Silt'e (ስልጥኘ or የስልጤ አፍ ) is a
Semitic language spoken in central
Ethiopia, mainly within the
Silte Zone, in the
Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region and by speakers of the language (today called
Silt'e), who have settled in Ethiopian cities, especially
Addis Ababa.
Speakers and dialects
Dialects of the language include:
Azernet-Berbere,
Silti,
Wuriro,
Ulbareg and
Wolane.
Sounds and orthography
Consonants and vowels
Silt'e has a fairly typical set of consonants for an
Ethiopian Semitic language. There are the usual
ejective consonants, alongside plain voiceless and voiced consonants and all of the consonants, except and , can be
geminated, that is, lengthened. However, Silt'e vowels differ considerably from the typical set of seven vowels in languages such as
Amharic,
Tigrinya and
Ge'ez. Silt'e has the set of five short and five long vowels, that is typical of the nearby Eastern Cushitic languages, which may be the origin of the Silt'e system. There is considerable
allophonic variation within the short vowels, especially for
a; the most frequent allophone of , , is shown in the chart. All of the short vowels may be
devoiced preceding a pause.
The charts below show the phonemes of Silt'e. For the representation of Silt'e consonants, this article uses a modification of a system that is common (though not universal), among linguists who work on
Ethiopian Semitic languages, but differs somewhat from the conventions of the......
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