Qimant language
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The Qimant language is a highly endangered language spoken by a small and elderly fraction of the Qemant people in northern Ethiopia, mainly in the Chilga woreda in Semien Gondar Zone between Gondar and Metemma.
Classifications
The language belongs to the western branch of the Agaw languages.Template:Sfn Other (extinct) varieties of this branch are Qwara and Kayla. Along with all other Cushitic languages, Qimant belongs to the Afroasiatic language family.
Geographic distribution and sociolinguistic situation
Script error: No such module "Unsubst". Qimant is the original language of the Qemant people of North Gondar Zone, Ethiopia. Although the ethnic population of the Qemant was 172,327 at the 1994 census, only a very small fraction of these speak the language nowadays. All speakers live either in the Chilga or Lay Armachiho woredas.[1] The number of first-language speakers is 1,625, the number of second language speakers 3,450.Template:Sfn All speakers of the language are older than 30 years, and more than 75% are older than 50 years.Template:Sfn The language is no longer passed on to the next generation of speakers. Most ethnic Qemant people speak Amharic. Qimant is not spoken in public or even within the home as a means of daily communication anymore, but is reduced to a secret code.Template:SfnToday, most ethnic Qemants overwhelmingly identify as Amharas, and Qemant was removed as an identity from Ethiopia’s 2007 national census, but there are some Qemant communities who are still attempting to preserve their culture and language.
Dialects/Varieties
Script error: No such module "Unsubst". It is not clear to what extent Kayla, Qwara, and Qimant have been dialects of the same Western Agaw language, or were languages distinct from each other.
Phonology
Consonants
Continuants can be geminated word-medially.
Vowels
Phonotactics
The maximum syllable structure in Qimant is CVC, which implies that consonant clusters are only allowed word-medially.Template:Sfn In loanwords from Amharic there may also be consonant-clusters within a syllable. Vowel clusters are not allowed.
Phonological processes
Consonant clusters with more than two consonants are broken up by inserting the epenthetic vowel Script error: No such module "IPA".. Other phonological processes are nasal assimilation and devoicing of Script error: No such module "IPA". at word boundaries.Template:Sfn
Prosody
The prosodic features of Qimant have not been studied yet.
Grammar
Morphology
The personal marking system distinguishes between first person singular and plural, second person singular, polite, and plural, and third person masculine, feminine and plural. On the verb, all inflectional categories are marked by suffixes. Zelealem (2003, p. 192) identifies three different aspect forms in Qimant: Perfective, Imperfective and Progressive. Like in other Central Cushitic languages, the numbers one to nine go back to an ancient quinary system, where the suffix Script error: No such module "IPA". added to the numbers two to four results in the numbers six to nine Script error: No such module "Unsubst". (2-4 are three numbers, 6-9 are four numbers).Template:Sfn
Syntax
The basic constituent order in Qimant, like in all other Afro-Asiatic languages of Ethiopia, is SOV. The presence of a case marking system allows for other, more marked orders. In the noun phrase the head noun follows its modifiers. Numbers, however, can also follow the head noun. All kind of subordinate clauses precede the main verb of the sentence.Template:Sfn
Vocabulary
As a consequence of the looming language death, many items of the vocabulary are already replaced by Amharic words.
Notes
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References
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Further reading
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External links
- World Atlas of Language Structures information on Kemant
- Africa 101 last tribes https://www.101lasttribes.com/tribes/qemant.html#:~:text=The%20ethnicity's%20population%20is%20reported,them%20as%20a%20separate%20group.