Language and writing
Ashraf Somali (Af-Ashraaf): the speech of Shingaani and Marka
Af-Ashraaf is the speech of the Ashraaf of southern Somalia's coast. It has two branches: Af-Shingaani in the Shingaani quarter of Mogadishu, and the Lower Shabelle branch around Marka, with the Af-Marka, Af-Gendershe and Af-Jilib varieties. Linguists Christopher Green and Evan Jones argue it should be treated as a language variety of its own.
Who speaks it and where
Af-Ashraaf is spoken along parts of the southern Somali coast by members of the Ashraaf, according to the Italian linguist Marcello Lamberti, whose 1981 survey is summarised by Landinfo (Landinfo 2011, p. 12). Lamberti divides it into two branches:
- Af-Shingaani, in the Shingaani district of Mogadishu.
- The Lower Shabelle branch, in the Marka district, with the varieties Af-Marka, Af-Gendershe and Af-Jilib.
Roger Blench's 2006 reference list of Afroasiatic languages uses the same split into Shingaani and Lower Shabelle (Ashraf Somali, Wikipedia, citing Blench 2006). Lamberti recorded the Af-Shingaani, Af-Merca and Af-Gendershe variants among his 52 dialect samples (Landinfo 2011, p. 4).
How it differs from Maxaa-tiri
Lamberti found that Af-Ashraaf has kept many old forms despite strong influence from the Benadir dialects around it (Landinfo 2011, p. 13). He gives these examples:
- a t between vowels that other dialects have lost: "I stand up" is an joogsati in Shingaani, against waan joogsaday in Maxaa-tiri;
- sh where other dialects have y: "she" is isha in Shingaani, against iyada; "I gave" is an siishi, against waan siiyey.
Of 67 dialect features Lamberti counted, Ashraf shares 14 with Northern Somali and another 14 with Benadir only (Landinfo 2011, p. 16). The Maay dialects, in turn, share more features with Benadir and Ashraf than with Northern Somali.
A dialect or its own language?
Lamberti knew of only two small research projects on Af-Shingaani at the time of his work (Landinfo 2011, p. 13). One was Roberto Ajello's 1984 study of focus in the Shingaani speech of the Ashraaf (Ashraf Somali, Wikipedia).
Newer work comes from the linguists Christopher R. Green and Evan Jones. In a 2019 paper they describe its verb and noun forms (Green and Jones 2019, Language Science Press). In a 2016 talk they said Marka "may be similar in certain ways to both Northern Somali and Maay" but "boasts a number of unique properties, particularly in its morphology", which in their view merit treating it "as a language variety of its own" (Ashraf Somali, Wikipedia, quoting Green and Jones 2016).
The linguist Mauro Tosco has made the general point that all the Somali varieties are "dialects" in social terms, because speakers accept Northern-Central Somali as a common medium, but that their status in strictly linguistic terms has not been tested (Ashraf Somali, Wikipedia, quoting Tosco 2012).
Read more
Sources
- Landinfo 2011, p. 12 · landinfo.no
- Ashraf Somali, Wikipedia, citing Blench 2006 · en.wikipedia.org
- Green and Jones 2019, Language Science Press · doi.org
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Where this matters
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