Afar

1. Classification / Classification

According to Ethnologue the classification is: Afro-Asiatic, Cushitic, East, Saho-Afar

2. Where Spoken / Localisation géographique

Ethiopia (eastern lowlands), Djibouti, Eritrea (southern), and possibly Somalia (Ethnologue)

3. Number of Speakers / Nombre de locuteurs

About 1.5 million

According to information from Ethnologue:

• Ethiopia: 979,367 (of which 905,872 monolinguals) (1998 census)
• Djibouti: 300,000 Djibouti (1996)
• Eritrea: 160,000 (2001 Johnstone and Mandryk)
• Total all countries: 1,439,367 (
• Also, 22,848 second language speakers in Ethiopia

4. Dialect Survey / Enquête de dialecte

According to Ethnologue

• Afar is related to Saho (interintelligibility?)
• Dialects of Afar are: Northern Afar, Central Afar, Aussa, Baadu (Ba'adu)

5. Usage / Utilisation

It is the most spoken language in Djibouti

Literacy rates among Afar L1 speakers(according to Ethnologue):

• Ethiopia
  • L1: <1%
  • L2: 3%
• Djibouti
  • L1: ?
  • L2: <1%
• Eritrea
  • L1: ?
  • L2: 8%

6. Orthography / Orthographe

6.1 Status / Statut

"The Afar alphabet or Qafar Feera was created by Dimis and Redo, two Afar intellectual nationalists who published their work in the early 1970s." (Omniglot) It uses the basic Latin alphabet.

Afar may also be written in the Ge'ez script (Wikipedia)

6.2 Sample Alphabet / Alphabet exemple

See:

• Afaraf abatasa http://afaraf.free.fr/page/alphabet.html
• Omniglot page http://www.omniglot.com/writing/afar.htm

A sample text is on the "Language Museum" site http://www.language-museum.com/a/afar.php

7. Use in ICT / Utilisation dans les TIC

7.1 Fonts / Polices

Standard Latin fonts would suffice

7.2 Keyboard layouts / Dispositions de clavier

7.3 Content on computers & internet / Contenu en informatique et sur l'Internet

Wikipedia in Afar at http://aa.wikipedia.org/ (virtually no content as of 5-2007)

7.4 Localized software / Logiciels localisés

Not aware of any

7.5 Language codes / Codes de langue

• ISO 639-1: aa
• ISO 639-2: aar
• ISO 639-3: aar

7.6 Locales / Paramètres régionaux

A locale has been filed with CLDR

7.7 Other / Autre

• Afaraf - Méthode de langue afare http://afaraf.free.fr/

8. Localisation resources / Ressources pour localisation

8.1 Individuals (experts) / Individuelles (experts)

8.2 Institutions / Institutions

8.3 On the internet / Sur la toile

9. Comments / Remarques

10. References / Références

Omniglot, "Afar (ʿAfár af)," http://www.omniglot.com/writing/afar.htm

SIL International, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, "Afar," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=aar

SIL International, "ISO 639 Code Tables," http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp

U.S. Library of Congress, "ISO 639.2: Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages: Alpha-3 codes arranged alphabetically by the English name of language," http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php

Wikipedia, "Afar language," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afar_language

______, "Afar (langue)," http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afar_%28langue%29

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