Gurage: The Last StrawAuthor(s): Jack FellmanSource: The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Dec., 1993), pp. 673-674Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/161298 .

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The Journal of Modern African Studies, 3I, 4 (1993), PP. 673-674 Copyright ? I993 Cambridge University Press

Gurage: the Last Straw

by Jack Fellman, Department of Hebrew and Semitic Languages, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel

Gurage is a cover-term for a dozen south Ethiopian-Semitic tongues spoken by some half-a-million people in a small and compact area about 70 miles south- southwest of Addis Ababa bounded to the north by the Awash River, to the east by Lake Zway, and to the south and west by the Omo River. Completely surrounded by Cushitic languages, especially Galla and Sidamo, Gurage forms, as it were, a tiny Semitic island floating in a vast Cushitic sea. The

variety, diversity, and fragmentation of tongues in such a small area, oo miles at its broadest and widest, is puzzling and problematic, not least because Gurage represents the highest concentration of linguistic diversity attested in the Semitic world. A satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon has not yet been offered, and unless and until further data, both synchronic and diachronic, becomes available, this short note will have to suffice, for better or for worse.l

Although all the Gurage tongues show many close family and typological resemblances, three distinct groups can be recognised: (i) Northern Gurage: Soddo, Goggot; (ii) Eastern Gurage: Selti, Wolane, Zway; and (iii) Western Gurage: Muher, Masqan, Chaha, Ezha, Ennemor, Endegeni, Gyeto. The tongues within each group are mutually intelligible and may, indeed, be considered as dialects of each other. Between the three groups, however, there is no (or minimal) mutual intelligibility, and they may better be considered as representing three separate languages, with their respective dialects. Further, Northern Gurage has striking affinities with Gafat (now extinct), to the northwest of Gurageland, as has Eastern Gurage with Harari, to the northeast.

Evidently, Gafat and Northern Gurage were once territorially contiguous, as were Harari and Eastern Gurage, but wars - especially the Galla invasions and convulsions of the sixteenth century - led to population movements, dislocations and relocations, and to the groups becoming separated, Northern and Eastern Gurage seeking and finding refuge in Gurageland. By way of contrast, Western Gurage evidently represents the earliest, the proper core of Gurage: it is the largest and most variegated group, with Chaha being the dominant tongue and lingua franca of Gurageland as a whole. Western Gurage is evidently the result of a Semitic-speaking military expedition from the north in the early middle ages arriving in Gurageland, intermarrying with the local Cushitic population, and forming a linguistic (and cultural) symbiosis with them, thereby imposing a Semitic superstratum on a Cushitic substratum and adstratum.

1 Basic bibliographical information, although now perhaps somewhat dated, may be found in Wolf Leslau, 'Ethiopic and South Arabian', in T. A. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics 6 (The Hague, i970), pp. 467-527.

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674 JACK FELLMAN

Gurage, then, is neither a linguistic entity in and of itself, nor just a cluster of dialects. It is, rather, a complex mix of three languages and their associated dialects, each with a different history which, however, ultimately led to their being isolated together in Gurageland. Since then, there has been an enormous and complicated interplay between the three languages, and they have become closer to one another in many ways, albeit at the same time still

retaining their key characteristic features. This may be due to the fact that

they came together rather late, and that their different religious and/or ethnic identities helped to buttress and reinforce linguistic separateness. Thus, it should be noted, the Northern Gurage are all Christians, the Eastern Gurage are almost all Muslims, and the Western Gurage are mostly pagans. Together they may well represent an example of' communal languages' attested also in other parts of the world. If so, Gurage would finally cease to be a puzzle and a problem for linguists and Semitists.

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