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69-483: Sanyi Nagassa Gammachis Aboye Liban Guracha Sabaif Galgalo Rabira Bilisumma Non-state opponents The Oromo Liberation Army ( OLA ; Oromo : Waraana Bilisummaa Oromoo , WBO) is an armed opposition group active in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia . The OLA consist primarily of former armed members of the pre-peace deal Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) who refused to disarm out of skepticism of

138-578: A peace agreement was signed between the Ethiopian government and the OLF, declaring a ceasefire , the OLF's disarming of weapons, the continuation of OLF's activities by "peaceful means", and the creation of a joint committee for implementing the agreement. Some factions of OLF's armed wing, the Oromo Liberation Army, refused to disarm out of skepticism of the government's intent to abide by

207-499: A reciprocal pronoun wal (English 'each other') that is used like of/if . That is, it is inflected for case but not person, number, or gender: wal jaalatu 'they like each other' (base form of wal ), kennaa walii bitan 'they bought each other gifts' (dative of wal ). Like English, Oromo makes a two-way distinction between proximal ('this, these') and distal ('that, those') demonstrative pronouns and adjectives. Some dialects distinguish masculine and feminine for

276-420: A stem , representing the lexical meaning of the verb, and a suffix , representing tense or aspect and subject agreement. For example, in dhufne 'we came', dhuf- is the stem ('come') and -ne indicates that the tense is past and that the subject of the verb is first person plural. As in many other Afroasiatic languages , Oromo makes a basic two-way distinction in its verb system between

345-441: A first language by an additional half-million people in parts of northern and eastern Kenya . It is also spoken by smaller numbers of emigrants in other African countries such as South Africa , Libya , Egypt and Sudan . Oromo is the most widely spoken Cushitic language and among the five languages of Africa with the largest mother-tongue populations. Oromo serves as one of the official working languages of Ethiopia and

414-432: A lot in the details, but the following changes are common. Verbs whose stems end in two consonants and whose suffix begins with a consonant must insert a vowel to break up the consonants since the language does not permit sequences of three consonants. There are two ways this can happen: either the vowel i is inserted between the stem and the suffix, or the final stem consonants are switched (an example of metathesis ) and

483-651: A military struggle are not to be allowed on its platform. On 6 May 2021, the Ethiopian House of Peoples' Representatives declared OLA to be a terrorist organisation. Oromo language With more than 41.7 million speakers making up 33.8% of the total Ethiopian population , Oromo has the largest number of native speakers in Ethiopia, and ranks as the second most widely spoken language in Ethiopia by total number of speakers (including second-language speakers) following Amharic . Forms of Oromo are spoken as

552-584: A number of members of other ethnicities who are in contact with the Oromo speak it as a second language. See, for example, the Omotic -speaking Bambassi and the Nilo-Saharan -speaking Kwama in northwestern Oromia. The Oromo people use a highly developed oral tradition. In the 19th century, scholars began writing in the Oromo language using Latin script . In 1842, Johann Ludwig Krapf began translations of

621-438: A vowel (e.g. in word-final environments or as part of consonant clusters). The Arabic script has also been used intermittently in areas with Muslim populations. Like most other Ethiopian languages, whether Semitic, Cushitic, or Omotic, Oromo has a set of ejective consonants , that is, voiceless stops or affricates that are accompanied by glottalization and an explosive burst of air. Oromo has another glottalized phone that

690-476: A word. This article uses ⟨c⟩ consistently for / tʃʼ / and ⟨ch⟩ for / tʃ / . Only the penultimate or final syllable of a root can have a high tone, and if the penultimate is high, the final must also be high; this implies that Oromo has a pitch-accent system (in which the tone need be specified only on one syllable, the others being predictable) rather than a tone system (in which each syllable must have its tone specified), although

759-868: Is Milk) became a hit in Ethiopia. To combat Somali wide-reaching influence, the Ethiopian Government initiated an Oromo language program radio of their own. Within Kenya there has been radio broadcasting in Oromo (in the Borana dialect) on the Voice of Kenya since at least the 1980s. The Borana Bible in Kenya was printed in 1995 using the Latin alphabet, but not using the same spelling rules as in Ethiopian Qubee. The first comprehensive online Oromo dictionary

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828-559: Is a subject pro-drop language . That is, neutral sentences in which the subject is not emphasized do not require independent subject pronouns: kaleessa dhufne 'we came yesterday'. The Oromo word that translates 'we' does not appear in this sentence, though the person and number are marked on the verb dhufne ('we came') by the suffix -ne . When the subject in such sentences needs to be given prominence for some reason, an independent pronoun can be used: ' nuti kaleessa dhufne ' ' we came yesterday'. The table below gives forms of

897-404: Is a two-way distinction between singular ('I', 'you sg.') and plural ('we', 'you pl.'), whereas for third person, there is a two-way distinction in the singular ('he', 'she') and a single form for the plural ('they'). Because Oromo has only two genders, there is no pronoun corresponding to English it ; the masculine or feminine pronoun is used according to the gender of the noun referred to. Oromo

966-711: Is also the working language of several of the states within the Ethiopian federal system including Oromia , Harari and Dire Dawa regional states and of the Oromia Zone in the Amhara Region . It is a language of primary education in Oromia , Harari , Dire Dawa , Benishangul-Gumuz and Addis Ababa and of the Oromia Zone in the Amhara Region . It is used as an internet language for federal websites along with Tigrinya . Under Haile Selassie 's regime, Oromo

1035-419: Is more unusual, an implosive retroflex stop , "dh" in Oromo orthography, a sound that is like an English "d" produced with the tongue curled back slightly and with the air drawn in so that a glottal stop is heard before the following vowel begins. It is retroflex in most dialects, though it is not strongly implosive and may reduce to a flap between vowels. One source describes it as voiceless [ᶑ̥] . Oromo has

1104-566: Is to treat the "singular" form as unspecified for number. When it is important to make the plurality of a referent clear, the plural form of a noun is used. Noun plurals are formed through the addition of suffixes . The most common plural suffix is -oota ; a final vowel is dropped before the suffix, and in the western dialects, the suffix becomes -ota following a syllable with a long vowel: mana 'house', manoota 'houses', hiriyaa 'friend', hiriyoota 'friends', barsiisaa 'teacher', barsiiso(o)ta 'teachers'. Among

1173-484: Is to use the noun meaning 'self': of(i) or if(i) . This noun is inflected for case but, unless it is being emphasized, not for person, number, or gender: isheen of laalti 'she looks at herself' (base form of of ), isheen ofiif makiinaa bitte 'she bought herself a car' (dative of of ). The other possibility is to use the noun meaning 'head', mataa , with possessive suffixes: mataa koo 'myself', mataa kee 'yourself (s.)', etc. Oromo has

1242-666: The medium of instruction in elementary schools throughout the region, including areas where other ethnic groups live speaking their languages, and as a language of administration within the region. Since the OLF left the transitional Ethiopian government in the early 1990s, the Oromo Peoples' Democratic Organization (OPDO) continued developing Oromo in Ethiopia. Radio broadcasts began in the Oromo language in Somalia in 1960 by Radio Mogadishu . The programme featured music and propaganda. A song Bilisummaan Aannaani (Liberation

1311-433: The ) with suffixes on the noun: -(t)icha for masculine nouns (the ch is geminated though this is not normally indicated in writing) and -(t)ittii for feminine nouns. Vowel endings of nouns are dropped before these suffixes: karaa 'road', karicha 'the road', nama 'man', namicha / namticha 'the man', haroo 'lake', harittii 'the lake'. For animate nouns that can take either gender,

1380-528: The Ethiopian governments attempts at sparking confrontations with "our brothers and sisters from different communities". They further added on and called for Oromo's to protect members of ethnic minorities in the Oromia region In their January 2023 political manifesto the OLA reiterated their calls for independent investigations into atrocities or reports of atrocities committed in Oromia, saying "We strongly encourage

1449-591: The Ethnologue also lists 722,000 speakers of Borana and Orma , two languages closely related to Ethiopian Oromo. Within Ethiopia, Oromo is the language with the largest number of native speakers. Within Africa, Oromo is the language with the fourth most speakers, after Arabic (if one counts the mutually unintelligible spoken forms of Arabic as a single language and assumes the same for the varieties of Oromo), Swahili , and Hausa . Besides first language speakers,

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1518-536: The Gospels of John and Matthew into Oromo, as well as a first grammar and vocabulary. The first Oromo dictionary and grammar was produced by German scholar Karl Tutschek in 1844. The first printing of a transliteration of Oromo language was in 1846 in a German newspaper in an article on the Oromo in Germany. After Abyssinia annexed Oromo's territory, the language's development into a full-fledged writing instrument

1587-739: The Karayu Oromo community were executed. The government initially had attempted to attribute the killings to the OLA, but after witnesses and two people who managed to escape attributed it to government forces, this led to a fallout in which a Member of the House of Peoples' Representatives, the Ethiopian Human Right's Commission, the State minister for Peace and the secretary of the Oromo Gada leaders council all had publicly implicated

1656-599: The OLA by its chosen name, instead referring to it as Shene ( Oromo : Shanee , lit.   'five'), Oneg or OLF-Shene . The Oromo Liberation Army, then the military wing of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), was formed in 1974, evolving from the Bale Revolt that started in the 1960s in response to the Ethiopian government's abuses and oppression of the Oromo people . In August 2018,

1725-457: The OLA launched a large-scale military offensive into West and East Welega. On 6 November 2022, they entered the town of Nekemte where they engaged in urban combat with Ethiopian state forces before a same-day retreat. Meta(Facebook) designates OLA as a "Violent non-state actor" on its list of organizations or individuals that proclaim a violent mission or are engaged in violence. According to Facebook's policy, non-state actors that are engaged in

1794-411: The Oromo people from political exclusion, economic exploitation, and socio-cultural marginalization. a) We fight to realize the Oromo people's right to freely determine their political status. For the right of our people to determine their political destiny and establish a responsive government through freely elected representatives. b) We fight to secure the Oromo people's economic sovereignty. To stop

1863-664: The Welega Zone, Oromia Region including East , West , Kellam , Horo and Illu . On 1 November, Jaal Marroo stated that the OLA had taken "several towns in western, central, and southern Oromia , facing little resistance from government forces who were retreating." The OLA also used the opportunity presented by the Tigray War to take brief control of Kamisee on 31 October 2021, as the Tigray Defence Forces advanced on Kombolcha . In late October 2022,

1932-528: The Western Command. As of 29 November 2021, Gemechu Aboye was the deputy leader of OLA, according to Sveriges Radio . The OLA international spokesperson is Odaa Tarbii. In January 2023 the OLF-OLA released a political manifesto in which they laid out their aims: "We, the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), fight for the Oromo people's right to self-determination . We fight for the freedom of

2001-623: The accusations. On 2 November 2020, 54 people—mostly ethnic Amhara women, children and elderly people—were killed in the village of Gawa Qanqa , after government security forces "abruptly and inexplicably left", by attackers identifying themselves as OLA. OLA denied responsibility. Instead saying: "The OLA would like to express its deepest condolences to all the victims of these terrible atrocities. We also want to underline that we are not responsible for these acts. The local admin[instration] works alongside Oromia Police & ex-OLA defectors to carry out these operations." In June 2022, locals on

2070-428: The agreement, thereby disassociating itself from the OLF and leading to the Oromo Liberation Army separate from the OLF in its current form. Many of the OLF members that disarmed ended up flocking back to the OLA after failing to see components of the peace deal be honored. As of the late 2010s, Kumsa Diriba, commonly known by his nom-de-guerre as Jaal Maaroo , is the commander-in-chief of OLA, largely operating with

2139-421: The autobenefactive; in this case the s of the causative is replaced by f : deebi '- 'return (intransitive)', deebis- 'return (transitive), answer', deebifam- 'be returned, be answered', deebifadh- 'get back for oneself'. Another derived verbal aspect is the frequentative or "intensive," formed by copying the first consonant and vowel of the verb root and geminating the second occurrence of

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2208-403: The basis for three derived voices, passive, causative, and autobenefactive, each formed with addition of a suffix to the root, yielding the stem that the inflectional suffixes are added to. The voice suffixes can be combined in various ways. Two causative suffixes are possible: ka '- 'go up', kaas- 'pick up', kaasis- 'cause to pick up'. The causative may be followed by the passive or

2277-520: The cases, there is a range of forms possible, some covering more than one case, and the differences in meaning among these alternatives may be quite subtle. In most languages, there is a small number of basic distinctions of person , number , and often gender that play a role within the grammar of the language. Oromo and English are such languages. We see these distinctions within the basic set of independent personal pronouns, for example, English I , Oromo ani ; English they , Oromo ' isaani ' and

2346-434: The class is not predictable from the verb stem. It is the forms that precede suffixes beginning with consonants ( t and n ) that differ from the usual pattern. The third person masculine singular, second person singular, and first person plural present forms are shown for an example verb in each class. The common verbs fedh- 'want' and godh- 'do' deviate from the basic conjugation pattern in that long vowels replace

2415-472: The definite suffix may indicate the intended gender: qaalluu 'priest', qaallicha 'the priest (m.)', qallittii 'the priest (f.)'. The definite suffixes appear to be used less often than the in English, and they seem not to co-occur with the plural suffixes. Oromo nouns appear in seven grammatical cases , each indicated by a suffix, the lengthening of the noun's final vowel, or both. For some of

2484-541: The digraphs ch, dh, ny, ph, sh. Gemination is not obligatorily marked for digraphs, though some writers indicate it by doubling the first element: qopphaa'uu 'be prepared'. In the charts below, the International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for a phoneme is shown in brackets where it differs from the Oromo letter. The phonemes /p v z/ appear in parentheses because they are only found in recently adopted words. There have been minor changes in

2553-491: The exploitation of our people's natural and human resources. To develop these resources for the benefit of all. c) We fight to realize the socio-cultural rights of our people. We demand respect for and full recognition of the Oromo language, culture, and history. " In a press release on December 10, 2022, the OLA High Command stated their war was not with any population group and called on the Oromo people to avoid

2622-462: The geminated consonants that would result when suffixes beginning with t or n are added: fedha 'he wants', feeta 'you (sg.) want', feena 'we want', feetu 'you (pl.) want', hin feene 'didn't want', etc. The verb dhuf- 'come' has the irregular imperatives koottu , koottaa . The verb deem- 'go' has, alongside regular imperative forms, the irregular imperatives deemi , deemaa . An Oromo verb root can be

2691-444: The gender of the modified noun). However, in the western dialects, the masculine forms (those beginning with k- ) are used in all cases. Possessive adjectives may take the case endings for the nouns they modify: ganda kootti 'to my village' ( -tti : locative case). As in languages such as French , Russian , and Turkish , the Oromo second person plural is also used as a polite singular form, for reference to people that

2760-484: The government responsible for the killings. On July 5, 2022, Hangassa Ibrahim, a member of the Ethiopian parliament, went on Facebook live stating it was not the OLA that was committing these massacres, but in fact another group formed by actors in the regional government. He stated that "It is rather the Shene organized by these people who have massacred citizens. It is not Jaal Maaroo's Shene [OLA] which has been massacring

2829-703: The government. According to the article, he called himself OLA but he didn't answer to the Commander Jaal Marroo. Residents said Fekade's troops fought the OLA at times but rarely ever engaged with the government.The OLA says he poses as an OLA commander but cooperates with the government. In the massacre at Agamsa, Fekade's forces were a short walk away from the town when Oromia Regional Government decided to leave despite residents urging them not to. Hours later, witnesses say they saw Fekade's men arrive in which they saw 5-18 Amharas killed by his forces. On November 31, 2021, 14 traditional ethnic Oromo leaders of

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2898-471: The ground in Ethiopia accused the OLA of killing over 200 ethnic Amhara. The OLA denies these allegations, instead saying the killings were committed by retreating government forces and militia. The attack you are referring to was committed by the regime's military and local militia as they retreated from their camp in Gimbi following our recent offensive... They escaped to an area called Tole, where they attacked

2967-509: The initial consonant. The resulting stem indicates the repetition or intensive performance of the action of the verb. Examples: bul- 'spend the night', bubbul- 'spend several nights', cab- 'break', caccab- 'break to pieces, break completely'; dhiib- 'push, apply pressure', dhiddhiib- 'massage'. The infinitive is formed from a verb stem with the addition of the suffix -uu . Verbs whose stems end in -dh (in particular all autobenefactive verbs) change this to ch before

3036-486: The international community, through the United Nations and/or other mechanisms, to find out the truth and live up to its pledge of 'Never Again.' On our part, we continue to call for credible, internationally mandated independent investigations into the atrocities or reports of atrocities committed in Oromia." The OLA has been accused of committing extrajudicial killings by the Ethiopian government. The OLA denied

3105-494: The local population and destroyed their property as retaliation for their perceived support for the OLA. Our fighters had not even reached that area when the attacks took place. - OLA International Spokesperson "Odaa Tarbii" in a message to AP News On May 21, 2023, the Wall Street Journal released a publication in which witnesses were attributing massacres to a "Fekade Abdisa". An ex-OLA operative who defected to

3174-485: The newspaper Bariisaa , Urjii and many others, were written in the traditional Ethiopic script. Plans to introduce Oromo language instruction in schools, however, were not realized until the government of Mengistu Haile Mariam was overthrown in 1991, except in regions controlled by the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). With the creation of the regional state of Oromia under the new system of ethnic federalism in Ethiopia, it has been possible to introduce Oromo as

3243-424: The ones responsible for the massacres occurring in Oromia. The OLA states that this militia wears artificial wigs and uniforms to impersonate OLA members. According to a 2021 Ethiopian Human Rights Commission report, there were incidents where government forces would film prisoners after forcing them to wear artificial hair, military uniforms and carry weapons. By late October 2021, the OLA controlled various areas in

3312-473: The orthography since it was first adopted: ⟨x⟩ ( [ tʼ ] ) was originally rendered ⟨th⟩ , and there has been some confusion among authors in the use of ⟨c⟩ and ⟨ch⟩ in representing the phonemes / tʃʼ / and / tʃ / , with some early works using ⟨c⟩ for / tʃ / and ⟨ch⟩ for / tʃʼ / and even ⟨c⟩ for different phonemes depending on where it appears in

3381-422: The other common plural suffixes are -(w)wan , -een , and -(a)an ; the latter two may cause a preceding consonant to be doubled: waggaa 'year', waggaawwan 'years', laga 'river', laggeen 'rivers', ilma 'son', ilmaan 'sons'. Oromo has no indefinite articles (corresponding to English a , some ), but (except in the southern dialects) it indicates definiteness (English

3450-1190: The other. Grammatical gender in Oromo enters into the grammar in the following ways: Except in some southern dialects, there is nothing in the form of most nouns that indicates their gender. A small number of nouns pairs for people, however, end in -eessa (m.) and -eettii (f.), as do adjectives when they are used as nouns: obboleessa 'brother', obboleettii 'sister', dureessa 'the rich one (m.)', hiyyeettii 'the poor one (f.)'. Grammatical gender normally agrees with natural gender for people and animals; thus nouns such as Abbaa 'father', Ilma 'son', and sangaa 'ox' are masculine, while nouns such as haadha 'mother' and intala 'girl, daughter' are feminine. However, most names for animals do not specify biological gender. Names of astronomical bodies are feminine: aduu 'sun', urjii 'star'. The gender of other inanimate nouns varies somewhat among dialects. Oromo displays singular and plural number , but nouns that refer to multiple entities are not obligatorily plural: nama 'man' namoota 'people', nama shan 'five men' namoota shan 'five people'. Another way of looking at this

3519-412: The particle hin ). For example, deemne 'we went', deemna 'we go', akka deemnu 'that we go', haa deemnu 'let's go', hin deemnu 'we don't go'. There is also a separate imperative form: deemi 'go (sg.)!'. The table below shows the conjugation in the affirmative and negative of the verb beek- 'know'. The first person singular present and past affirmative forms require

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3588-400: The particular verb tense / aspect / mood , they are normally not considered to be pronouns and are discussed elsewhere in this article under verb conjugation . In all of these areas of the grammar—independent pronouns, possessive adjectives, possessive pronouns, and subject–verb agreement—Oromo distinguishes seven combinations of person, number, and gender. For first and second persons, there

3657-478: The peace deal, and former youth protestors who grew disillusioned with nonviolent resistance. The Ethiopian government now considers the OLF to be a legal political party but the OLA to be a terrorist group, In 2021, the group announced it had established a political wing and would adopt Oromo Liberation Front-Oromo Liberation Army (OLF-OLA) (Oromo: Adda Bilisummaa Oromoo-Waraana Bilisummaa Oromoo, ABO-WBO) as its official name. The Ethiopian government refuses to call

3726-485: The people,". He further stated that it was not the OLA's plan to kill and massacre ethnic Amharas but the ruling Prosperity Party and that if Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed does not tear down the cabinet of the Oromia region and replace it with a new one, then the Prime Minister himself is the instigator behind it all. This corroborates OLA's claim that a government formed state-backed militia called "Gachana Sirna" are

3795-495: The personal pronouns in the different cases, as well as the possessive adjectives. For the first person plural and third person singular feminine categories, there is considerable variation across dialects; only some of the possibilities are shown. The possessive adjectives, treated as separate words here, are sometimes written as noun suffixes. In most dialects there is a distinction between masculine and feminine possessive adjectives for first and second person (the form agreeing with

3864-499: The proximal pronouns; in the western dialects the masculine forms (beginning with k- ) are used for both genders. Unlike in English, singular and plural demonstratives are not distinguished, but, as for nouns and personal pronouns in the language, case is distinguished. Only the base and nominative forms are shown in the table below; the other cases are formed from the base form as for nouns, for example, sanatti 'at/on/in that' (locative case). An Oromo verb consists minimally of

3933-475: The rules are complex (each morpheme can contribute its own tone pattern to the word), so that "one can call Oromo a pitch-accent system in terms of the basic lexical representation of pitch, and a tone system in terms of its surface realization." The stressed syllable is perceived as the first syllable of a word with high pitch. Like most other Afroasiatic languages , Oromo has two grammatical genders , masculine and feminine, and all nouns belong to either one or

4002-444: The set of possessive adjectives and pronouns , for example, English my , Oromo koo ; English mine , Oromo kan koo . In Oromo, the same distinctions are also reflected in subject–verb agreement: Oromo verbs (with a few exceptions) agree with their subjects ; that is, the person, number, and (singular third person) gender of the subject of the verb are marked by suffixes on the verb. Because these suffixes vary greatly with

4071-498: The speaker wishes to show respect towards. This usage is an example of the so-called T-V distinction that is made in many languages. In addition, the third person plural may be used for polite reference to a single third person (either 'he' or 'she'). For possessive pronouns ('mine', 'yours', etc.), Oromo adds the possessive adjectives to kan 'of': kan koo 'mine', kan kee 'yours', etc. Oromo has two ways of expressing reflexive pronouns ('myself', 'yourself', etc.). One

4140-431: The suffix -n to appear on the word preceding the verb or the word nan before the verb. The negative particle hin , shown as a separate word in the table, is sometimes written as a prefix on the verb. For verbs with stems ending in certain consonants and suffixes beginning with consonants (that is, t or n ), there are predictable changes to one or the other of the consonants. The dialects vary

4209-638: The suffix. Examples: dhug- 'drink', dhuguu 'to drink'; ga '- 'reach', ga ' uu 'to reach'; jedh- 'say', jechu 'to say'. The verb fedh- is exceptional; its infinitive is fedhuu rather than the expected fechuu . The infinitive behaves like a noun; that is, it can take any of the case suffixes. Examples: ga ' uu 'to reach', ga ' uuf 'in order to reach' (dative case); dhug- 'drink', dhugam- 'be drunk', dhugamuu to be drunk', dhugamuudhaan 'by being drunk' (instrumental case). Extrajudicial killing Too Many Requests If you report this error to

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4278-417: The two tensed forms, past (or "perfect") and present (or "imperfect" or "non-past"). Each of these has its own set of tense/agreement suffixes. There is a third conjugation based on the present which has three functions: it is used in place of the present in subordinate clauses , for the jussive ('let me/us/him, etc. V', together with the particle haa ), and for the negative of the present (together with

4347-483: The typical Eastern Cushitic set of five short and five long vowels, indicated in the orthography by doubling the five vowel letters. The difference in length is contrastive, for example, hara 'lake', haaraa 'new'. Gemination is also significant in Oromo. That is, consonant length can distinguish words from one another, for example, badaa 'bad', baddaa 'highland'. In the Qubee alphabet, letters include

4416-411: The vowel a is inserted between them. For example, arg- 'see', arga 'he sees', argina or agarra (from agar-na ) 'we see'; kolf- 'laugh', kolfe 'he laughed', kolfite or kofalte 'you (sg.) laughed'. Verbs whose stems end in the consonant ' (which may appear as h , w , or y in some words, depending on the dialect) belong to three different conjugation classes;

4485-717: Was an indigenous Oromo script invented by Sheikh Bakri Sapalo (1895–1980; also known by his birth name, Abubaker Usman Odaa) in the late 1950s, and used underground afterwards. Despite structural and organizational influences from Ge'ez and the Arabic script , it is a graphically independent creation designed specifically for Oromo phonology. It is largely an Abugida in nature, but lacks the inherent vowel present in many such systems; in actual use, all consonant characters are obligatorily marked either with vowel signs (producing CV syllables) or with separate marks used to denote geminated consonants or pure/standalone consonants not followed by

4554-533: Was banned in education, in conversation, and in administrative matters. Ethnologue (2015) assigns five ISO codes to Oromo: Blench (2006) divides Oromo into four languages: Some of the varieties of Oromo have been examined and classified. About 85 percent of Oromo speakers live in Ethiopia , mainly in the Oromia Region . In addition, in Somalia there are also some speakers of the language. In Kenya ,

4623-518: Was developed by the Jimma Times Oromiffa Group (JTOG) in cooperation with SelamSoft. Voice of America also broadcasts in Oromo alongside its other horn of Africa programs. In May 2022, Google Translate added Afaan Oromo as translation. Oromo and Qubee are currently utilized by the Ethiopian government's state radios, TV stations and regional government newspaper. Oromo is written with a Latin alphabet called Qubee which

4692-550: Was formally adopted in 1991. Various versions of the Latin-based orthography had been used previously, mostly by Oromos outside of Ethiopia and by the OLF by the late 1970s (Heine 1986). With the adoption of Qubee, it is believed more texts were written in the Oromo language between 1991 and 1997 than in the previous 100 years. In Kenya, the Borana and Waata also use Roman letters but with different systems. The Sapalo script

4761-537: Was interrupted. The few works that had been published, most notably Onesimos Nesib 's and Aster Ganno 's translations of the Bible from the late 19th century, were written in the Ge'ez alphabet . Following the 1974 Revolution , the government undertook a literacy campaign in several languages, including Oromo, and publishing and radio broadcasts began in the language. All Oromo materials printed in Ethiopia at that time, such as

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