Afar

E50164

Afar is a Cushitic language spoken primarily by the Afar people in the Horn of Africa, especially in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.

Observed surface forms (8)


Statements (46)

Predicate Object
instanceOf Afroasiatic language
Cushitic language
language
alternativeName Afar
surface form: Afaraf

Qafar
closelyRelatedTo Oromo
Saho
Somali
countryStatus recognized language in Djibouti
recognized language in Eritrea
recognized language in Ethiopia
glottologCode afar1241
hasApproximateSpeakers over 1 million speakers
hasDialects Afar self-linksurface differs
surface form: Aussa Afar

Afar self-linksurface differs
surface form: Central Afar

Afar self-linksurface differs
surface form: Northern Afar
hasStandardizationEfforts orthography development in late 20th century
iso639-1Code aa
iso639-2Code aar
iso639-3Code aar
languageFamily Afroasiatic languages
surface form: Afroasiatic

Cushitic
linguisticSubgroup Cushitic
surface form: Lowland East Cushitic
morphology agglutinative morphology
nativeName Qafar af
phonologyFeature contrastive vowel length
emphatic consonants
primaryAreaWithinDjibouti Dikhil Region
primaryAreaWithinEritrea Southern Red Sea Region
primaryAreaWithinEthiopia Afar Region
region Horn of Africa
scriptUsage Latin-based orthography used in modern publications
spokenBy Afar people
spokenIn Djibouti
Eritrea
Ethiopia
typology SOV word order (tends toward subject–object–verb)
usedAlongside Amharic in Ethiopia
Arabic in Djibouti
Tigrinya in Eritrea
usedFor education at primary level in some areas
folk songs
local administration in Afar Region of Ethiopia
oral poetry
writingSystem Geʽez script
Latin script

Referenced by (20)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

Afar alternativeName Afar
this entity surface form: Afaraf
Saho belongsToBranch Afar
this entity surface form: Saho–Afar branch
this entity surface form: Afar people
Afar hasDialects Afar self-linksurface differs
this entity surface form: Northern Afar
Afar hasDialects Afar self-linksurface differs
this entity surface form: Central Afar
Afar hasDialects Afar self-linksurface differs
this entity surface form: Aussa Afar
this entity surface form: Afar people
this entity surface form: Somalis
this entity surface form: Afar people
Tadjoura languageCommon Afar
this entity surface form: Afar Region
this entity surface form: Afar people