Gurage languages

The Gurage dialects form the Gurague Af or language, and Guraginya in Italian. Some dialects are not intelligible with other dialects but have organic relationship indicating that they originated from a proto-Gurage language. Gurage Af and its dialects belong to the Southern subdivision of the Ethiopian Semitic languages within the Afroasiatic family. The languages are often referred to collectively as "Guraginya" by other Ethiopians (-inya is the Amharic suffix for most Ethiopian Semitic languages).

There are three major dialect subgroups: Northern, Eastern and Western. All the Gurage subgroups (Northern, Western, and Eastern Gurage) belong to South Ethiopic. East Gurage is related to Harari, while Northern and Western Gurage are related to each other and Gafat.

The Gurage Af is written with the Ge'ez script. The Gurage subset of this script has 44 independent glyphs. Latin script is an alternative consideration.

There is no general agreement on how dialects there are, in particular within the West Gurage grouping.

As the Gurage people are surrounded by speakers of Cushitic languages, these languages have influenced the Gurage languages perhaps even more than they have other Ethiopian Semitic languages. For example, the East Gurage languages have a ten-vowel system characteristic of the neighboring Cushitic languages rather than the seven-vowel system common to most other Ethiopian Semitic languages, including the West Gurage languages.

In the following listing, the distinction between languages and dialects follows Ethnologue.

In the Northern group

• Soddo (Kistane)
  • Dialects: Soddo, Goggot (Dobi)

In the Eastern group

• Silt'e (Selti; not, strictly speaking, a Gurage language, since the people do not consider themselves Gurage)
  • Dialects: Ulbare, Wolane, Inneqor
• Zay (Zway)

In the Western group

• Inor
  • Dialects: Ennemor [Inor proper], Endegegn, Gyeto
• Mesmes (extinct; sometimes considered Inor)
• Mesqan
• Sebat Bet Gurage
  • Dialects: Chaha, Ezha, Gumer, Gura, Muher

Sebat Bet (or Sebat Beit), in particular, is best understood as a grouping in itself; the term means literally "Seven Houses," and refers to seven specific Western Gurage groups and varieties. Silt'e is more closely related to Amharic than to Soddo.