Sidama language

Sidama or Sidaamu Afoo is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Highland East Cushitic branch of the Cushitic family. It is spoken in parts of southern Ethiopia by the Sidama people, particularly in the densely populated Sidama National Regional State (SNRS). Sidaamu Afoo is the ethnic autonym for the language, while Sidaminya is its name in Amharic. It is not known to have any specific dialects. The word order is typically SOV. Sidaama has over 100,000 L2 speakers. The literacy rate for L1 speakers is 1%-5%, while for L2 speakers it is 20%. In terms of its writing, Sidaama used an Ethiopic script up until 1993, from which point forward it has used a Latin script.

The term Sidamo has also been used in the past to refer to most Highland East Cushitic languages, earlier even to some Omotic languages. The results from a research study conducted in 1968-1969 concerning mutual intelligibility between different Sidamo languages suggest that Sidaama is more closely related to the Gedeo language, which it shares a border with to the south, than other Sidamo languages. According to Ethnologue, the two languages share a lexical similarity of 60%. Another study shows over 64% lexical similarity with Alaba-K'abeena, 62% with Kambaata, and 53% with Hadiyya, all of which are other Highland East Cushitic languages spoken in southwestern Ethiopia. Sidaama vocabulary has also been influenced by Oromo vocabulary.

In Sidaama, not all noun phrases have nouns. This can occur when it is so obvious what kind of thing the referent of the noun phrase is, that it is unnecessary for the speaker to mention it. Sidaama has two types of noun phrases without nouns. One type is made up only of an adjective or a numeral, where the adjective or the numeral agrees in case, number, and gender with the referent of a noun phrase. This is shown in the examples below:

busul-u

smart-NOM.M

da-ø-ino.

come-3SG.M-PERF.3

busul-u da-ø-ino.