Afar language

"Qafar" redirects here. For the village in Iran, see Qafar, Iran.

Afar (Afar: Qafaraf; also known as ’Afar af, Afaraf, Qafar af) is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch. It is spoken by the Afar people inhabiting Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Afar
Qafar af
Pronunciation	[ʕʌfʌɾʌf]
Native to	Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia
Region	Horn of Africa
Ethnicity	Afar
Native speakers	2.6 million (2019–2022)[1]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Cushitic East Lowland Saho–Afar Afar
Dialects	Aussa Ba'adu Central Afar Northern Afar
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Ethiopia
Recognised minority language in	Djibouti  Eritrea
Language codes
ISO 639-1	aa
ISO 639-2	aar
ISO 639-3	aar
Glottolog	afar1241
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Classification

Afar is classified within the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family. It is further categorized in the Lowland East Cushitic sub-group, along with Saho and Somali.^[2] Its closest relative is the Saho language.^[1]

Geographic distribution

The Afar language is spoken as a mother tongue by the Afar people in Djibouti, Eritrea, and the Afar Region of Ethiopia.^[1]

According to Ethnologue, there are 2,600,000 total Afar speakers. Of these, 1,280,000 were recorded in the 2007 Ethiopian census, with 906,000 monolinguals registered in the 1994 census.^[1]

Official status

In Djibouti, Afar is a recognized national language.^[3] It is also one of the broadcasting languages of the Radio Television of Djibouti public network.

In Eritrea, Afar is recognized as one of nine national languages which formally enjoy equal status although Tigrinya and Arabic are by far of greatest significance in official usage. There are daily broadcasts on the national radio and a translated version of the Eritrean constitution. In education, however, Afar speakers prefer Arabic – which many of them speak as a second language – as the language of instruction.^[4]

In the Afar Region of Ethiopia, Afar is also recognized as an official working language.^[5] Since 2020, Afar is one of the five official working languages of Ethiopia.^[6]

Phonology

Consonants

The consonants of the Afar language in the standard orthography are listed below in angle brackets (preceded by the IPA notation):

		Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless		t ⟨t⟩			k ⟨k⟩
	voiced	b ⟨b⟩	d ⟨d⟩			ɡ ⟨g⟩
Fricative	voiceless	f ⟨f⟩	s ⟨s⟩				ħ ⟨c⟩	h ⟨h⟩
	voiced						ʕ ⟨q⟩
Nasal		m ⟨m⟩	n ⟨n⟩
Approximant		w ⟨w⟩	l ⟨l⟩		j ⟨y⟩
Tap			ɾ ⟨r⟩	ɽ ⟨x⟩[7]

Voiceless stop consonants which close syllables are released, e.g., [ʌkʰˈme].

Vowels and stress

	Front		Central	Back
	short	long	long	short	long
Close	i ⟨i⟩	iː ⟨ii⟩		u ⟨u⟩	uː ⟨uu⟩
Mid	e ⟨e⟩	eː ⟨ee⟩		o ⟨o⟩	oː ⟨oo⟩
Open			aː ⟨aa⟩	ʌ ⟨a⟩

Sentence final vowels of affirmative verbs are aspirated (and stressed), e.g.

• Afar: abeh = /aˈbeʰ/ 'He did.'

Sentence final vowels of negative verbs are not aspirated (nor stressed), e.g.

• Afar: maabinna = /ˈmaːbinːaː/ 'He did not do.'

Sentence final vowels of interrogative verbs are lengthened (and stressed), e.g.

• Afar: abee? = /aˈbeː/ 'Did he do?'

Otherwise, stress in word-final.

Phonotactics

Possible syllable shapes are V, VV, VC, VVC, CV, CVV and CVVC.^[8]

Syntax

As in most other Cushitic languages, the basic word order in Afar is subject–object–verb.^[1]

Writing system

In Ethiopia, Afar used to be written with the Ge'ez script (Ethiopic script). Since around 1849, the Latin script has been used in other areas to transcribe the language.^[1] Additionally, Afar is also transcribed using the Arabic script.^[9]

In the early 1970s, two Afar intellectuals and nationalists, Dimis and Redo, formalized the Afar alphabet. Known as Qafar Feera, the orthography is based on the Latin script.^[10]

Officials from the Institut des Langues de Djibouti, the Eritrean Ministry of Education, and the Ethiopian Afar Language Studies and Enrichment Center have since worked with Afar linguists, authors and community representatives to select a standard orthography for Afar from among the various existing writing systems used to transcribe the language.^[9]

Latin alphabet

^{[clarification needed]}

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

a

ba

ca

da

e

fa

ga

ha

i

ja

ka

la

ma

na

o

pa

qa

ra

sa

ta

u

va

wa

xa

ya

za

^[11]

A

B

T

S

E

C

K

X

I

D

Q

R

F

G

O

L

M

N

U

W

H

Y

a

ba

ta

sa

e

ca

ka

xa

i

da

qa

ra

fa

ga

o

la

ma

na

u

wa

ha

ya

^[12]

See also

• Afar Region