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Siltʼe (ስልጥኘ [siltʼiɲɲə] or የስልጤ አፍ [jəsiltʼe af]) is an Ethiopian Semitic language spoken in central Ethiopia. A member of the Afroasiatic family, its speakers are the Siltʼe, who mainly inhabit the Siltʼe Zone in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region. Speakers of the Wolane dialect mainly inhabit the Kokir Gedebano district of Gurage Zone, as well as the neighbouring Seden Sodo district of the Oromia Region. Some have also settled in urban areas in other parts of the country, especially Addis Ababa.

Siltʼe
ስልጥኘ
Native toSouthern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region, Ethiopia
EthnicitySilt’e
Native speakers
940,000 Siltʼe proper (2007 census)[1]
125,000 speakers of Wolane dialect
Language family
Afro-Asiatic
  • Semitic
    • West Semitic
      • South Semitic
        • Ethiopic
          • South Ethiopic
            • Transversal South Ethiopic
              • Harari – East Gurage
                • East Gurage
                  • Siltʼe
Language codes
ISO 639-3Either:
stv – Siltʼe
wle – Wolane
Glottologsilt1239
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Speakers and dialects


Dialects of the Siltʼe language include: Azernet-Berbere, Silti, Wuriro, Ulbareg and Wolane. There are about 940,000 native Siltʼe speakers (2007 census); 125,000 speakers of Wolane.


Phonology



Consonants


Siltʼe has a fairly typical set of consonants for an Ethiopian Semitic language. There are the usual ejective consonants, alongside plain voiceless and voiced consonants and all of the consonants, except /h/ and /ʔ/, can be geminated, that is, lengthened.

The charts below show the phonemes of Siltʼe. For the representation of Siltʼe consonants, this article uses a modification of a system that is common (though not universal), among linguists who work on Ethiopian Semitic languages, but differs somewhat from the conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet. When the IPA symbol is different, it is indicated in brackets in the charts.

Consonants
Labial Dental/
Alveolar		 Postalveolar/
Palatal		 Velar Glottal
Plosive/
Affricate		 Voiceless p[lower-alpha 1] t t͡ʃ ⟨č⟩ k ʔ[lower-alpha 2]
Voiced b d d͡ʒ ⟨ǧ⟩ ɡ
Ejective tʼ t͡ʃʼ ⟨čʼ⟩ kʼ
Fricatives Voiceless f s ʃ ⟨š⟩ h
Voiced z ʒ ⟨ž⟩
Nasals m n ɲ ⟨ñ⟩
Approximants w l j ⟨y⟩
Flap/Trill r
  1. /p/ only plays a marginal role in the system, because it appears in only a few words in the Azarnat dialect.
  2. /ʔ/ only plays a marginal role in the system, because (as in Amharic), it is often omitted.

Vowels


Siltʼe vowels differ considerably from the typical set of seven vowels in languages such as Amharic, Tigrinya and Geʽez. Siltʼe has the set of five short and five long vowels that are typical of the nearby Eastern Cushitic languages, which may be the origin of the Siltʼe system. There is considerable allophonic variation within the short vowels, especially for a; the most frequent allophone of /a/, [ə], is shown in the chart. All of the short vowels may be devoiced preceding a pause.

Vowels
Front Central Back
High i, ii u, uu
Mid e, ee [ə] ⟨a⟩ o, oo
Low aa

Orthography


Since at least the 1980s, Siltʼe has been written in the Geʽez script, originally developed for the now-extinct Geʽez language and most familiar today in its use for Amharic and Tigrinya.

This orthographic system makes distinctions among only seven vowels. Some of the short-long distinctions in Siltʼe are therefore not marked. In practice, this probably does not interfere with comprehension because there are relatively few minimal pairs based on vowel length. In written Siltʼe, the seven Geʽez vowels are mapped onto the ten Siltʼe vowels as follows:


Language vitality


Meshesha Make Jobo reports that the use of the Siltʼe language is being replaced by the use of Amharic by some speakers for some domains. He points to large political and social factors, many from the national level. He also points out smaller, local factors, such as the lack of creatively genres.[2]


References


  1. Siltʼe at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
    Wolane at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. Meshesha Make Jobo. 2016. Indigenous language shift in Siltie: Causes, effects and directions for revitalization. Journal of Languages and Culture 7(7): 69-78.

Bibliography





На других языках

[de] Silt’e (Sprache)

Silt’e (ስልጥኘ .mw-parser-output .IPA a{text-decoration:none}[siltʼiɲɲǝ] oder የስልጤ አፍ [jǝsiltʼe af]) ist eine semitische Sprache, die von den Silt’e im südlichen Zentraläthiopien gesprochen wird.
- [en] Siltʼe language

[ru] Селти (язык)

Селти[1] — эфиосемитский язык, на котором говорят в Эфиопии. Распространён в области Народностей Южной Эфиопии (зона Сыльти). По данным 2007 года было около 935 тыс. носителей языка. В начальной школе является языком обучения, в старших классах преподаётся как предмет[2].


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