ABSTRACT
Somali is a member of the East Cushtic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It has 10–16 million native speakers and perhaps half a million second-language speakers, mainly in Somalia but also in Canada, Denmark, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Finland, Italy, Kenya, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and Yemen. Until 1972, Somali has been written in different scripts: the Arabic script in the thirteenth century (Wadaad script); the Osmanya script invented in 1920 similar to the 171Ethiopian writing system; and a minor script that was invented in 1930, called the Borama script. The official script introduced in 1972 by General Siad Barre and used since has been a Latin-based alphabet (Somali alphabet). If the script is entirely standardized, the spelling may differ. Somali is a tone language, with tonal variation marking case, gender, number, and verbal inflection. Somali uses all but three letters (p, v, and z) of the English alphabet. It has seven consonants (c, dh, kh, q, r, x and' [glottal stop]) that do not match with English. Moreover, the letters c, x, and q are pronounced quite differently:
“c” sounds close to the Arabic ayn (voiced pharyngeal fricative). Examples are Cali (Ali), Cabdi (Abdi), and Jaamac (Jama) for personal names; Burco (Burao) for towns.
“x” sounds like the aspirated “h” (voiceless pharyngeal fricative). Examples are Xasan (Hassan), Axmed (Hamed) and xeer (heer).
“q” is the voiced uvular plosive made at the back of the throat like in the French “r”.
