Inor sometimes called Ennemor, is a Semitic language

Semitic languages

The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...

 spoken in 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...

, mainly within the Gurage Zone

Gurage Zone

Gurage is a Zone in the Ethiopian Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region . This zone is named for the Gurage people, whose homeland lies in this zone. Gurage is bordered on the south by Hadiya on the west north and east by the Oromia Region, and on the southeast by Silte. Its highest...

 in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region, and by speakers of the language who have settled in Ethiopian cities, especially Addis Ababa

Addis Ababa

Addis Ababa is the capital city of Ethiopia...

. In addition to the morphological complexity that is common to all Semitic languages, Inor exhibits the very complex morphophonology

Morphophonology

Morphophonology is a branch of linguistics which studies, in general, the interaction between morphological and phonetic processes. When a morpheme is attached to a word, it can alter the phonetic environments of other morphemes in that word. Morphophonemics attempts to describe this process...

 characteristic of West Gurage languages.

Endegegn, Enner, Gyeto, and the extinct dialect Mesmes

Mesmes language

The Mesmes language is an extinct language, one of the West Gurage languages, a cluster of Semitic languages in Ethiopia. There are still many people who claim the Mesmes ethnic identity, but none who speak the language. The last speaker of the language was interviewed by a language survey team...

 are all sometimes considered dialects of Inor.

Inor possesses nasal vowel

Nasal vowel

A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...

s, unusual for a Gurage language, and many of these may be the result of historical rhinoglottophilia

Rhinoglottophilia

In linguistics, rhinoglottophilia refers to the connection between laryngeal and nasal articulations. The term was coined by James A. Matisoff in 1975....

.

Consonants

Inor consonants

		labial		alveolar	alveo- palatal	palatal	velar			glottal
		plain	labialized				plain	palatalized Palatalization In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....	lab.	plain	lab.
Stops Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...  and affricates Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...	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...			t’	tʃ’		k’	kʲ’	kʷ’
	voiceless Voice (phonetics) Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...	p	pʷ	t	tʃ		k	kʲ	kʷ	ʔ	ʔʷ
	voiced Voice (phonetics) Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...	b	bʷ	d	dʒ		ɡ	ɡʲ	ɡʷ
Fricatives 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...	voiceless	f	fʷ	s	ʃ		x	xʲ	xʷ
	voiced			z	ʒ
Nasals 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 :...		m	mʷ	n	ɳ	ɲ	ŋ
Approximants 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...	plain	β̞		(l)		j			w
	nasalized Nasalization In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth...	β̞̃
Rhotics Rhotic consonant In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet...	plain			r
	nasalized			r̃

Vowels

Inor vowels

	front	central	back
high	i	ɨ	u
mid	e	ə	o
low	æ		a

[ɨ] may be regarded as largely epenthetic and only marginally phonemic.

External links

• Ethnologue entry for Inor