Somali Language; Af Soomaali; اف صومالِ; 𐒖𐒍 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘

The Somali language is a Cushitic language from the Horn of Africa; Greater Somalia. From my travels in Maine and meeting many Somali people, I gain a love for the Somali language. I do have to admit I am not the best source for the language; for I am not a Somali person nor the best at the language, but as I develope my skills I will add infomation here to inform you. I would say this ver any language I put onto my website, I am a simple New Englander.

Script

Somali has 5 scripts (Far Soomaali) that are used, Latin being the main official one. Wadaad's writing is the script used before Latin and others, it being an adaption of Arabic scipt. The one in more of a decline in modern day are Osmanya alphabet, which came after Arabic and was used in 1900's. The two smaller ones also developed in the 1900's were Gadabuursi script and Kaddare script. You can defiently get by in Somali just using Latin since it is the official one, some people may still or in the past used the other ones.

Somali Latin Script (Soomaali Alifbeet) as I said is the official script. It uses the same alphabet as English but no P, V, and Z. Unlike other Latin scripted languages, there are no diacritics, more similar to English in that way. There is one unique part of it though, its digraphs: DH, KH, and SH. Luckly Somali is mostly phonemic, making it easier to read. Long vowels are made by doubling; aa, ee, ii, oo, uu. Also consonants are commonly doubled in words too; gg, ll, mm, nn, rr. Diphthong are made with Y or W; ay, aw, ey, oy, & ow.

Image from a Omniglot; this is being used out of convience, too lazy to make my own graph.

In Somali using capital letters is basically the same as in English; proper nouns capitalized. G before an article is pornounced like k and d may be t.