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52-602: Somali people. The Silcis inhabit the traditional coastal region of Benadir in the southern part of Somalia. This region should not be confused with the much smaller present day Banaadir administrative region ( gobol ) which contains Somalia’s capital Mogadishu . Silcis live, or have historically lived, along the Shabeelle River in towns such as Afgooye and Jowhaar , as well as along the coast, especially in Mogadishu and Warsheekh . The Silcis rose to prominence in

104-747: A Latin orthography as the official national alphabet over several other writing scripts that were then in use. Concurrently, the Italian -language daily newspaper Stella d'Ottobre ("The October Star") was nationalized, renamed to Xiddigta Oktoobar , and began publishing in Somali. The state-run Radio Mogadishu has also broadcast in Somali since 1951. Additionally, other state-run public networks like Somaliland National TV , regional public networks such as Puntland TV and Radio and, as well as Eastern Television Network and Horn Cable Television , among other private broadcasters, air programs in Somali. Somali

156-533: A Bulo Mererta”]. Luling claims that the Silcis "became an insignificant, scattered people”. It is apparent, however, from the historical record beginning in the 19th century that the Silcis became established at Warsheekh and that this became their new centre. The Italian colonial administration signed a "TREATY of Peace, Friendship and Protection" with the "Chiefs of Warsheekh (Seles Gorgate and Abgal)" on August 26, 1894. The Italians also confirmed Haji Mao Mallim Elmi,

208-820: A Silcis member, as the chief of Warsheekh in 1897. In 1951, a large number of representatives of the Silcis submitted an appeal to the United Nations Advisory Council for the Trust Territory of Somaliland under Italian Administration, in order to protest the taking of Silcis lands by Italians. The signatories submitted the appeal “on behalf of the Seles Gorgate inhabitants living in Warsheikh, Giohar, Harar, Jigjiga, Mogadishu and Afgoi". Banaadir Banaadir ( Somali : Banaadir , Arabic : بنادر , Italian : Benadir )

260-493: A prominent 40,000-entry Somali dictionary. Most of the terms consisted of commonly used nouns. These lexical borrowings may have been more extensive in the past since a few words that Zaborski (1967:122) observed in the older literature were absent in Agostini's later work. In addition, the majority of personal names are derived from Arabic. The Somali language also contains a few Indo-European loanwords that were retained from

312-524: Is a result of a long series of southward population movements over the past ten centuries from the Gulf of Aden littoral. Lamberti subdivides Northern Somali into three dialects: Northern Somali proper (spoken in the northwest; he describes this dialect as Northern Somali in the proper sense), the Darod group (spoken in the northeast and along the eastern Ethiopia frontier; greatest number of speakers overall), and

364-448: Is a tonal language, whereas Banti (1988) suggests that it is a pitch system. The syllable structure of Somali is (C)V(C). Root morphemes usually have a mono- or di-syllabic structure. Clusters of two consonants do not occur word-initially or word-finally, i.e., they only occur at syllable boundaries. The following consonants can be geminate: /b/, /d/, /ɖ/, /ɡ/, /ɢ/, /m/, /n/, /r/ and /l/. The following cannot be geminate: /t/, /k/ and

416-732: Is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch. It is spoken primarily in Greater Somalia , and by the Somali diaspora as a mother tongue. Somali is an official language in both Somalia and Ethiopia , and serves as a national language in Djibouti , it is also a recognised minority language in Kenya . The Somali language is officially written with the Latin alphabet although

468-713: Is an administrative region ( gobol ) in southeastern Somalia . It covers the same area as the city of Mogadishu , which serves as the capital. It is the only region in the country not belonging to any of the six states . It is bordered to the northwest by the Shabelle river, and to the southeast by the Indian Ocean. Although by far the smallest administrative region in Somalia, it has the largest population, estimated at 1,650,227 (including 369,288 internally displaced persons ) in 2014. The territorial extent and scope of

520-557: Is derived from the Somali banaadir , which means "coast", in reference to the southern Somali coastal cities Mogadishu , Merka and Barawa . The place name reflects the region's medieval position as a key trade center with Persia , Arabian Peninsula and the Swahili coast. The name derives from the Persian bandar (بندر) meaning ‘port’ or ‘harbour’. Its capital is Mogadishu, known locally as Xamar (pronounced: Hamar), although

572-546: Is not known to what extent the Silcis sultans engaged in this practice. However, the importance of this account to Geledi and Wacdaan history should not be discounted or dismissed. The final ruler of the Silcis in Lama Jiidle (Afgooye) was the sultan 'Umur Abukar Abroone. According to Luling, "His daughter Imbia used to go round collecting the daily tribute of grain, accompanied by her slaves" from her father's Wacdaan and Geledi subjects. Oral accounts hold that one day, "when

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624-597: Is not marked, and front and back vowels are not distinguished. Writing systems developed in the twentieth century include the Osmanya , Borama and Kaddare alphabets , which were invented by Osman Yusuf Kenadid , Abdurahman Sheikh Nuur and Hussein Sheikh Ahmed Kaddare , respectively. Several digital collections of texts in the Somali language have been developed in recent decades. These corpora include Kaydka Af Soomaaliga (KAF), Bangiga Af Soomaaliga,

676-481: Is rarely pronounced as a velar fricative, Partially the reason why is that it is mostly found in Arabic loanwords. It is pronounced as the phoneme χ when it is an allophone for the letter ⟨q⟩ in syllabic codas. As in A kh ri from A q ri meaning (read). Pitch is phonemic in Somali, but it is debated whether Somali is a pitch accent , or it is a tonal language . Andrzejewski (1954) posits that Somali

728-584: Is recognized as an official working language in the Somali Region of Ethiopia. Although it is not an official language of Djibouti , it constitutes a major national language there. Somali is used in television and radio broadcasts, with the government-operated Radio Djibouti transmitting programs in the language from 1943 onwards. The Kenya Broadcasting Corporation also broadcasts in the Somali language in its Iftin FM Programmes. The language

780-467: Is similar to the stem alternation that typifies Cairene Arabic . Somali has two sets of pronouns: independent (substantive, emphatic) pronouns and clitic (verbal) pronouns. The independent pronouns behave grammatically as nouns, and normally occur with the suffixed article -ka/-ta (e.g. adiga , "you"). This article may be omitted after a conjunction or focus word. For example, adna meaning "and you..." (from adi - na ). Clitic pronouns are attached to

832-738: Is spoken by an estimated 95% of the country's inhabitants, and also by a majority of the population in Djibouti. Following the start of the Somali Civil War in the early 1990s, the Somali-speaking diaspora increased in size, with newer Somali speech communities forming in parts of the Middle East, North America and Europe. Constitutionally, Somali and Arabic are the two official languages of Somalia . Somali has been an official national language since January 1973, when

884-507: Is spoken in Somali inhabited areas of Somalia , Djibouti , Ethiopia , Kenya , Yemen and by members of the Somali diaspora . It is also spoken as an adoptive language by a few ethnic minority groups and individuals in Somali majority regions. Somali is the most widely spoken Cushitic language in the region followed by Oromo and Afar . As of 2021, there are approximately 24 million speakers of Somali, spread in Greater Somalia of which around 17 million reside in Somalia. The language

936-718: Is spoken in the Somali territories within North Eastern Kenya , namely Wajir County , Garissa County and Mandera County . The Somali language is regulated by the Regional Somali Language Academy , an intergovernmental institution established in June 2013 in Djibouti City by the governments of Djibouti, Somalia and Ethiopia. It is officially mandated with preserving the Somali language. As of October 2022, Somali and Oromo are

988-646: The Arabic script and several Somali scripts like Osmanya , Kaddare and the Borama script are informally used. Somali is classified within the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family, specifically, Lowland East Cushitic in addition to Afar and Saho . Somali is the best-documented of the Cushitic languages, with academic studies of the language dating back to the late 19th century. The Somali language

1040-455: The Near East and South Asia (e.g. khiyaar "cucumber" from Persian : خيار khiyār ). Other loan words have also displaced their native synonyms in some dialects (e.g. jabaati "a type of flat bread" from Hindi: चपाती chapāti displacing sabaayad). Some of these words were also borrowed indirectly via Arabic. As part of a broader governmental effort of linguistic purism in

1092-553: The Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain, scientist Johann Maria Hildebrandt noted upon visiting the area that "we know from ancient authors that these districts, at present so desert, were formerly populous and civilised[...] I also discovered ancient ruins and rock-inscriptions both in pictures and characters[...] These have hitherto not been deciphered." According to the 1974 report for Ministry of Information and National Guidance, this script represents

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1144-610: The Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC) declared it the Somali Democratic Republic 's primary language of administration and education. Somali was thereafter established as the main language of academic instruction in forms 1 through 4 , following preparatory work by the government-appointed Somali Language Committee. It later expanded to include all 12 forms in 1979. In 1972, the SRC adopted

1196-524: The Transitional Federal Government (2004–2012) and its African Union Mission to Somalia allies. With a change in administration in late 2010, government troops and their military partners had succeeded in forcing out Al-Shabaab by August 2011. Mogadishu has then subsequently experienced a period of intense reconstruction. The 1,650,227 (as of 2014) residents of Benaadir are 50.7% female and come from 303,021 households. It has

1248-641: The Cushitic and Semitic Afroasiatic languages spoken in the Horn region (e.g. Amharic ). However, Somali noun phrases are head-initial, whereby the noun precedes its modifying adjective. This pattern of general head-finality with head-initial noun phrases is also found in other Cushitic languages (e.g. Oromo), but not generally in Ethiopian Semitic languages. Somali uses three focus markers: baa , ayaa and waxa(a) , which generally mark new information or contrastive emphasis. Baa and ayaa require

1300-510: The Geledi, who had to pay as tribute a measure (suus) of grain every day from each household; it was collected and loaded on a camel, others say a donkey. A tax was also imposed on those who brought their stock to water at the river”. Barile also describes the taxes levied by the Silcis. A controversial aspect of traditional Geledi and Wacdaan accounts of Silcis rule is the imposition by the Silcis sultan of ius primae noctis . According to Eno, "it

1352-585: The Lower Juba group (spoken by northern Somali settlers in the southern riverine areas). Benadir (also known as Coastal Somali) is spoken on the central Indian Ocean seaboard, including Mogadishu . It forms a relatively smaller group. The dialect is fairly mutually intelligible with Northern Somali. The language has five basic vowels . Somali has 22 consonant phonemes . The retroflex plosive /ɖ/ may have an implosive quality for some Somali Bantu speakers, and intervocalically it can be realized as

1404-592: The Mogadishu area, was inhabited by Benadiris for centuries and was during the early modern period considered the wealthiest city on the East African coast, as well as the center of a thriving textile industry. In the 17th century, Mogadishu and parts of southern Somalia fell under the Hiraab Imamate and in the 19th century came under the Geledi Sultanate 's sphere of influence. After

1456-588: The Semitic Himyarite and Sabaean languages that were largely spoken in what is modern day Yemen —"there is an extensive and ancient relationship between the people and cultures of both sides of the Red Sea coast" Mire posits. Yet, while many more such ancient inscriptions are yet to be found or analyzed, many have been "bulldozed by developers, as the Ministry of Tourism could not buy the land or stop

1508-698: The Shabeelle River region following the disintegration of the Ajuuraan Sultanate , which controlled a large part of southern Somalia, and with which the Silcis are connected. Cassanelli points out that in Geledi oral history accounts, the Silcis are often viewed as "that section of the Ajuran who governed the Afgoy district". He asserts that Geledi accounts "attest to the continuity and similarity of Ajuran and Sil'is rule". The Silcis centre of power

1560-577: The Sil'is from Afgoy”. The Silcis Sultanate in the Afgooye region was replaced by the Geledi Sultanate . Some authors claim that the Silcis ceased to be a significant group after their overthrow in Afgooye. Puccioni states that "the Silcis were reduced to a small, sparse grouping along the Shabeelle from Afgooye to Bulo Mererta [“i Seles sono ridotti a piccoli raggruppamenti sparsi lungo lo Scebeli da Afgoi

1612-680: The Somali Republic became independent in 1960, Mogadishu became known and promoted as the White Pearl of the Indian Ocean . After the ousting of the Siad Barre regime in 1991 and the ensuing Somali Civil War , various militias fought for control of the city, later to be replaced by the Islamic Courts Union in the mid-2000s. The ICU thereafter splintered into more radical groups, notably the al-Shabaab , which fought

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1664-668: The Somali Web Corpus (soWaC), a Somali read-speech corpus, Asaas (Beginning in Somali) and a Web-Based Somali Language Model and text Corpus called Wargeys (Newspaper in Somali). For all numbers between 11 kow iyo toban and 99 sagaashal iyo sagaal , it is equally correct to switch the placement of the numbers, although larger numbers is some dialects prefer to place the 10s numeral first. For example 25 may both be written as labaatan iyo shan and shan iyo labaatan (lit. Twenty and Five & Five and Twenty). Although neither

1716-525: The Somali language, the past few decades have seen a push in Somalia toward replacement of loanwords in general with their Somali equivalents or neologisms . To this end, the Supreme Revolutionary Council during its tenure officially prohibited the borrowing and use of English and Italian terms. Archaeological excavations and research in Somalia uncovered ancient inscriptions in a distinct writing system . In an 1878 report to

1768-530: The Somali people's extensive social, cultural, commercial and religious links and contacts with nearby populations in the Arabian peninsula. Arabic loanwords are most commonly used in religious, administrative and education-related speech (e.g. aamiin for "faith in God"), though they are also present in other areas (e.g. kubbad-da , "ball"). Soravia (1994) noted a total of 1,436 Arabic loanwords in Agostini a.o. 1985,

1820-469: The Somali poems by Sheikh Uways and Sheikh Ismaaciil Faarah. The rest of the existing historical literature in Somali principally consists of translations of documents from Arabic. Since then a number of writing systems have been used for transcribing the Somali language. Of these, the Somali Latin alphabet , officially adopted in 1972, is the most widely used and recognised as official orthography of

1872-544: The Sultan's daughter came round to collect the tribute, she got a beating instead of the grain", as the Geledi refused to pay. When Imbia reported this event to her father, he exclaimed "waa la i afgooye", literally "they have cut off my mouth", meaning that the regime's source of provision had been terminated. Lama Jiidle's name became Afgooye to commemorate this victory over the Silcis. According to Cassanelli, “the Geledi (Rahanweyn) and Wa'dan (Darandolle Gurgate) allied to drive

1924-666: The administrative region itself is coextensive with the city. Benaadir is much smaller than the historical region of Benadir, which covered most of the country's central and southern seaboard opposite the Indian Ocean and up to the Juba River , including Mogadishu. Thabit M. Abdi was appointed mayor of Mogadishu and governor of Banaadir in 2017, succeeding Yusuf Hussein Jimale who held that post since November 2015. Tradition and old records assert that southern Somalia, including

1976-473: The city of Mogadishu. This Banaadir municipality is bordered to the north by Hirshabelle and to the southwest by South West , and is the only Somali gobol (administrative region) which is both a municipality and a gobol known as a region. The Banaadir region is bordered by the Middle Shebelle (Shabeellaha Dhexe) and Lower Shebelle (Shabeellaha Hoose), as well as the Indian Ocean. "Benaadir"

2028-543: The colonial period. Most of these lexical borrowings come from English and Italian and are used to describe modern concepts (e.g. telefishen-ka , "the television"; raadia-ha , "the radio"). There are 300 loan words from Italian, such as garawati for "tie" (from Italian cravatta ), dimuqraadi from democratico (democratic), mikroskoob from microscopio , and so on. Additionally, Somali contains lexical terms from Persian , Urdu and Hindi that were acquired through historical trade with communities in

2080-534: The destruction". Besides Ahmed's Latin script, other orthographies that have been used for centuries for writing the Somali language include the long-established Arabic script and Wadaad's writing . According to Bogumił Andrzejewski , this usage was limited to Somali clerics and their associates, as sheikhs preferred to write in the liturgical Arabic language. Various such historical manuscripts in Somali nonetheless exist, which mainly consist of Islamic poems ( qasidas ), recitations and chants. Among these texts are

2132-402: The earliest written attestation of Somali. Much more recently, Somali archaeologist Sada Mire has published ancient inscriptions found throughout Somaliland . As much for much of Somali linguistic history the language was not widely used for literature, Dr. Mire's publications however prove that writing as a technology was not foreign nor scarce in the region. These piece of writing are from

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2184-441: The flap [ɽ] . Some speakers produce /ħ/ with epiglottal trilling as / ʜ / in retrospect. /q/ is often epiglottalized . The letter ⟨dh⟩ is a retroflex flap when it is pronounced intervocalically, hence becoming the phoneme ( ɽ ): for example, Qu r aanjo (Ant) from Qu dh aanjo; But however, more often than not is the pronunciation of ɽ to the unretained-retroflex ɾ . The letter ⟨kh⟩

2236-400: The focused element to occur preverbally, while waxa(a) may be used following the verb. Somali loanwords can be divided into those derived from other Afroasiatic languages (mainly Arabic), and those of Indo-European extraction (mainly Italian). Somali's main lexical borrowings come from Arabic, and are estimated to constitute about 20% of the language's vocabulary. This is a legacy of

2288-471: The fricatives. Two vowels cannot occur together at syllable boundaries. Epenthetic consonants, e.g. [j] and [ʔ], are therefore inserted. Somali is an agglutinative language, and also shows properties of inflection . Affixes mark many grammatical meanings, including aspect, tense and case. Somali has an old prefixal verbal inflection restricted to four common verbs, with all other verbs undergoing inflection by more obvious suffixation. This general pattern

2340-652: The highest percentage of residents who are internally displaced persons among the regions of Somalia, because of its relative safety, economic opportunities and availability of resources. The Banaadir region consists of seventeen districts. Warta Nabada District was previously known as Wardhigley District until it was officially renamed in 2012. Kahda District was formed in 2013 and is still absent from most maps. Somali language Somali ( / s ə ˈ m ɑː l i , s oʊ -/ sə- MAH -lee, soh- ; Latin script: Af Soomaali ; Wadaad : اف صومالِ ‎; Osmanya : 𐒖𐒍 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘 [af soːmaːli] )

2392-523: The only Cushitic languages available on Google Translate . The Somali languages are broadly divided into three main groups: Northern Somali , Benadir and Maay . Northern Somali forms the basis for Standard Somali. It is spoken by the majority of the Somali population with its speech area stretching from Djibouti , and the Somali Region of Ethiopia to the Northern Frontier District . This widespread modern distribution

2444-453: The plural of the masculine noun dibi ("bull") is formed by converting it into feminine dibi . Somali is unusual among the world's languages in that the object is unmarked for case while the subject is marked, though this feature is found in other Cushitic languages such as Oromo. Somali is a subject–object–verb (SOV) language. It is largely head final , with postpositions and with obliques preceding verbs. These are common features of

2496-557: The state. The script was developed by a number of leading scholars of Somali, including Musa Haji Ismail Galal , B. W. Andrzejewski and Shire Jama Ahmed specifically for transcribing the Somali language, and uses all letters of the English Latin alphabet except p , v and z . There are no diacritics or other special characters except the use of the apostrophe for the glottal stop , which does not occur word-initially. There are three consonant digraphs : DH, KH and SH. Tone

2548-507: The term Benaadir has varied in definition throughout its history, with medieval usage extending Benaadir to huge swaths of coast adjacent to Mogadishu stretching as far as hundreds of miles, from Hobyo in the north. The early modern period which extended the meaning of Benaadir to the interior midway towards the Hirshabelle region, to the contemporary period wherein sometimes the nonstandard misnomer of usage being interchangeable with

2600-408: The verb and do not take nominal morphology. Somali marks clusivity in the first person plural pronouns; this is also found in a number of other East Cushitic languages, such as Rendille and Dhaasanac. As in various other Afro-Asiatic languages, Somali is characterized by polarity of gender , whereby plural nouns usually take the opposite gender agreement of their singular forms. For example,

2652-593: Was in Lama Jiidle (present day Afgooye). Lama Jiidle means "two roads" in Somali. Barile erroneously claims that Afgooye's previous name was simply "Seles" (the common Italian spelling of Silcis). The Silcis imposed taxation on their subject clans, such as the Wacdaan , a fellow subclan of the Gurgate Hawiye, and the Geledi , a Rahanweyn subclan. According to Virginia Luling, "The Sil'is imposed their dominion on

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2704-417: Was ‘Xeer’ [customary] for every Geledi bride... to celebrate her honeymoon [first] with a Silcis-Gorgaate male before she could celebrate the occasion with her official marital husband". Luling, however, points out that ius primae noctis was "A habit regularly attributed to tyrants in this part of Somalia”. It is thus possible that the accounts of the Silcis practice were exaggerated by the clans they ruled. It

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