Native to Ethiopia Glottolog inor1238 | ISO 639-3 ior | |
Native speakers (undated figure of 280,000) Language family Afro-Asiatic
Semitic
South Semitic
Ethiopian Semitic
South
Outer
West Gurage
Inor | ||
Inor (pronounced [inoːr]), sometimes called Ennemor, is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in central Ethiopia. One of the Gurage languages, it is mainly spoken within the Gurage Zone in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region, as well as by speakers of the language who have settled in Ethiopian cities, especially Addis Ababa. In addition to the morphological complexity that is common to all Semitic languages, Inor exhibits the very complex morphophonology characteristic of West Gurage languages.
Endegegn, Enner, Gyeto, and the extinct dialect Mesmes are all sometimes considered dialects of Inor.
Inor possesses nasal vowels, which are unusual for a Gurage language. Many of these may be the result of historical rhinoglottophilia.
Vowels
[ɨ] may be regarded as largely epenthetic and only marginally phonemic.