Gedeo is the name of a Highland East Cushitic language 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 spoken in south central 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...

. Alternate names for the language include Derasa, Deresa, Darassa, Geddeo, Derasanya, Darasa. It is spoken by the Gedeo people

Gedeo people

The Gedeo are an ethnic group in southern Ethiopia. The Gedeo Zone in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region is named for this people...

, who live in the highland area, southwest of Dila

Dila, Ethiopia

Dilla is a market town in southern Ethiopia. The administrative center of the Gedeo Zone in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region , and located on the main road from Addis Ababa to Nairobi, this town has a longitude and latitude of with an elevation of 1570 meters above sea...

 and east of Lake Abaya

Lake Abaya

Lake Abaya is a lake in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region of Ethiopia. It was named Lake Margherita by the Italian explorer Vittorio Bottego, the first European commonly thought to visit the lake, to honor the wife of king Umberto I of Italy, Queen Margherita...

.

The languages has SOV word order. Verbs are marked for person, number, and gender of subject. Verbs are marked for voice: active, causative, middle, and passive.

The New Testament was published in the Gedeo language in 1986, using the Ethiopian syllabary.

External links

• Information on Linguist List http://linguistlist.org/forms/langs/LLDescription.cfm?code=drs
• Introduction to Gedeo dictionary
• Gedeo dictionary