Somali language explained

Somali language should not be confused with Somali languages.

Nativename:Somali: Af Soomaali,[1] Somali: Soomaali[2]
Region:Horn of Africa
Speakers:18.63 million
Fam3:Lowland East Cushitic
Fam4:Somali languages
Script:Somali Latin alphabet (Latin script; official)
Wadaad writing (Arabic script)
Osmanya alphabet
Borama alphabet
Kaddare alphabet

Agency:Regional Somali Language Academy
Map:Somali map.jpg
Mapcaption:Primary Somali Sprachraum

Somali [3] (Latin: Somali: Af-Soomaali; Osmanya: in Somali pronounced as /æ̀f sɔ̀ːmɑ́ːlì/) is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch. It is spoken as a mother tongue by Somalis in Greater Somalia and the Somali diaspora. Somali is an official language of Somalia and Somaliland,[4] a national language in Djibouti, and a working language in the Somali Region of Ethiopia and also in North Eastern Kenya. It is used as an adoptive language by a few neighboring ethnic minority groups and individuals. The Somali language is written officially with the Latin alphabet.


See main article: Afroasiatic languages and Cushitic languages. Somali is classified within the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family, specifically, Lowland East Cushitic in addition to Afar and Saho. Somali is the best-documented Cushitic language, with academic studies of the language dating back to the late 19th century.

Geographic distribution


Somali is the second most widely spoken Cushitic language after Oromo.

As of 2020, there were approximately 18.63 million speakers of Somali, spread in Greater Somalia of which around 7.8 million resided in Somalia.[5] The language is spoken by an estimated 95% of the country's inhabitants, and also by a majority of the population in Djibouti.


Official status

Constitutionally, Somali and Arabic are the two official languages of Somalia.[6] Somali has been an official national language since January 1973, when the Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC) declared it the Somali Democratic Republic's primary language of administration and education. Somali was thereafter established as the main language of academic instruction in forms 1 through 4, following preparatory work by the government-appointed Somali Language Committee. It later expanded to include all 12 forms in 1979. In 1972, the SRC adopted a Latin orthography as the official national alphabet over several other writing scripts that were then in use. Concurrently, the Italian-language daily newspaper Stella d'Ottobre ("The October Star") was nationalized, renamed to Xiddigta Oktoobar, and began publishing in Somali. The state-run Radio Mogadishu has also broadcast in Somali since 1943. Additionally, the regional public networks the Puntland TV and Radio and Somaliland National TV, as well as Eastern Television Network and Horn Cable Television, among other private broadcasters, air programs in Somali.[7]

Somali is recognized as an official working language in the Somali Region of Ethiopia.[8] Although it is not an official language of Djibouti, it constitutes a major national language there. Somali is used in television and radio broadcasts,[9] with the government-operated Radio Djibouti transmitting programs in the language from 1943 onwards.



As of 2013, Somali is also one of the featured languages available on Google Translate.[12]


See main article: Somali languages. Somali linguistic varieties are broadly divided into three main groups: Northern, Benadir and Maay. Northern Somali (or Nsom[13]) forms the basis for Standard Somali. It is spoken by more than 85% of the entire Somali population, with its speech area stretching from Djibouti, Somaliland, Somali Region of Ethiopia, Northern Frontier District to most parts of Somalia[14] This widespread modern distribution is a result of a long series of southward population movements over the past ten centuries from the Gulf of Aden littoral. Lamberti subdivides Northern Somali is into three dialects: Northern Somali proper (spoken in the northwest; he describes this dialect as Northern Somali in the proper sense), the Darod group (spoken in the northeast and along the eastern Ethiopia frontier; greatest number of speakers overall), and the Lower Juba group (spoken by northern Somali settlers in the southern riverine areas).[13] Benadir (also known as Coastal Somali) is spoken on the central Indian Ocean seaboard, including Mogadishu. It forms a relatively smaller group. The dialect is fairly mutually intelligible with Northern Somali.

There are other languages that are spoken in Somalia which are not necessarily Afsoomali. They may be a mixture of the Somali Languages and other indigenous Languages. Such a Language is Maay and is principally spoken by the Digil and Mirifle (Rahanweyn or Sab) clans in the southern regions of Somalia. Its speech area extends from the southwestern border with Ethiopia to a region close to the coastal strip between Mogadishu and Kismayo, including the city of Baidoa. Maay is not mutually comprehensible with Northern Somali, and it differs in sentence structure and phonology.[15] It is also not generally used in education or media. However, Maay speakers often use Standard Somali as a lingua franca, which is learned via mass communications, internal migration and urbanization.[15]

Maay is not closely related with the Somali language in sentence structure and phonology is spoken by Jiddu, Dabarre, Garre and Tunni varieties that are also spoken by smaller Rahanweyn communities. Collectively, these languages present similarities with Oromo that are not found in mainstream Somali. Chief among these is the lack of pharyngeal sounds in the Rahanweyn/Digil and Mirifle languages, features which by contrast typify Somali but are not Somali. Although in the past frequently classified as dialects of Somali, more recent research by the linguist Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi has shown that these varieties, including Maay, constitute separate Cushitic languages. The degree of divergence is comparable to that between Spanish and Portuguese.[16] Of the Digil varieties, Jiddu is the most incomprehensible to Benadir and Northern speakers.[17] Despite these linguistic differences, Somali speakers collectively view themselves as speaking a common language.[18]




See main article: Somali phonology. Somali has 22 consonant phonemes.

Somali consonant phonemes
Nasalpronounced as /m/      pronounced as /n/                     
Plosive  pronounced as /b/   pronounced as /t̪/ pronounced as /d̪/        pronounced as /ɖ/   pronounced as /k/ pronounced as /ɡ/pronounced as /q/     pronounced as /ʔ/  
Affricate            pronounced as /t͡ʃ/                   
Fricative   pronounced as /f/     pronounced as /s/  pronounced as /ʃ/        pronounced as /x~χ/pronounced as /ħ/ pronounced as /ʕ/pronounced as /h/  
Trill         pronounced as /r/                     
Approximant         pronounced as /l/      pronounced as /j/pronounced as /w/         
The consonants pronounced as //b d̪ ɡ// often weaken to pronounced as /[β ð ɣ]/ intervocalically. The retroflex plosive pronounced as //ɖ// may have an implosive quality for some speakers, and intervocalically it can be realized as the flap pronounced as /[ɽ]/. Some speakers produce pronounced as //ħ// with epiglottal trilling. pronounced as //q// is often epiglottalized.



Pitch is phonemic in Somali, but it is debated whether Somali is a pitch accent or tonal language.[21] Andrzejewski (1954) posits that Somali is a tonal language,[22] whereas Banti (1988) suggests that it is a pitch accent language.[23]


See main article: Somali grammar.

 ! colspan="2" style="background-color:#ABCDEF"
Subject pronounsObject pronouns
1. Sing.aniguaananigai(i)
2. Sing.adiguaadadigaku(u)
3. Sing. m.isaguuuisaga(he)
3. Sing. f.iyaduayiyada(she)
1. Pl. (inclusive)innaguaynuinnagaina/inoo
1. Pl. (exclusive)annaguaannuannagana/noo
2. Pl.idinkuaadidinkaidin/idiin
3. Pl.iyaguayiyaga(u)




Changes in pitch are used for grammatical rather than lexical purposes. This includes distinctions of gender, number and case. In some cases, these distinctions are marked by tone alone (e.g. Ínan, "boy"; inán, "girl").

Somali has two sets of pronouns: independent (substantive, emphatic) pronouns and clitic (verbal) pronouns. The independent pronouns behave grammatically as nouns, and normally occur with the suffixed article -ka/-ta (e.g. adiga, "you"). This article may be omitted after a conjunction or focus word. For example, adna meaning "and you..." (from adi-na). Clitic pronouns are attached to the verb and do not take nominal morphology. Somali marks clusivity in the first person plural pronouns; this is also found in a number of other East Cushitic languages, such as Rendille and Dhaasanac.

As in various other Afro-Asiatic languages, Somali is characterized by polarity of gender, whereby plural nouns usually take the opposite gender agreement of their singular forms.[25] For example, the plural of the masculine noun dibi ("bull") is formed by converting it into feminine dibi.[25] Somali is unusual among the world's languages in that the object is unmarked for case while the subject is marked, though this feature is found in other Cushitic languages such as Oromo.[26]


Somali is a subject–object–verb (SOV) language.[5] It is largely head final, with postpositions and with obliques preceding verbs. These are common features of the Cushitic and Semitic Afroasiatic languages spoken in the Horn region (e.g. Amharic).[27] However, Somali noun phrases are head-initial, whereby the noun precedes its modifying adjective. This pattern of general head-finality with head-initial noun phrases is also found in other Cushitic languages (e.g. Oromo), but not generally in Ethiopian Semitic languages.

Somali uses three focus markers: baa, ayaa and waxa(a), which generally mark new information or contrastive emphasis. Baa and ayaa require the focused element to occur preverbally, while waxa(a) may be used following the verb.



Somali's main lexical borrowings come from Arabic, and are estimated to constitute about 20% of the language's vocabulary. This is a legacy of the Somali people's extensive social, cultural, commercial and religious links and contacts with nearby populations in the Arabian peninsula. Arabic loanwords are most commonly used in religious, administrative and education-related speech (e.g. aamiin for "faith in God"), though they are also present in other areas (e.g. kubbad-da, "ball"). Soravia (1994) noted a total of 1,436 Arabic loanwords in Agostini a.o. 1985, a prominent 40,000-entry Somali dictionary. Most of the terms consisted of commonly used nouns. These lexical borrowings may have been more extensive in the past since a few words that Zaborski (1967:122) observed in the older literature were absent in Agostini's later work. In addition, the majority of personal names are derived from Arabic.

The Somali language also contains a few Indo-European loanwords that were retained from the colonial period. Most of these lexical borrowings come from English and Italian and are used to describe new objects or modern concepts (e.g. telefishen-ka, "television"; raadia-ha, "radio"). There are as well 300 directly Romance loans, such as garawati for "tie" (from the Italian Italian: cravatta).

Indeed, the most used loanwords from the Italian are "ciao" as a friendly salute, "dimuqraadi" from Italian "democratico" (democratic), "mikroskoob" from "microscopio” (microscope), "Jalaato" from "gelato" (ice cream), "baasto" from "pasta" (pasta), "bataate" from "patate" (potato), "bistoolad" from "pistol" (pistol), "fiyoore" from "fiore" (flower) and "injinyeer" from "ingegnere" (engineer).[28] Somalis call their calendar months as Soon, soonfur, siditaal, carafa....but these changed recently. Furthermore, all the months in Somali language are now loaned words from the Italian, like "Febraayo" that comes from "febbraio" (February).

Additionally, Somali contains lexical terms from Persian, Urdu and Hindi that were acquired through historical trade with communities in the Near East and South Asia (e.g. khiyaar "cucumber" from Persian: خيار khiyār). Some of these words were also borrowed indirectly via Arabic.


Writing system

See main article: Somali alphabets. Archaeological excavations and research in Somalia uncovered ancient inscriptions in a distinct writing system.[29] In an 1878 report to the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain, scientist Johann Maria Hildebrandt noted upon visiting the area that "we know from ancient authors that these districts, at present so desert, were formerly populous and civilised[...] I also discovered ancient ruins and rock-inscriptions both in pictures and characters[...] These have hitherto not been deciphered."[30] According to Somalia's Ministry of Information and National Guidance, this script represents the earliest written attestation of Somali.[29]

Besides Ahmed's Latin script, other orthographies that have been used for centuries for writing the Somali language include the long-established Arabic script and Wadaad writing.[31] According to Bogumił Andrzejewski, this usage was limited to Somali clerics and their associates, as sheikhs preferred to write in the liturgical Arabic language. Various such historical manuscripts in Somali nonetheless exist, which mainly consist of Islamic poems (qasidas), recitations and chants.[32] Among these texts are the Somali poems by Sheikh Uways and Sheikh Ismaaciil Faarah. The rest of the existing historical literature in Somali principally consists of translations of documents from Arabic.[33]

Since then a number of writing systems have been used for transcribing the Somali language. Of these, the Somali Latin alphabet, officially adopted in 1972, is the most widely used and recognised as official orthography of the state.[34] The script was developed by a number of leading scholars of Somali, including Musa Haji Ismail Galal, B. W. Andrzejewski and Shire Jama Ahmed specifically for transcribing the Somali language, and uses all letters of the English Latin alphabet except p, v and z.[35] [36] There are no diacritics or other special characters except the use of the apostrophe for the glottal stop, which does not occur word-initially. There are three consonant digraphs: DH, KH and SH. Tone is not marked, and front and back vowels are not distinguished.


Sample text


English Somali
One kow
Two laba
Three saddex
Four afar
Five shan
Six lix
English Somali
Eleven kow iyo toban
Twelve laba iyo toban
Thirteen saddex iyo toban
Fourteen afar iyo toban
Fifteen shan iyo toban
Sixteen lix iyo toban
Seventeen toddoba iyo toban
Eighteen sideed iyo toban
Nineteen sagaal iyo toban
Twenty labaatan
English Somali
Thirty soddon
Forty afartan
Fifty konton
Sixty lixdan
Seventy todobaatan
Eighty siddeetan
Ninety sagaashan
English Somali
One hundred boqol
One thousand kun
One million milyan
One billion bilyan

Days of the week

English Somali
Sunday Axad
Monday Isniin
Tuesday Salaasa/Talaado
Wednesday Arbacaa/Arbaco
Thursday Khamiis
Friday Jimco
Saturday Sabti

Months of the year

English Somali
January Janaayo
February Febraayo
March Maarso
April Abriil
May Maajo
June Juun
July Luuliyo
August Agoosto
September Sebteembar
October Oktoobar
November Nofeembar
December Diseembar

See also



Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Somali alphabets, pronunciation and language. Omniglot. 16 June 2017.
  2. Web site: cldr/so.xml at master · unicode-org/cldr. Unicode. 8 November 2020.
  3. Web site: Somali. Collins Dictionary. Retrieved on 21 September 2013
  4. Web site: Constitution of the Republic of Somaliland. November 10, 2019.
  5. Web site: Somali . SIL International. 2021 . January 27, 2021.
  6. Web site: The Federal Republic of Somalia - Provisional Constitution. 13 March 2013. dead. 24 January 2013.
  7. Web site: Somali Media Mapping Report. Somali Media Mapping. 31 August 2014.
  8. Book: Kizitus Mpoche, Tennu Mbuh, eds.. Language, literature, and identity. 2006. Cuvillier. 3-86537-839-0. 163–164.
  9. Web site: Ethnologue - Djibouti - Languages. Ethnologue. 25 April 2013.
  11. Web site: Regional Somali Language Academy Launched in Djibouti. COMESA Regional Investment Agency. 28 February 2014.
  12. News: Google Translate - now in 80 languages. 30 December 2013. Google Translate. 10 December 2013.
  13. Book: Lamberti, Marcello. Map of Somali dialects in the Somalia Democratic Republic. 1986. H. Buske. 9783871186905. en.
  14. Book: Mundus, Volumes 23-24. Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft. 1987. 205.
  15. Web site: Maay - A language of Somalia. Ethnologue. 7 May 2013.
  16. Book: Lewis, I. M.. Saints and Somalis: Popular Islam in a Clan-based Society. 1998-01-01. The Red Sea Press. 9781569021033. 74. en.
  17. Web site: Country of Origin Information Centre (Landinfo). 2011. Report Somalia: Language situation and dialects . 6.
  18. Book: Somali nationalism: international politics and the drive for unity in the Horn of Africa. 1963. Department of Linguistics and the African Studies Center, University of California, Los Anglos. 24. 9780674818255.
  20. Web site: Somali ATR harmony. November 10, 2019.
  21. Book: Keith Brown, Sarah Ogilvie. Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. 2010. Elsevier. 978-0080877754. 987.
  22. Book: Andrzejewski. Bogumit Witalis. "Is Somali a Tone-language?", Proceedings of the Twenty-Third International Congress of Orientalists. 1954. Royal Asiatic Society. 367–368. 496050266.
  23. Book: Banti. Giorgio. "Two Cushitic Systems: Somali and Oromo nouns", Autosegmental Studies on Pitch Accent. 1988. Walter de Gruyter. 3110874261. 11–50. 26 May 2017. 11 October 2017. dead. dmy-all.
  24. Book: Kraska, Iwona. Analogy: the relation between lexicon and grammar. 2007. Lincom Europa. 978-3895868986. 140.
  25. Tosco. Mauro. Department of Anthropology . Indiana University . Is There an "Ethiopian Language Area"?. Anthropological Linguistics. 2000. 42. 3. 349. 8 May 2013.
  26. Book: John I. Saeed. The Syntax of Focus & Topic in Somali. 1984. H. Buske. 3871186724. 66.
  27. Book: Klaus Wedekind, Charlotte Wedekind, Abuzeinab Musa. A learner's grammar of Beja (East Sudan): grammar, texts and vocabulary (Beja-English and English-Beja). 2007. Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. 978-3896455727. 10.
  28. Web site: Italian and English Loanwords in Somali, by Alberto Mioni. November 10, 2019.
  31. Web site: Omniglot - Somali writing scripts. Omniglot. 8 May 2013.
  32. Book: Andrezewski. B. W.. In Praise of Somali Literature. Lulu. 1291454535. 130–131. 17 January 2015.
  33. Book: Andrezewski. B. W.. In Praise of Somali Literature. Lulu. 1291454535. 232. 17 January 2015.
  34. Economist Intelligence Unit (Great Britain), Middle East annual review, (1975), p.229
  35. Book: Abdullahi, Mohamed Diriye. Culture and Customs of Somalia. registration. 73. 2001. Greenwood Publishing Group. 978-0-313-31333-2. en.
  36. Book: Lewis, I. M.. A Pastoral Democracy: A Study of Pastoralism and Politics Among the Northern Somali of the Horn of Africa. 1999. James Currey Publishers. 978-0-85255-280-3. en.