Siltʼe language

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 and , 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.

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 , , is shown in the chart. All of the short vowels may be devoiced preceding a pause.

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:

• ä → a: አለፈ alafa 'he passed'
• u → u, uu: ሙት mut 'death', muut 'thing'
• i →
  • ii: ኢን iin 'eye'
  • word-final i: መሪ mari 'friend'
  • i ending a noun stem: መሪከ marika 'his friend'
  • impersonal perfect verb i suffix: ባሊ baali 'people said'; በባሊም babaalim 'even if people said'
• a → aa: ጋራሽ gaaraaš 'your (f.) house'
• e → e, ee: ኤፌ eeffe 'he covered'
• ǝ →
  • i (except as above): እንግር ingir 'foot'
  • consonant not followed by a vowel: አስሮሽት asroošt 'twelve'
• o → o, oo: ቆጬ kʼočʼe 'tortoise', kʼoočʼe 'he cut'

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 creative genres.