Similarities Between Somali and Oromo

Can Somali and Oromo speakers understand each other or other Cushitic languages such as Beja, Afar, Hadiyya, Kambaata, Saho, and Sidama? In this episode we showcase some of the similarities between Oromo (Afaan Oromoo), which is one of the official languages of Ethiopia, native to the Ethiopian state of Oromia and primarily spoken in Ethiopia and northeastern Kenya, and Somali (Af Soomaali), which is the official language of Somalia and Somaliland, and also spoken in Djibouti, and parts of Ethiopia and Kenya. A list of words and sentences will be given to Quxube (Oromo speaker) and Ramla (Somali speaker) to see how well they can understand one another.

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Oromo and Somali have the highest number of speakers among all the Cushitic languages.

Somali (Af Soomaali), as a Cushitic language in the Afroasiatic language family, is mainly spoken in Somalia and Somaliland, as well as Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Yemen. The language is written using the Latin alphabet. The adoption of the Latin orthography as the official national alphabet over several other previous writing scripts took place in 1972. Besides the Latin script, the Arabic and Wadaad scripts were used for writing the Somali language. The current Latin script was developed by several scholars of Somali, such as Musa Haji Ismail Galal, B. W. Andrzejewski and Shire Jama Ahmed, and it uses all letters of the English Latin alphabet except p, v and z. Other writing systems such as the Osmanya (invented by Osman Yusuf Kenadid), Borama (by Abdurahman Sheikh Nuur) and Kaddare alphabets (by Hussein Sheikh Ahmed Kaddare) were developed to write the Somali language as well.

Oromo (Afaan Oromoo) is primarily spoken in Ethiopia and northeastern Kenya. In Ethiopia, it has the largest number of native speaker, and is second to Amharic in the total number of speakers in the country. There are several different varieties of the language, stretching all across Ethiopia and Kenya. Although Oromo is written with a Latin alphabet called Qubee (formally adopted in 1991), in the past the Sapalo script was used, invented by Sheikh Bakri Sapalo (Abubaker Usman Odaa), and in some cases, within Muslim majority areas, the Arabic script is sometimes used.