- Official language in
- Ethiopia
- Script
- Latin
Where it's spoken
The constitution of Ethiopia names Amharic as the working language of the Federal Government, gives all Ethiopian languages equal state recognition, and lets the members of the federation determine their own working languages by law. The revised constitution of the Oromia Regional State says that Afaan Oromo is the working language of the Regional State.
Sources
Script & pronunciation
The Oromia Regional State constitution says that Afaan Oromo is written in the Latin alphabet, and this app's cards use Latin letters, as in Galatoomaa ("Thank you. (polite / plural)"). The Unicode Standard notes that the Ethiopic script has also been adopted for writing several languages of central east Africa, including Oromo, but the app's Oromo cards do not use it.
Sources
- The Oromia National Regional State Revised Constitution, Proclamation No. 46/2001 (with Amendment Proclamations No. 94/2005 and No. 108/2006) — Article 5, Working Language
- The Unicode Standard, Version 16.0.0 — Core Specification, Chapter 19: Africa — Section 19.1, Ethiopic
Grammar essentials
The World Atlas of Language Structures codes Oromo (Harar) as having subject–object–verb word order, so the verb comes last. This app's card Foon hin nyaadhu. ("I don't eat meat.") shows the object before the verb. A community-edited Oromo course says the negative places hin before the verb, as in "Ani hin beeku", and a thesis on negation in Afan Oromo says that morphological negation is used with finite verbs and that the first particle of the negative pair, hin, always comes before the root verb. The same card shows this pattern, with hin placed before nyaadhu. Both sources say that "is" in a clause such as Ani daldalaa dha. ("I am a businessperson.") is negated with the separate form miti rather than hin.
Sources
Politeness & etiquette
A community-edited Oromo course says that Oromo uses the plural pronouns isin and isaan also as the polite or formal pronouns, mostly when talking to or about older and respected members of the community, and that in southern Oromia the singular ati is rarely used and considered rude. By contrast, the World Atlas of Language Structures records no politeness distinction in pronouns for Oromo (Harar). This app's cards reflect the distinction in greetings: Akkam bultan? is "Good morning (polite / plural)", while Akkam bulte? is "Good morning (to one friend)".