Native to Ethiopia Writing system Ethiopic, Latin | Native speakers 890,000 (2007 census) | |
Region southwest Gurage, Kambaata, Hadiyya Regions Language family Afro-Asiatic
Cushitic
Highland East
Kambaata Dialects Kambaata
Ṭəmbaro
Alaba
K'abeena | ||
Kambaata is a Highland East Cushitic language, part of the larger Afro-Asiatic family and spoken by the Kambaata people. Dialects are Kambaata, Tambaro, Alaba, and K'abeena. It is one of the official languages of Ethiopia. The language has a large number of verbal affixes. When these are affixed to verbal roots, there are a large amount of morphophonemic changes. The language has SOV order (subject–object–verb). The phonemes of Kambaata include five vowels (which are distinctively long or short), a set of ejectives, a retroflexed implosive, and glottal stop.
The New Testament and some parts of the Old Testament have been translated into the Kambaata language. At first, they were published in the Ethiopian syllabary (New Testament in 1992), but later on, they were republished in Latin letters, in conformity with new policies and practices.