النظام الصوتي للغة الهررية وكتابتها بالحرف العربي

Abstract

The research studied the writing of Harari language (Adarenya) in Arabic script, relying on an experimental phonological study carried in the Ethiopian old city of Harar. Using phonemic analysis, the study identified 24 consonants and 5 vowel phonemes, it showed that no supra segmental feature is phonemic in the language. By investigating the relations between Harari Language and Arabic, the research revealed a two folds relationship between the two languages: genetic (both languages are Semitic languages), and historical (Harar was a center for Islamic education and culture in Ethiopia in the sixteenth century). That relation helped developing literary traditions in Harar, it resulted in using Arabic script as the sole system for writing the language, within the course of four centuries these traditions produced hundreds of manuscripts. Many of these manuscripts were written in Harari language using Arabic script. Now most of these manuscripts are unreadable for Harari people because of the long detachment from Arabic script. The detachment began in the eighties of the 19th century, after the takeover of the city by the army of Menlik II. Since then, Harari language was exposed to a linguistic policy that aimed to raise Amharic to the level the dominant language in a country distinguished by multi-linguistic situations. The Federal constitution of 1994 changed this feature, which remained characteristic of the linguistic policy in Ethiopia all through different past periods. The research suggested the rewriting of the texts of manuscripts, to maintain the position and use of the Harari Language, this will contribute also for reservation and publishing its literary heritage. Through studying representative samples of manuscripts, the researcher defined the Arabic letters modified for representing the harari sounds which are not found among the sounds of Arabic. Only three letters were modified for six sounds, and the relation between letters (L) and sounds (S) was not one to one relation (L S), thus the Harari Language was not phonologically written. The research suggested the use of a computerized standardized Arabic script to rewrite the texts of Harari manuscripts; in addition, it studied the statistical recurrence of the sounds of the language in randomly selected texts to prepare a Harari Key board. The suggested letters were used to rewrite some parts of a Harari manuscript. Results of the research and recommendations were included in the final chapter.