Dirasha is a member of the East Cushitic

East Cushitic languages

The Lowland East Cushitic languages comprise two dozen languages of the Cushitic family within Afro-Asiatic. They are spoken mainly in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia, and by Cushitic groups in northern Kenya....

 branch of the 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...

 family. It is spoken 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...

 in the Omo

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...

 Region, in the hills west of Lake Chamo

Lake Chamo

Lake Chamo is a lake in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region of southern Ethiopia. It is located in the Great Rift Valley at an elevation of 1,110 meters. It is just to the south of Lake Abaya and the city of Arba Minch, and east of the Guge Mountains.The lake's northern end...

, around Gidole

Gidole

Gidole is a town in southern Ethiopia, and is the administrative center of the Dirashe special woreda. Located in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region, this town has a latitude and longitude of with an elevation ranging from 2045 to 2650 meters above sea level...

 town. A number of speakers also use Oromo

Oromo language

Oromo, also known as Afaan Oromo, Oromiffa, Afan Boran, Afan Orma, and sometimes in other languages by variant spellings of these names , is an Afro-Asiatic language, and the most widely spoken of the Cushitic family. Forms of Oromo are spoken as a first language by more than 25 million Oromo and...

 or Komso. According to Wondwosen, the "Dirasha" is the name of the people, and the name of the language is given variously as "Dirashitata, Dirayta and Diraytata" (2006:3,4).

The language has a three ejective consonant phonemes and two implosive consonant

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...

 phonemes, fitting the pattern of the Ethiopian Language Area

Ethiopian Language Area

Charles Ferguson first proposed the Ethiopian Language Area . He posited a number of phonological and morpho-syntactic features that were found widely across Ethiopia , including the Ethio-Semitic, Cushitic, and Omotic languages, Charles Ferguson first proposed the Ethiopian Language Area (1970,...

. It has two tones and five vowels. Duration (or gemination

Gemination

In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....

) is distinctive for both consonants and vowels (Wondwosen 2006:9,10).

External links

• Ethnologue
  Ethnologue
  Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...
  
  information on Dirasha
• Klaus Wedekind, "Sociolinguistic Survey Report of the Languages of the Gawwada (Dullay), Diraasha (Gidole), Muusiye (Bussa) Areas" SIL Electronic Survey Reports: SILESR 2002-065 (contains a word-list of Dirasha, with 320 entries)