Me'en language

Me'en language
Me'en
Spoken in Ethiopia
Region Eastern Africa
Native speakers

5,770 of Bodi dialect

145,333 of Me'en dialect[1]  (date missing)
Language family
Nilo-Saharan?
Writing system Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3 mym

Me'en (also Mekan, Mie'en, Mieken, Meqan, Men) is a Nilo-Saharan language (Eastern Sudanic, Surmic) spoken in Ethiopia by the Me'en people. In recent years, it has been written with the Ge'ez alphabet, but in 2007 a decision was made to use the Latin alphabet. Dialects include Bodi (Podi) and Tishena (Teshina, Teshenna).

Me'en is unique among Surmic languages in that it has ejective consonants.

Reliable descriptions of some parts of the language have been produced by Hans-Georg Will, but Conti Rossini's work is much less reliable, consisting of his efforts to edit the extensive language notes of a non-linguist.

Notes

  1. ^ Ethiopia 2007 Census

References

  • Conti Rossini, Carlo. (1913). "I Mekan o Suro nell'Etiopia meridionale e il loro linguaggio." Rend. R. Acc. Lincei XXII (7-10): 397-463.
  • Diehl, Achim and Hans-Georg Will. (2007). "Meˀen language." In Siegbert Uhlig (ed.), Encyclopaedia Aethiopica 3, 907-909. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
  • Will, Hans-Georg. 1989. "Sketch of Me'en grammar." In M. Lionel Bender (ed.), Topics in Nilo-Saharan linguistics , 129-50. Nilo-Saharan, 3. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.
  • Will, Hans-Georg. 1998. "The Me'en verb system: Does Me'en have tenses?." In Gerrit J. Dimmendaal and Marco Last (eds.), Surmic languages and cultures , 437-58. Nilo-Saharan, 13. Cologne: R. Köppe

External links



Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно решить контрольную?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Language education — Language Teaching redirects here. For the journal, see Language Teaching (journal). Linguistics …   Wikipedia

  • Language attrition — is the loss of a first or second language or a portion of that language by individuals; it should be distinguished from language loss within a community (the latter process is referred to as language shift or language death). Language attrition… …   Wikipedia

  • Language revitalization — is the attempt by interested parties, including individuals, cultural or community groups, governments, or political authorities, to recover the spoken use of a language that is endangered, moribund, or no longer spoken. Language death is the… …   Wikipedia

  • Language immersion — is a method of teaching a second language (also called L2, or the target language). Unlike a more traditional language course, where the target language is simply the subject material, language immersion uses the target language as a teaching… …   Wikipedia

  • Language contact — occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual.[1] …   Wikipedia

  • Language module — refers to a hypothesized structure in the human brain (anatomical module) or cognitive system (functional module) that some psycholinguists (e.g., Steven Pinker) claim contains innate capacities for language. According to Jerry Fodor the sine qua …   Wikipedia

  • Language secessionism — or linguistic secessionism is an attitude consisting in separating a language variety from the language to which it normally belongs, in order to make this variety considered as a distinct language. This phenomenon was first analyzed by Catalan… …   Wikipedia

  • language — lan‧guage [ˈlæŋgwɪdʒ] noun 1. [countable, uncountable] a system of speaking and writing used by people in one country or area: • the French language • Do you speak any foreign languages? • Trading in Europe means communicating in more than one… …   Financial and business terms

  • Language transfer — (also known as L1 interference, linguistic interference, and crossmeaning) refers to speakers or writers applying knowledge from their native language to a second language. It is most commonly discussed in the context of English language learning …   Wikipedia

  • Language delay — is a failure to develop language abilities on the usual developmental timetable. Language delay is distinct from speech delay, in which the speech mechanism itself is the focus of delay. Thus, language delay refers specifically to a delay in the… …   Wikipedia

  • Language shift — Language shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”