Kambaata language

Kambaata
Kambaatissata
Native toEthiopia
RegionSouthwest Gurage, Kambaata, Hadiyya Regions
EthnicityKambaata
Native speakers
740,000 (2007 census)[1][2]
Ethiopic, Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3Either:
ktb – Kambaata
alw – Alaba-K’abeena
Glottologkamb1318

Kambaata is a Highland East Cushitic language, part of the larger Afro-Asiatic family and spoken by the Kambaata people. Closely related varieties are Xambaaro (T'ambaaro, Timbaaro), Alaba, and Qabeena (K'abeena),[3] of which the latter two are sometimes divided as a separate Alaba language. The language has many verbal affixes. When these are affixed to verbal roots, there are a large amount of morphophonemic changes.[4] The language has subject–object–verb order. The phonemes of Kambaata include five vowels (which are distinctively long or short), a set of ejectives, a retroflexed implosive, and glottal stop.

The New Testament and some parts of the Old Testament have been translated into the Kambaata language. At first, they were published in the Ethiopian syllabary (New Testament in 1992), but later on, they were republished in Latin letters, in conformity with new policies and practices.

  1. ^ Ethiopia 2007 Census Archived 2010-11-14 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ "Kambaata". Ethnologue. Retrieved 24 September 2023.
  3. ^ Treis 2008, p. 4.
  4. ^ Sim 1985, 1988.