Kambaata language

language
name=Kambaata
familycolor=Afro-Asiatic
states=Ethiopia
region=southwest Gurage, Kambaata, Hadiyya Regions
speakers=606,241
fam1=Afro-Asiatic
fam2=Cushitic
fam3=East
fam4=Highland
iso3=ktb

Kambata is a Highland East Cushitic language, part of the larger Afro-Asiatic family. Dialects are Qebena, Tambaro, and Timbaro. [Raymond G. Gordon, Jr, ed. 2005. "Ethnologue: Languages of the World". 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.] It is one of the official languages of the country. The language has a large number of verbal affixes. When these are affixed to verbal roots, there are a large amount of morphophonemic changes. [Sim 1985, 1988.] The language has SOV order (Subject-Object-Verb). The phonemes of Kambaat include five vowels (which are distinctively long or short), a set of ejectives, a retroflexed implosive, and glottal stop.

The New Testament and some parts of the Old Testament have been translated into the Kambaata language. At first, they were published in the Ethiopian syllabary (New Testament in 1992), but later on, they were republished in Latin letters, in conformity with new policies and practices.

Notes

References

* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ktb Ethnologue entry for Kambaata]
* Margaret G. Sim. 1985. "Kambaata Verb Morphophonemics," "The morphophonemics of five Highland East Cushitic languages including Burji". Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 2. Köln: Institut für Afrikanistik, Universität zu Köln. Pages 44-63.
* Margaret Sim. 1988. "Palatalization and gemination in the Kambaata verb," "Journal of Afroasiatic Languages" 1.58-65.

External links

* Treis, Yvonne. 2006. [http://www.afrikanistik-online.de/afrika/archiv/2006/379/ "Form and Function of Case Marking in Kambaata."]