Chara is an Afro-Asiatic

Afro-Asiatic languages

The Afroasiatic languages , also known as Hamito-Semitic, constitute one of the world's largest language families, with about 375 living languages...

 language of the North Omotic

North Omotic languages

The North Omotic or Nomotic languages belong to the Afro-Asiatic family and are spoken in Ethiopia.- References :*...

 variety spoken in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region

Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region

Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region is one of the nine ethnic divisions of Ethiopia. It was formed from the merger of the former Regions 7-11 following the 1994 elections...

 of Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

 by more than 13,000 people.

Status

Chara is geographically situated to the southeast of Nayi

Nayi language

Nayi is an Omotic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken in western Ethiopia. The 2007 census listed 1998 census listed 7,188 speakers; the 1998 census 3,656 speakers, with 1,137 identified as monolinguals....

, west of Kullo, northeast of Mesketo, and northwest of Gofa.
Chara speakers live in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region

Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region

Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region is one of the nine ethnic divisions of Ethiopia. It was formed from the merger of the former Regions 7-11 following the 1994 elections...

, in the Kafa and Debub Omo Zone

Debub Omo Zone

Debub Omo is a Zone in the Ethiopian Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region . Debub Omo is bordered on the south by Kenya, on the southwest by the Ilemi Triangle, on the west by Bench Maji, on the northwest by Keficho Shekicho, on the north by Semien Omo, on the northeast by the...

s, on both sides of the Omo river

Omo River

The Omo River is an important river of southern Ethiopia. Its course is entirely contained within the boundaries of Ethiopia, and empties into Lake Turkana on the border with Kenya...

. Chara's approximately 7,000 speakers are scattered in three villages in Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

: Geba a meša, Buna Anta, and Kumba. Of these, only 5,556 are monolingual in Chara. Native speakers may also speak Melo

Melo language

Melo is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in the Gamo Gofa Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region in Ethiopia....

, Wolaytta (54% lexical similarity with Chara) to the east, and Kafa

Kafa language

Kaffa is an Afroasiatic language spoken in Ethiopia around Bonga in the Keficho Shekicho Zone. The language is also called Kafi nono.- Further reading :...

 to the west.

Language use is vigorous, and there are over 680 second language

Second language

A second language or L2 is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue. Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas ....

 learners of the language.

Consonants

Consonant phonemes of Chara

Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Palatoalveolar/ Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... 1		m	n	[ɲ]
Plosive	Voiceless	p	t		k	ʔ
	Voiced	b	d		ɡ
	Ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants...	pʼ	tʼ		kʼ
	Implosive Implosive consonant Implosive consonants are stops with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in addition to expelling air from the lungs. Therefore, unlike the purely glottalic ejective consonants, implosives can...	ɓ	(ɗ)
Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...	Voiceless		ts	tɕ
	Voiced			dʑ
	Ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants...		sʼ	tɕʼ
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...		[f]	s	ɕ, (ʑ)		h
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...		w		j
Trill Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular....			r
Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....			l

[p] and [f] are in free variation. /ɗ/ only occurs in the word /jalɗa~jaltʼa/ 'crooked'. Yilma (2002) found /ɓ/ to occur five times in around 550 lexical items. He also found /ʑ/ occurring in two, both in the sequence /iʑa/. Occurrence of /ɗ/ and /pʼ/ may be governed by dialectual variation.

Vowels

Vowel phonemes of Chara

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

/a/ is realized as [ə] in unstressed word-medial syllables.

Length is minimally contrastive. Minimal pairs include /mola/ 'fish', /moːla/ 'egg'; /masa/ 'to wash', /maːsa/ 'leopard'; /buna/ 'flower', /buːna/ 'coffee'.

Suprasegmentals

Chara has phonemic stress. Examples: /ˈbakʼa/ 'to slap', /baˈkʼa/ 'empty'; /ˈwoja/ 'to come', /woˈja/ 'wolf'.

Morphophonemics

Morpheme-initial nasals assimilate point of articulation to that of the preceding consonant, usually found when verbs are suffixed with the singular imperative morpheme /-na/, e.g. /dub-na/ 'to hit.imp' → [dubma] 'hit!'.

Morphology

Chara generally uses noun case suffixes and postpositions.

Nouns are inflected for gender, number, definiteness, case, and possession. These are all suffixes, except for the possessive.

Gender pairs are usually lexical, except for a few with /-i/ in the masculine and /-a/ in the feminine. Examples:

/mansa/ 'ox', /mija/ 'cow'

/izi/ 'he', /iza/ 'she'

Nouns and adjectives inflect for plural with the suffix /-eːndi/. Examples:

/ina/ 'mother', /ineːndi/ 'mothers'

/dala/ 'while (sg.)', /daleːndi/ 'white (pl.)'

Definiteness in nouns is marked with the suffix /-naːzi/ (as an independent word meaning 'the male/man') for masculines and /-ena/ for feminines. Adjectives take /-bi/ in the masculine and /-ena/ in the feminine. Examples:

/mansa/ 'ox', /mansanaːzi/ 'the ox'

/mija/ 'cow', /mijena/ 'the cow/

/karta/ 'black', /kartabi/ 'the black (m.)', /kartena/ 'the black (f.)'

Nouns and adjectives may be marked for nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, ablative, instrumental

Instrumental

An instrumental is a musical composition or recording without lyrics or singing, although it might include some non-articulate vocal input; the music is primarily or exclusively produced by musical instruments....

, or vocative case

Vocative case

The vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence...

. The nominative suffix is /-i/, accusative /-(i)s/, dative /-(i)ri/, genitive /-e/, , ablative /-kaj/, instrumental /-ne/, and vocative /-o/.

Chara pronouns

Person		Independent		Possessive
		(s)	(pl)	(s)
1		/tani/	/noːne~nuni/	/tareri/
2		/neːni/	/inˈti/	/nereri/
3	(m)	/izi/	/itsendi/	/izeri/
	(f)	/iza/

Bound possessive pronouns: /ta-mija/ 'my cow', /ne-mija/ 'your cow', /iza-mija/ 'his cow'.

Syntax

Chara is a subject–object–verb language.

Adjectives end in /-a/ like nouns, and inflect for number, definiteness, plurality, and case. In noun phrases adjectives precede their nouns, and are not inflected.

Examples

Numerals 1-10

Number	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Chara	issa:	nanta:	keza:	obda:	uchcha	sa:fun	la:pun	nandirse	biza:	tantsa:

External links

• Resources in and about the Chara language