An Investigation of Afar Language Shift and Maintenance: The Case of Dubte District in Afar Regional State

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to assess the language shift and maintenance in Dubti town with respect to the town dwellers. In order to achieve the objective of this study, basic questions were raised regarding proficiency, choice of language in different domains, use of MTs, and perception of respondents towards each language collected through questionnaire, participant observation, and recordings from the targeted population based on interviews. The study attempts to discover the domains of shift of the Afar language and other Ethiopian languages, their attitudes towards their ethnic language and other Ethiopian languages, and the factors that led them to either maintain or lose their ethnic language. The analysis of the overall results of the questionnaire, interviews and community profile confirms the ability of the Afar community to maintain their ethnic language for many centuries despite of all the challenges and difficulties that they faced over the years as well as the presence of language such as Amharic which is the official language in Ethiopia. The Afar community mix between their language and Amharic unconsciously. Knowledge of Amharic is vital in schools and universities, to get good jobs and to communicate with the whole society. The government bodies should give attention to the linguistic profile of the community, when planning language for education, administration and the like. Since there is frequent and intense contact among speakers of different languages in the study area, it needs further research on outcomes of language shift and contact to come up with details of language shift due to borrowing, code switching and code mixing between/ among different languages. Since the current study is limited to the Afar community who live in Dubte, The researcher recommends further studies to be conducted about the Afar community who live in other parts of Afar Regional State.