Silt'e language
| Silt'e | |
|---|---|
| ስልጥኘ | |
| Native to | Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region, Ethiopia |
|
Native speakers
|
940,000 Silt'e proper (2007 census) 125,000 speakers of Wolane dialect |
|
Afro-Asiatic
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Either: stv – Silt'e wle – Wolane |
| Glottolog | silt1239 |
Silt'e (ስልጥኘ [siltʼiɲɲə] or የስልጤ አፍ [jəsiltʼe af]) is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in central Ethiopia. One of the Ethiopian Semitic languages, its speakers are the Silt'e, who mainly inhabit the Silte Zone in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region. Speakers of the Wolane dialect mainly inhabit the Kokir Gedebano district of Gurage Zone, as well as the neighbouring Seden Sodo district of Oromia. Some have also settled in urban areas in other parts of the country, especially Addis Ababa.
Dialects of the Silt'e language include: Azernet-Berbere, Silti, Wuriro, Ulbareg and Wolane. There are about 940,000 native Silt'e speakers (2007 census); 125,000 speakers of Wolane.
Silt'e 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. However, Silt'e vowels differ considerably from the typical set of seven vowels in languages such as Amharic, Tigrinya and Ge'ez. Silt'e 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 Silt'e 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.
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