” or “to” (my) are often

written independently, hyphenated or connected to other words. Conjunctions

such as "fi”(and), and pronouns such as “ko” or “to” (my), and affirmative or

negative markers such as “ni” and “hin” (as in “ni demna” and “hin demnu” (we

will go, and we won’t go)) have no meaning if they come on their own in the

Oromo language. Hence, it is appropriate to question if these and similar

morphemes should be written attached as a prefix or suffix or separated from

the base forms.

Another example of uncertainty concerning word division is how to write in

words (not in figures) cardinal numerals which represent two or more digits

such as eleven, twelve, and so on. For example, should the Oromo words

representing the numbers eleven and twelve, respectively, be written joined

“kudhatokko” (eleven), “kudhalama” (twelve), hyphenated (kudha-tokko ,

kudha-lama ), or should they be written separated (kudha tokko, and kudha

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lama)? Even though the prefix (kudha) is not a meaningful word by itself, it is

proposed here that (as a matter of consistency) it is always written

independently (kudha tokko) without being hyphenated or attached to the

second part of the numeral. This is also recommended because etymologically

the morpheme “kudha” ([kuda] or “kudhan” [kudan] means “ten” (10) and

kudha tokko, kudha lama, etc. refers to “ten plus one” (eleven), “ten plus

two” (twelve), etc.

How to write the present tense form of the verb to be ‘dha’ (am, is or are) is

another problem in the Qubee system. Should it be written connected to or

separated from a preceding word as in Ani fayyaadha or Ani fayyaa dha (I am

well)? For practicality, I propose that ‘dha’ is written separated from the main

verb or the subject:

Ani fayyaa dha (I am well).

Iddoon suni Haroojii dha (That place is Haroojii).

Similarly, I propose as a matter of consistency that the affirmative and negative

markers, and conjunctions such as “fi” (and) are written independently,

separated from the verb they modify. Thus, they can be written as:

‘Ni demna’ (We will go) and not Nidemna

‘Hin demnu’ (We won’t go), and not Hindemnu

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‘Tolaa fi Gammaddaa’ (Tolaa and Gammadda) and not Tolaafi Gammaddaa

Word division is an important aspect of writing, and it continues to be a

challenge to Oromo writers using the Roman script or the Qubee system.

Cerulli’s statement quoted in Chapter III above is a good example of

recognizing and attempting to deal with word division as a challenge from the

early days of writing Oromo. The statement reads: “Háarkā * bba tokkótti

ibíddā qabú * nsodātánu [harka abba tok:ot:i ibida k’abu: insoda:tanu]”

(One does not get frightened to touch a fire as long as it is with someone else’s

hand” my translation). Here Cerulli used the macron ( * ) to join words, which

could be written separated as ‘Harka abbaa tokkotti….’

This example from Cerulli’s is important because it deals with the issue of

graphic representation of two consecutive vowels, that is, a word final and

word initial vowel. Since some sounds may be assimilated and consequently

may not be pronounced in speech due to their phonetic environment, it is

appropriate to write some words separately even if they are not a true

representation of their actual pronunciation. However, it remains the case that

the quality of Oromo vowels at word final position (short, medium and long)

needs to be further investigated in order to help us develop a good

understanding of their effect on pronunciation and writing.

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In summary, there are many branches of these linguistic considerations (such

as bound morphemes, conjunctions, pronouns, vowel quality and tone) that

are crucial for the usage and implementation of word division in writing and

justify further detailed study.

8.11. The present state of the Qubee and the Oromo language

Within a relatively short period of time, the Qubee and the Oromo language

have undergone an unprecedented transformation. The Oromo language is

now taught as an examinable subject in schools and employed as a medium of

instruction in both primary and junior secondary schools in Oromia. It is also

offered at Addis Ababa (Finfinnee) University and at some other universities

in Ethiopia as a Minor and Major subject of study at both undergraduate and

postgraduate level.

Moreover, Oromo is an official language in Oromia and the Oromo people

take pride in being able to utilize it in the conduct of their business and

professional activities as well as in their personal lives. In the streets of Addis

Ababa (Finfinnee) it has become common to hear Oromo people speaking

their language without any fear or shame. This was not the case for many

“educated” (those who attended formal education) or “non-educated” people

250
who did not attend formal education) Oromos during the Haile Sellassie and

the Derg regimes. As discussed earlier (Chapter V), speaking in Oromo, let

alone writing in it, in public during the Haile Sellassie and Derg regimes was

often a source of embarrassment and a cause of being labeled as a narrow

nationalist.

The physical presence and reality of the Qubee has also recently become more

apparent as road markings, billboard advertisements, names of hotels and

offices and menus in restaurants in Oromia are now being written in the

Qubee. Oromo language is also broadcast on television from Adaama, a city

situated about 100 kilometres south of Addis Ababa (Finfinnee). This is in

addition to the already existing daily radio programmes transmitted from

Finfinnee and Harar cities.

The number and variety of books published in Oromo using the Qubee in the

last two decades are estimated to be greater than those published during the

preceding century. Besides school textbooks, a number of grammar books,

dictionaries, novels, short stories, poetry and plays have been written in

Oromo during the last decades. A popular play, Dukkanaan Duuba, written

and directed in Oromo by Dhaabaa Woyyessaa in the early 1990’s was a good

example for the development of Oromo as a literary language. Gaaddisaa

Birru's novel, Kuusaa Gaddoo, is another example of an Oromo novel written in

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Qubee in early 1990's. All these literary works indicate how Oromo language

has flourished within a short time of the adaptation of the Qubee. Popular pre-

existing Oromo newspapers such as Urjii and Bariisa changed the script they

used from the Ge’ez to the Qubee. Monthly magazines such as Madda

Walaabuu, Odaa, and Urjii all started writing in Qubee in the early 1990’s and

stayed in circulation almost until the end of the last decade. Except for Bariisa,

a government sponsored newspaper, all the other Oromo newspapers and

magazines are currently out of circulation with the journalists being either

imprisoned or forced to emigrate to foreign countries. This was usually based

on the accusations by the Ethiopian government that the contents of these

papers were “incompatible” with the prevailing political climate and

priorities of the country. However, the Urjii newspaper has recently re-

commenced its publication in Canada and is available to readers all over the

world by subscription.

Some groups in the United States (with access to modern information

technology) have also developed an Oromo Software that is compatible with a

Personal Computer (PC) as well as with Macintosh Word versions. This effort

has had a tremendous potential in the development and standardisation of

the Qubee. It is obvious from observations and personal correspondence with

a number of fellow Oromos in the Diaspora that the Oromo Software is

effectively and beneficially used. A range of Oromo websites have also

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mushroomed over the past few years and these have provided greater

opportunities for Oromo people to speak, read and write in their language.

No doubt, similar sorts of endeavours are likely to occur as more use is made

of information technology (IT) to play a significant role in the development of

the Oromo language and the Qubee.

With the status of Oromo as an official language in the Oromo region, Oromo

music has also started to flourish. Before the early 1990’s Oromo culture and

music were banned and it was rare to find cassettes of Oromo music within

Ethiopia. The situation is currently very different and now a variety of Oromo

music is available in audio or video formats through various media including

the internet. Many Oromo youngsters and artists have presented songs

dealing with a wide variety of themes such as tradition, patriotism, social life,

culture, religion, love, and politics. Cassettes, compact disks (CD’s) and

digital versatile discs (DVD’s) of Oromo music are available in abundance for

sale in Ethiopia and also widely distributed among the Oromo Diaspora. In

recent times, shops and bars owned, not exclusively but mostly, by the Oromo

people in Ethiopia have begun to play Oromo music without fear of political

retribution. The use in public of the Oromo language is now a symbol of

Oromo identity and pride rather than a source of shame and sign of illiteracy.

As was observed by Lemma Arity (see McNab, 1989), it was different prior to

the 1990’s. Well-known Oromo musicians such as Ali Birra, Zerihun Wadajo,

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and many other popular artists have even composed poems and songs

praising the Oromo language and the Qubee.

To summarize, Qubee has become a name universally recognised in Ethiopia

as the Oromo writing system based on the Roman alphabet. This chapter has

pointed out that the OLF has played a significant role in developing and

promoting Qubee as an officially recognized system for Oromo writing in

Ethiopia. It has been discussed that there are some inconsistencies in the

representation of some phonemes and the use of digraphs. But despite this,

Qubee has still been incorporated extensively in contemporary everyday life

and has become the accepted standard writing system.

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Chapter IX

9. Qubee and the modernisation of Oromo vocabulary

The change in the status of Oromo from oral to written language brought

with it a new challenge: the need to modernise the vocabulary. It is generally

the case that the vocabulary used in writing is more formal and differs from

the form used for oral and informal communication as the former is

consciously selected to convey the idea in well constructed sentences. Also the

elevation from its status from oral to written language meant that Oromo

would be used more extensively and formally for business, education,

judiciary, politics, technology, etc, tasks which came with new concepts that

required new Oromo terminology. Language being dynamic, the expansion of

words (which is usually necessitated by the need to represent new ideas,

concepts or innovations) is a common phenomenon in all languages at all

times regardless of their status of being written or unwritten. In most cases,

this happens through language contact and borrowing, and indeed most

languages have borrowed their words from others. English, for example, one

of the world’s major languages, has borrowed a substantial number of its

words from other languages. It can also be claimed that it would be difficult –

if not impossible - to find a “pure” language with no borrowed vocabulary in

it. As long as there is a contact between societies, it is inevitable that words

255
will be borrowed. It is paradoxical to assert this because vocabulary is the

main phenomenon which differentiates one language from the other, and it is

yet vocabulary that draws languages together.

It is when a language is written and used for different functions such as office

work and education that we often find a dramatic and deliberate vocabulary

expansion. Caney (1984) discusses five methods through which vocabulary

expansion can be attained. These methods, which appear to be self-

explanatory, are listed as follows (Caney, 1984):

1. Semantic shift

2. Borrowing

3. Derivation

4. Compounding

5. Phrase grouping

Caney believes that methods 1, 3, 4, and 5 are the most important in deliberate

vocabulary expansion, as they involve internal enrichment of the language

through native invention and adaptation. Method 2 is thought to be relatively

the least important and is usually looked upon as a last resort. The use of

loanwords, however, is inevitable (for example, in science and technology)

where concepts may be difficult to translate adequately or find an alternative

256
term in the target language. For example, “komputara” (computer) has been

borrowed from the English and is now part of the Oromo vocabulary.

In addition to borrowing, methods 1, 3, and 4 have been commonly used in

the Oromo vocabulary expansion. The word “jaalle” (friend, lover), which

means “comrade”, is an example of a semantic shift. An example of

derivation is “yaadanno” (remembrance), which is formed by adding the

suffix “-anno” to the stem “yaad-“ (think). Similarly, the words “mana”

(house) and “seeraa” (law) are compounded to form “mana seeraa” (court).

The growth in vocabulary of the Oromo language (as mentioned above) is

evident from books, day-to-day conversations and the media. The Oromo

Diaspora would most certainly be puzzled by the amount of new Oromo

words and phrases if returning to Oromia after a long period of absence. It

was mentioned earlier in Chapter II that the word entries in Oromo

dictionaries for some loan segments such as / p / and / z / have expanded over

time. Indeed, the expansion of the vocabulary of Oromo since the adoption of

the Qubee in the early 1990’s is staggering. In their conversations as well as in

their writings, the people have become more conscious of their actions to use

(as far as possible) only Oromo words without “mixing” them with foreign

words. This is presumably not because of unwillingness or resistance to

borrowing but only a demonstration that Oromo can be used for all

257
communication purposes in its own right. However, from personal

experience, using the Oromo language without “mixing” it with English or

Amharic has not been possible for many Oromo people in the Diaspora and

from the urban areas in Oromia. This is because these groups of people have

not had the opportunity to learn their language in schools or to use it in

conducting of their business. Having stated this, it is not a major problem to

interchangeably use words from other languages as this does not

substantially dilute the meaning and hinder communication.

A written document that describes the strategies used or, indeed, if there has

ever been a conscious strategy designed to aid the expansion of the Oromo

vocabulary to meet the new demands necessitated by its new status as a

written and official language in Oromia, is not available. Taha Abdi, however,

shared with the author his knowledge and experience with regard to the

process of the expansion of the Oromo vocabulary and the development of

the language. He stated that the process of modernization of Oromo

vocabulary had started well before the Qubee was officially adopted as a

writing system in 1991. He explained the process used by the OLF to

modernize the Oromo vocabulary as follows:

We had to argue for hours, days and nights

among ourselves (OLF members and
cadres) to find and use new words for
concepts needed in the structures we were

258
 formulating. We were determined to be
creative and use the limited resources at
our disposal since one of our objectives was
to develop our language (Interview, 19
February, 2005, London).

He recalled how he and his friends were in a hot deliberation when searching

to find an equivalent Oromo word for the word “editor”. He said that Oromo

did not have a concept for “editor” as it is conventionally used in countries

where there is a system and culture of writing. He said he and his friends

discussed the job of an editor, as a starting point, and then one person among

them came up with “gulaala” (sieve) as an appropriate and equivalent word

for “editor” since the Oromo concept of sieving is to sort out the weeds from

the seeds and since the job of an editor is to review ideas. Hence, he said, the

word “gulaala” or (sieve) was taken as the Oromo word for “editor”. This is

an example of semantic shift, where a word (“gulaala”) is assigned a new

meaning (“editor”).

Despite a lack of a written evidence of the strategies adopted or a lack of a

study which would provide details of the basic methods employed for Oromo

vocabulary expansion, it may generally be asserted that the Oromo people

have become “experts” in giving new meanings to old words. By way of

semantic shift (as in the above example), by borrowing (see Figure 43), by

making compound words and in grouping phrases together (see Figure 44) to

259
give them new meanings, Oromo vocabulary has expanded exponentially.

Grienefenow-Mews’ (1994: 237-248) article, “The Rise of New Terms in

Oromo: Means and Problems”, is a useful contribution that indentifies three

main means of word formation in Oromo used in the creation of new

terminology. In her article, Grienefenow-Mews observes a problem that can

occur in word formation in Oromo because of the diversity of the means of

word formation and the use of different terms in different dialects. She rightly

suggests the need for standardisation in this area.

Here it is worth noting how the presence of dialects in Afaan Oromo, which is

often wrongly taken as a negative aspect or a hindrance to communication

(see Chapter II), has helped the expansion of the vocabulary. Dialects or the

use of different accents and different words in a language can often be

positive attributes even though they may also pose communication (verbal or

written) difficulties between people. In the modernization of the vocabulary

of Oromo language, the availability in some dialects of some words, phrases

or concepts, which are not used in the other Oromo dialects, have been

beneficial as they have been used constructively to modernise or expand the

vocabulary of the language. An example here is the word “ciree”27 [tS’ire: ]

27
In an interview with the author in London on 19 February, 2005, Mr Taha Abdi
stated that “ciree” ([tS’ire: ]) was coined by one of his comrades in 1980’[Link] represent
“breakfast” He said “ciree” (cutting or breaking) was basically a loose translation

260
(breakfast) which has only been part of the eastern Oromo dialect but has

recently become part of the vocabulary of afaan Oromo throughout Oromia.

On his first visit in ten years to Oromia, in 1995, the author was surprised to

read the name “Mana Ciree” which literally means “house breakfast” or

“breakfast house” in front of some coffee shops in western Oromia. The word

“ciree” had never been part of the vocabulary of western Oromia and was

only introduced after 1991.

The degree and speed of the expansion of the Oromo vocabulary is expected

to continue unabated due to its status as an official language and a medium of

instruction in schools, teacher training institutes and universities. Moreover,

albeit some current restrictions, outlets such as the radios, television

programmes, courts, music and religion, all of which are expected to use

Oromo in the Oromia region, will continue to play a great role in the

expansion and modernization of the Oromo vocabulary. This is in addition to

natural factors such as the introduction of new technologies or occurrence of

new concepts as a result of innovations or needs that drive the expansion of a

vocabulary. Figures 43, 44 and 45 provide examples of new Oromo words,

which have been introduced to the language or which have acquired new

meanings as a result of the modernization of the vocabulary.

from breakfast. “ciree” had been widely used in eastern Oromia before the adoption of
the Qubee in 1991.

261
Figure 43 New (Borrowed) Oromo words

Oromo English
baabura train, rail
biiroo office, bureau
doktoora doctor
draamaa drama
hakiima physician
ispoortii sport
kolleejii college
kompuutarii computer
ripoorterii reporter
sharafuu To change (money)
iskoolaarshiippii scholarship
telefoona telephone
traakterii tractor
warshaa factory

Figure 44 New (Compound) words

Oromo English
abbaa seeraa judge
abbaa barcumaa chairman
angafoota oduu news headlines
baabuura lafaa railway
bu’aa calla net profit
caal-baasii auction
daandii dhugaa right way
damee basaasaa espionage branch
dirree lolaa war zone, fighting field
dura-taa’aa chairman or president
fedhii ilma namaa human need
kana malees in addition to this
kubbaa miillaa football
kubbaa saaphanaa volleyball
kutaa tokko first class (one section or part
one)
lammeentaa tokko one-half
mana maree assembly hall

262
Almost all of the newly borrowed words from languages such as English and

Italian seem to have been subjected to Oromo phonological and

morphological patterns. For example, in Figures 45 and 46, the newly

borrowed words end in vowel sounds rather than in consonants as in their

original language.

Figure 45 New words borrowed from the English language

Oromo English
baankii bank
kolleejii college
taaypistii typist
kompuutarii Computer
repoorterii Reporter
iskoolaarshiippii Scholarship
telefoona Telephone

Where the newly borrowed words already end in a vowel in their original

language, a phonological adjustment is made to the final vowel by making it

longer in the Oromo (Figure 46):

Figure 46 Examples of phonological adjustment

Oromo Amharic/Italian Gloss

shittoo shitto (Amharic) perfume
kitfoo kitfo (Amharic) minced meat
caammaa Chamma (Amharic) shoe
gaazexaa Gazzetta (Italian) newspaper
kaabboo capo (Italian) foreman
makiinaa macchina (Italian) car, machine

263
While some urban Oromo people or those who have been through schools

under the Haile Sellasie or Derg regimes struggle to use Oromo without

“mixing” with words from other languages, there seems to be a tendency

amongst the educated Oromo people to resist borrowing words from other

languages despite the fact that the borrowed words are often subjected to the

phonological and morphological patterns of the language. For example, the

words caammaa (shoe) and makiinaa (car), borrowed from Amharic and

Italian respectively, are also formally and popularly known as kophee and

konkolaataa. Even though the borrowed words, caammaa and makiinaa,

have been known and used to represent the respective objects, the educated

Oromo people seem to prefer to use the relatively new Oromo words; that is

konkolaataa and kophee, in this case. Other similar examples, which have

“old version” of words, include telefoona (telephone) which is also

represented by bilbila; and rophlaana (airplane), represented by xiyyaara.

And there are many other similar words where newly borrowed foreign

words are used along with internally “invented” words. A possible reason

that may be given here is that those people who resist the use of borrowed

words equate “pure” language with emancipation from the linguistic

suppression that existed in Ethiopia under the Haile Sellassie and Derg

regimes, and it is for ideology or prestige reasons that people would like

reject existing foreign words and coin new terms for concepts and objects. As

264
the experience from English, a well developed language, would suggest, there

is no harm in borrowing words from other languages. It remains to be seen

whether this will be the case for Oromo.

In conclusion, with the adoption and development of the new Oromo writing

system, and with the use of the language for official, academic, religious,

business, etc. purposes, the Oromo vocabulary has seen an unprecedented

expansion over the past few years especially in relation to new scientific

terminology. This has already begun to significantly impact the structure of

the language and the ways in which terminology is incorporated in everyday

language and societal infrastructures.

265
Chapter X

10. Conclusion

The issue of the Oromo writing system has recently seen two major

qualitative developments: firstly, the issue of whether or not it should be

written or used for official purposes (such as education, commerce, etc.) has

given way to a debate about the choice of script; and secondly, a new

challenge, which relates to standardisation, has emerged. The question

relating to the choice of script for writing Oromo, and a resistance to the new

writing system based on the Roman alphabet by a sector of the Ethiopian

population, is not a new phenomenon. This has also been observed elsewhere

(for example, in Turkey and Somalia) where the Roman script was resisted

(albeit unsuccessfully) due to religious objections by sections of the

populations in their respective countries. What has been new in the case of

Oromo, has been that the new script has been opposed exclusively by certain

sectors of non-Oromo speakers based on arguments either that the Roman

Alphabet was a “foreign” script or that its adoption would lead Oromia to

secede from Ethiopia.

This thesis has argued that the Roman Alphabet is the best option for Oromo

writing even though it is not a perfect one. It is the best option to date because

it is relatively easy to adapt for representing the phonological aspects of

266
Oromo. It is also a script used for writing more languages than the Ge’ez

script, and this can have potential advantages for the Oromo learners who

wish to learn those languages. Although the Ge’ez script can also be used for

Oromo writing, notwithstanding its acknowledged limitations in Amharic

writing, it would not be appropriate to adopt it fully on the proposition that,

unlike the Roman Alphabet, it is an indigenous script which would not lead

Oromia to secede from Ethiopia. The author has argued that the reasons

presented by the opponents of the Roman Alphabet for Oromo writing were

not convincing, as for Oromo both the Ge’ez syllabary and the Roman

Alphabet are foreign and indeed there has not been conclusive evidence

(contrary to certain scholars’ claim in Ethiopia) to confirm that the Ge’ez

script is indigenous to the country. Secondly, the notion that the use of the

Roman Alphabet for writing Oromo in Ethiopia, where the Ge’ez script is

used to write other languages, could lead to the secession of Oromia is

baseless as the experiences of India and China (where more than one script is

used to write languages) demonstrate that this has not resulted in a national

breakup (Das Gupta, 1969). Similarly, as the example of Eritrea (which

seceded from Ethiopia, despite using the Ge’ez script), clearly shows using

one script is not a main requirement for people to live together in a country.

The author has argued that the choice of a script for Oromo writing should be

made by the speakers of the language, i.e. by those most likely to be more

affected by its usage. It cannot be denied that the promotion of Afaan Oromo

267
from a vernacular to an official language in Oromia, and the adoption of the

Roman Alphabet for its writing system, have implications for the economic,

political and social aspects of Ethiopia, and it is recommended these should

be a subject of future study.

While the Roman Alphabet is the preferred script for Oromo writing, there

still remain formidable challenges to be faced in making it a viable system.

One of these challenges is the issue of the standardization of the language.

A standardisation of the Oromo language is needed for political as much as

for linguistic reasons. A standardised Oromo that incorporates all the dialects

can help build the people’s feelings of national integrity and unity. It can also

help effective communication and provide equal opportunities in economic,

social and cultural development. Writing can be effective as a communication

tool only if there is a standard form with which people are familiar. If

individuals “spell” words following their own pronunciations, it would be

impossible to achieve an effective communication in writing because

languages that do not have a standardised spelling can: (a) be difficult to read

(in reading we learn to recognise words rather than sounds, which is why

learning to read the IPA, for example, is very slow); and (b) it would not be

taken seriously. However, the process of achieving standardization in the case

of Oromo may be both complex and challenging, and would therefore,

268
require much further study. The present writer proposes that the following

points would need to be considered in the process:

• The approach should be an inclusive one. As no Oromo variety

can be shown to be more prestigious than any other, it is recommended that

the standardized form includes all Afaan Oromo varieties. An obvious

advantage of this is that no Oromo group would feel particularly alienated or

discriminated against through the standardization of the language.

• There should be an establishment of an Oromo Language

Academy that would have a mandate to review and give directives regarding

the standard writing system. The membership of this group would need to

include linguists, anthropologists, politicians, lawyers and other Oromo

scholars with an adequate knowledge of the dialects of Oromo. A familiarity

with the experiences of the Accademia della Crusca of 1582, Italy (which

became the model for Cardinal Richelieu’s Académie française of 1635 in

France (Haugen, 1966)), and a knowledge of the Inter-Territorial (Kiswahili)

Language Committee of East Africa (. Mhina, George A (1976)), could be

useful.

• There should be the development of information technology to

produce both software and hardware incorporating the phonetics, phonology,

269
morphology and syntax of the language. An organisation with a mandate to

coordinate and develop information technology systems would need to be

established to work in close conjunction with the Oromo Language Academy.

• The Oromo Diaspora played a pivotal role in the development

of Oromo in the 70s and 80s. While it is believed that they can continue to

play a great role in the development of the Oromo language and its writing

system, a niche needs to be found in order for them to make a positive

contribution. The demography of the Oromo Diaspora has greatly changed in

the last two decades, in terms of the countries they live in, their numbers, and

their social and academic backgrounds. Today, there are very many Oromos

living in different parts of the world, including the USA, Australia, UK,

Norway, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, Italy, Holland, Yemen, Saudi Arabia,

Kenya, South Africa, etc. The Oromo Diaspora come from all parts of Oromia

and therefore may speak different Oromo dialects. Moreover, the Diaspora

are likely to be affected in terms of pronunciation, by the language of their

host countries. It is imperative, therefore, that a system is put in place with a

view to the Diaspora having access to and being able to use the standard form

of Oromo being developed in Oromia. In addition, the Oromo Diaspora

should have a wide opportunity to play a significant role in the development

and standardisation of the Oromo writing system. The Oromo Diaspora are

arguably the most educated of the Oromo people as well as being more

270
affluent financially than their peers at home. They are thus better able to make

a tangible contribution towards the development of their language. They

could do this through any of the following avenues:

• by actively using the language amongst themselves in their

communications both in writing and orally;

• by translating major world books written in various languages into

Oromo;

• by writing new books in Oromo;

• by raising funds for building public libraries and buying books.

Finally, the Ethiopian government needs to revise the country’s linguistic

policy. Being a multilingual and multicultural country engulfed for decades

by conflicts underpinned by linguistic and culture issues, Ethiopia cannot

afford not to review its language policy, which allows Amharic the sole

official federal language. This would require a political decision by the federal

government and further research by academicians in the relevant fields. The

present writer favours models based on those employed by certain

multilingual European countries such as Malta, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland,

Belarus and Luxembourg, where two languages are used as official languages

or others such as Switzerland, Belgium and Bosnia–Herzegovina, where,

through the principle of linguistic territoriality, several languages enjoy an

271
official status in their territorial regions. In adopting the first model, Afaan

Oromo could be used as an official language in the Oromia region and, along

with Amharic, at a federal level. The second model would be that other major

languages could also enjoy official status in their respective regions. The

political, economic, social and cultural implications of such language policies

have not fallen within the scope of this study but would be an interesting and

pertinent area for future study.

272
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Kingdom.
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282
Appendices

I. Map of Oromia

Source: Gadaa Melbaa (1988). Oromia: an Introduction.

[Link] Accessed 10/7/14

283
II. Ethiopia – regional states

Source: Embassy of The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, London,

United Kingdom,
[Link]
Accessed 7/6/2015

284
III. Map of Africa

Source: [Link]
Accessed 18/05/2015

285
IV. Laryngography of Oromo single and geminate /d/

Laryngography of Oromo single /d/ ‘d’ or ’dh’ as in [ kad a: ] produced by the

researcher at SOAS phonetics laboratory.

286
Laryngography of Oromo geminate /d/ ‘d’ or ’dh’ as in [ kad:a: ] produced by
the researcher at SOAS phonetics laboratory.

287
V. Examples of common Oromo abbreviations and acronyms.

Abbreviation/Acronym Oromo word(s) Gloss

A.B.O. Adda Bilisummaa Oromo Liberation Front
Oromoo
A.L.A. Akka Lakkofsa European calendar
Awurophaa (Gregorian calendar)
A.L.I. (also ALH) Akka Lakkofsa Itophiya Ethiopian calendar
(Habashaa)
ABO Adda Billisumma Oromo Liberation Front
Oromoo
Dh.K.B. Dhaloota Kirstoos A.D. (anno Domini; in
Booda the year of our Lord).
Dh.K.D. Dhaloota Kirstoos Dura B.C.
Dr. Doktora Doctor
FK. fakeenyaafi For example
Kkf Kan kana fakkaatu This and the like [and so
on]
[Link]. Lakkoofsa bilbilaa Telephone number
WB Waaree booda After noon (pm)
WD Waaree dura Morning (am)

288