Chaha language
| Chaha | |
|---|---|
| ቸሃ | |
| Native to | Ethiopia |
|
Native speakers
|
(undated figure of 130,000) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | chah1248 |
Chaha or Cheha (in Chaha and Amharic: ቸሃ čehā or čexā) is a Gurage language spoken in central Ethiopia, mainly within the Gurage Zone in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region and by speakers of the language who have settled in Ethiopian cities, especially Addis Ababa. Chaha is known to many phonologists and morphologists for its very complex morphophonology.
According to Ethnologue, the dialects of SBG (Sebat Bet Gurage) are Chaha (čäxa), Ezha (äža), Gumer (or Gwemare, gʷämarä), Gura, Gyeto (or Gyeta, gʸäta), and Muher (or Mwahr, mʷäxǝr). However, some of these are sometimes considered languages in their own right. In particular, Muher diverges so much from the other dialects that it is not necessarily even treated as a member of the Western Gurage group to which SBG belongs.
This article focuses on the Chaha dialect, which has been studied more than the others. Unless otherwise indicated, all examples are Chaha.
SBG has a fairly typical set of phonemes for an Ethiopian Semitic language. There is the usual set of ejective consonants as well as plain voiceless and voiced consonants. However, the language also has a larger set of palatalized and labialized consonants than most other Ethiopian Semitic languages. Besides the typical seven vowels of these languages, SBG has open-mid front (ɛ) and back vowels (ɔ). Some of the dialects have both short and long vowel phonemes, and some have nasalized vowels.
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