Somali (af Soomaali)
Somali is a member of the East Cushtic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It has 10-16 million native speakers and perhaps half a million second language speakers mainly in Somali, where it is an official language, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya. There are also significant numbers of Somali speakers in Europe, North America and Yemen.
Somali has been written with four different scripts: an Arabic-based abjad known as Wadaad's writing, a Latin-based alphabet and two native alphabets, the Osmanya script and the Borama script.
Sample text in Wadaad's writing
Wadaad's writing (Arabic script)
The Arabic script was first introduced in the 13th century by Sheikh Yusuf al-Kowneyn to aid Koranic teaching. In the 19th century Sheikh Uways al-Barawi improved the writing of Somali with the Arabic script and based it on the Maay dialect of Southern Somalia. A Somali linguists, Muuse Xaaji Ismaaciil Galaal, radically altered the spelling conventions for Somali written with the Arabic script and introduced a set of new symbols for the vowels in the 1950s.
Borama/Gadabuursi alphabet
In 1933 Sheikh Abdurahman Sheikh Nuur invented another script for Somali known as Borama or Gadabuursi which was only used by the Sheikh's small circle of associates in Borama.
Sample text
Translation
My beloved brother Huseen, Peace.I am well, the reer is at Đoobo.The big burden camel has been eaten by a lion. 'Ali has come.The goods have been received by us. Send us (some) ghee.Out mother has come. Your brother Guuleed has gone to Hargeisa.
Nuur Bile,Borama.
Somali/Osmanya alphabet
The Osmanya alphabet was created in between 1920 and 1922 by Cismaan Yuusuf Keenadiid, brother of the Sultan of Obbia. In Somali it is known as far soomaali (Somali writing) or cismaanya. It replaced an attempt by Sheikh Uweys to devise an Arabic-based alphabet for Somali, and has in turn been replaced by the Latin orthography of Muuse Xaaji Ismaaciil Galaal (1914-1980).
The Osmanya alphabet is not used much these days, though during the 1970s quite a number of people used it for personal correspondence and bookkeeping. A few books and magazines have also been published in the alphabet.
Notable features
Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal rows.
The names of the letters are based on Arabic letter names.
The letters waw and ya are used to write the long vowels uu and ii respectively.
Somali is a tonal language with four tones which are not usually marked in writing. The tones have grammatical uses: theny indicate number, gender and case.
Numerals
Sample text
Latin alphabet for Somali
In 1961 both the Latin and Osmanya scripts were adopted for use in Somalia, but in 1969 there was a coup, with one of its stated aims the resolution of the debate over the country's writing system. The Latin alphabet was finally adopted in 1972 and at the same time Somali was made the sole official language of Somalia.
Sample text
Aadanaha dhammaantiis wuxuu dhashaa isagoo xor ah kana siman xagga sharafta iyo xuquuqada Waxaa Alle (Ilaah) siiyay aqoon iyo wacyi, waana in qof la arkaa qofka kale ula dhaqmaa si walaaltinimo ah.
Translation
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
Links
Information about the Somali languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_language
Information about Somali scriptshttp://gess.wordpress.com/files/2006/10/the-gadabuursi-script.pdf (PDF)
Free Osmanya fontshttp://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_Osmanya.html
BBC worldservice in Somali (includes audio)http://www.bbc.co.uk/somali
Somalinet - a Somali portal (in Somali & English)http://www.somalinet.com
Information about Somali alphabets (in Somali)http://www.dm.unipi.it/~jama/alif/qaamuus/gogoldhig.htmlhttp://www.somaliedu.com/Somali Education/Maqaallo/taariikhda qoraalka farsoomaaliga.htm
Other alphabets
Armenian, Avestan, Bassa (Vah), Beitha Kukju, Coptic, Cyrillic, Elbsan, Etruscan, Fraser, Georgian (Asomtavruli & Nuskha-khucuri), Georgian (Mkhedruli), Glagolitic, Gothic, Greek, Hungarian Runes, Irish, Kayah Li, Korean, Latin, Lycian, Lydian, Manchu, Meroïtic, Mongolian, N'Ko, Ogham, Old Church Slavonic, Oirat Clear Script, Old Italic, Old Permic, Orkhon, Pollard Miao, Runic, Santali, Somali, Sutton SignWriting, Tai Dam, Thaana, Uyghur
Related languages
Afaan-Oromo, Afar, Somali
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Friday, April 17, 2009
Monday, November 17, 2008
November 18, 2008
How the War on Terror pushed Somalia into the arms of al-Qaeda
It has been the forgotten debacle of the Bush years. But anarchy in the Horn of Africa may soon haunt the West
as President Bush prepares to leave office, the pundits will start to produce their balance sheets. It is hard to know what they will list under “achievements”, but easy to predict their “disasters”: Iraq, Afghanistan, economic meltdown, soaring debt and America's loss of global stature.
One other debacle should feature prominently in that second column, but probably won't because it has occurred in a faraway country that most Westerners know only through the film Black Hawk Down - or from recent reports of rampant piracy including the seizure early on Sunday of a Saudi tanker, carrying more than two million barrels of oil, which had an immediate effect on crude prices.
I am referring to the Bush Administration's intervention in Somalia in the name of the War on Terror. It has helped to destroy that wretched country's best chance of peace in a generation, left more than a million Somalis dead, homeless or starving, and achieved the precise opposite of its original goal. Far from stamping out an Islamic militancy that scarcely existed, the intervention has turned Somalia into a breeding ground for Islamic extremists and given al-Qaeda a valuable foothold in the Horn of Africa.
Rewind to the early summer of 2006. For 15 years, since the fall of the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, feuding warlords had made Somalia a byword for anarchy and terrorism - the archetypal failed state. A tenth of its population had been killed. A million had fled abroad. At that point the warlords were finally routed, despite covert CIA backing, by a remarkable public uprising in support of the so-called Islamic Courts movement that promised to end the lawlessness.
Background
Islamists await hijacked ship's weapons cache
Plunder is used to fund terrorism
Britain’s phoney war on terror
Somalis in terror of the night letter
Somalia had always practised a mild form of Islam, but the Courts received a bad press in the West, being widely portrayed as a new Taleban determined to impose the most draconian forms of Sharia on a terrified populace. That was certainly what I expected when I visited Mogadishu in early December 2006. But what I actually found was a people still celebrating the return of peace and security.
Gone were the checkpoints where the warlords' gunmen extorted and killed. Gone were their “technicals” - the Jeeps with heavy machineguns on the back with which they terrorised the citzenry. For the first time that most Somalis could remember, they were walking around their shattered capital in safety, even at night. Businesses were reopening. Exiles were returning. Mountains of rubbish were being carted away.
“It's like paradise compared to even one year ago,” according to Mohammed Ahmed, a doctor who had returned from working at the West Middlesex Hospital.
The Courts had certainly imposed what would be seen in the West as some fairly repressive moral codes. They cracked down on the narcotic qat that rendered half the menfolk senseless, banned sexually explicit films, encouraged women to cover their heads and discouraged Western music and dancing. There had been two public executions. But that was a price most Somalis were happy to pay, and while the Courts' disparate factions undoubtedly included extremists with dangerous connections and intentions, they also included moderates with whom the West could have done business.
European nations favoured engagement. Washington did not. It accused the Courts of harbouring the al-Qaeda terrorists responsible for bombing US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. The Courts hardly helped their cause by claiming territory in Kenya and Ethiopia.
Weeks after my visit the US supported - morally, materially and with intelligence - an invasion by predominantly Christian Ethiopia, Somalia's oldest bitter enemy. That replaced what was, for all its faults, Somalia's most effective government in memory with a deeply unpopular one led by former warlords, which had been cobbled together by the international community in Nairobi two years previously.
“The Americans see an extremist under every Muslim stone,” one European official complained bitterly, and the consequences were entirely predictable. An insurgency that began early in 2007 has steadily gathered strength, while the reviled Government in Mogadishu has come to depend utterly for its survival on thousands of Ethiopian troops that were meant to withdraw within weeks.
As the fighting has worsened 10,000 Somali civilians are thought to have been killed, more than a million have fled their homes, and more than three million - 40 per cent of the population - now urgently need humanitarian assistance. Although the UN World Food Programme is still getting some aid into the country the situation is deteriorating and scores of humanitarian workers have been killed or abducted. Exploiting the lawlessness, pirates have turned the waters off Somalia into some of the most dangerous in the world.
In Kenya last weekend Abdullahi Yusuf, Somalia's President, finally admitted that insurgents now control most of the country and have advanced to the very edge of Mogadishu. His Government, he said, was close to collapse.
There are several insurgent forces, but one of the most powerful is the Shabab - a group of virulently anti-Western jihadists that has now eclipsed the Islamic Courts movement of which it was once part.
Somalia's nightmare may be only just starting. President Yusuf predicts wholesale slaughter if the Shabab seize Mogadishu. Diplomats fear that the Shabab will wage all-out war with other insurgent forces, including those of the Islamic Courts, for control of the country once Ethiopian troops - the common enemy - are withdrawn.
And unlike the Courts, the Shabab has no truck with moderation: in the port city of Kismayo last month a young girl who complained that she had been raped was stoned to death for adultery, while in Balad two dozen Somalis were flogged for performing a traditional dance.
Whatever happens, Somalia will be another horrendous legacy for Barack Obama, but somewhere on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border one man will be celebrating. Shabab openly supports al-Qaeda. It has adopted suicide bombings and other tactics. “Al-Qaeda is the mother of the holy war in Somalia... We are negotiating how we can unite into one,” Muktar Robow, a leading Shabab commander, recently told the Los Angeles Times. “We will take our orders from Sheikh Osama bin Laden because we are his students.”
All in all, hardly a resounding triumph for the War on Terror.
How the War on Terror pushed Somalia into the arms of al-Qaeda
It has been the forgotten debacle of the Bush years. But anarchy in the Horn of Africa may soon haunt the West
as President Bush prepares to leave office, the pundits will start to produce their balance sheets. It is hard to know what they will list under “achievements”, but easy to predict their “disasters”: Iraq, Afghanistan, economic meltdown, soaring debt and America's loss of global stature.
One other debacle should feature prominently in that second column, but probably won't because it has occurred in a faraway country that most Westerners know only through the film Black Hawk Down - or from recent reports of rampant piracy including the seizure early on Sunday of a Saudi tanker, carrying more than two million barrels of oil, which had an immediate effect on crude prices.
I am referring to the Bush Administration's intervention in Somalia in the name of the War on Terror. It has helped to destroy that wretched country's best chance of peace in a generation, left more than a million Somalis dead, homeless or starving, and achieved the precise opposite of its original goal. Far from stamping out an Islamic militancy that scarcely existed, the intervention has turned Somalia into a breeding ground for Islamic extremists and given al-Qaeda a valuable foothold in the Horn of Africa.
Rewind to the early summer of 2006. For 15 years, since the fall of the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, feuding warlords had made Somalia a byword for anarchy and terrorism - the archetypal failed state. A tenth of its population had been killed. A million had fled abroad. At that point the warlords were finally routed, despite covert CIA backing, by a remarkable public uprising in support of the so-called Islamic Courts movement that promised to end the lawlessness.
Background
Islamists await hijacked ship's weapons cache
Plunder is used to fund terrorism
Britain’s phoney war on terror
Somalis in terror of the night letter
Somalia had always practised a mild form of Islam, but the Courts received a bad press in the West, being widely portrayed as a new Taleban determined to impose the most draconian forms of Sharia on a terrified populace. That was certainly what I expected when I visited Mogadishu in early December 2006. But what I actually found was a people still celebrating the return of peace and security.
Gone were the checkpoints where the warlords' gunmen extorted and killed. Gone were their “technicals” - the Jeeps with heavy machineguns on the back with which they terrorised the citzenry. For the first time that most Somalis could remember, they were walking around their shattered capital in safety, even at night. Businesses were reopening. Exiles were returning. Mountains of rubbish were being carted away.
“It's like paradise compared to even one year ago,” according to Mohammed Ahmed, a doctor who had returned from working at the West Middlesex Hospital.
The Courts had certainly imposed what would be seen in the West as some fairly repressive moral codes. They cracked down on the narcotic qat that rendered half the menfolk senseless, banned sexually explicit films, encouraged women to cover their heads and discouraged Western music and dancing. There had been two public executions. But that was a price most Somalis were happy to pay, and while the Courts' disparate factions undoubtedly included extremists with dangerous connections and intentions, they also included moderates with whom the West could have done business.
European nations favoured engagement. Washington did not. It accused the Courts of harbouring the al-Qaeda terrorists responsible for bombing US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. The Courts hardly helped their cause by claiming territory in Kenya and Ethiopia.
Weeks after my visit the US supported - morally, materially and with intelligence - an invasion by predominantly Christian Ethiopia, Somalia's oldest bitter enemy. That replaced what was, for all its faults, Somalia's most effective government in memory with a deeply unpopular one led by former warlords, which had been cobbled together by the international community in Nairobi two years previously.
“The Americans see an extremist under every Muslim stone,” one European official complained bitterly, and the consequences were entirely predictable. An insurgency that began early in 2007 has steadily gathered strength, while the reviled Government in Mogadishu has come to depend utterly for its survival on thousands of Ethiopian troops that were meant to withdraw within weeks.
As the fighting has worsened 10,000 Somali civilians are thought to have been killed, more than a million have fled their homes, and more than three million - 40 per cent of the population - now urgently need humanitarian assistance. Although the UN World Food Programme is still getting some aid into the country the situation is deteriorating and scores of humanitarian workers have been killed or abducted. Exploiting the lawlessness, pirates have turned the waters off Somalia into some of the most dangerous in the world.
In Kenya last weekend Abdullahi Yusuf, Somalia's President, finally admitted that insurgents now control most of the country and have advanced to the very edge of Mogadishu. His Government, he said, was close to collapse.
There are several insurgent forces, but one of the most powerful is the Shabab - a group of virulently anti-Western jihadists that has now eclipsed the Islamic Courts movement of which it was once part.
Somalia's nightmare may be only just starting. President Yusuf predicts wholesale slaughter if the Shabab seize Mogadishu. Diplomats fear that the Shabab will wage all-out war with other insurgent forces, including those of the Islamic Courts, for control of the country once Ethiopian troops - the common enemy - are withdrawn.
And unlike the Courts, the Shabab has no truck with moderation: in the port city of Kismayo last month a young girl who complained that she had been raped was stoned to death for adultery, while in Balad two dozen Somalis were flogged for performing a traditional dance.
Whatever happens, Somalia will be another horrendous legacy for Barack Obama, but somewhere on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border one man will be celebrating. Shabab openly supports al-Qaeda. It has adopted suicide bombings and other tactics. “Al-Qaeda is the mother of the holy war in Somalia... We are negotiating how we can unite into one,” Muktar Robow, a leading Shabab commander, recently told the Los Angeles Times. “We will take our orders from Sheikh Osama bin Laden because we are his students.”
All in all, hardly a resounding triumph for the War on Terror.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - 09:47 PM
Kismaayo: Baaq ku socda Maleeshiyooyinka ku dagaalamaya Degaanka Kudha
Dhamaan Gudiga iyo Xubnaha Ururka Badbaadinta Iyo Mideynta Jubbada Hoose ee ku kala Sugan Kismaayo, Bariga Dhexe, Bariga Afrika, Yurub, W/Ameerika, Australia waxaan talo iyo waano u direynaa dhamaan dadka walaalaha ah ee ku dagaalamaya marsada Kudhaa inay si shuruud la,aan ah ay u joojiyaan dagaalka...
KA: GUDIGA URURKA BADBAADINTA IYO MIDDEYNTA JUBBADDA HOOSEKU: DHAMAAN KOOXAHA KU DAGAALAMAYA GOBOLKA JUBBADA HOOSE KHAASATAN MARSADA KUDHAA. BISMILLAAHI RAXMAANI RAXIIMDhamaan Gudiga iyo Xubnaha Ururka Badbaadinta Iyo Mideynta Jubbada Hoose ee ku kala Sugan Kismaayo, Bariga Dhexe, Bariga Afrika, Yurub, W/Ameerika, Australia waxaan talo iyo waano u direynaa dhamaan dadka walaalaha ah ee ku dagaalamaya marsada Kudhaa inay si shuruud la,aan ah ay u joojiyaan dagaalka una wada hadlaan, dhibaatada dhexdooda ahna ay ku xaliyaan si walaalnimo ah, kana digtoonaadan in uu cadowgooda kaga faa,iideysto dagaalka ka dhex alooshan dhexdooda.Waxaan kaloo baaq u direynaa dhamaan waxgaradka iyo cuqaasha, siyaasiyiinta, isimada, dhalinyarada iyo waliba intii garaad fiyoow leh in ay si deg deg ah u joojiyaan dagaalka ay ku le,anayaan dadka walaalaha ah,Waxaa ka mamnuuca qofka muslinka ah inuu daadiyo dhiiga walaalkiisa kale ee muslinka ah, waxaan u aragnaa dagaaladan haddii aan nahay Ururka Badbaadinta iyo Mideynta Jubbada Hoose wax waxashnimo ah oo ay ku kaceen dad aan garaad fiican lahayn.Hadaba dhamaan dadka ehelada ah ee ka soo jeeda Gobolka Jubbada Hoose waxaan ku boorinaynaa inay ka qeyb qaataan joojinta dhiiga ku daadanaya marsada Kudhaa. Mahadsanidiin dhamaantiin.Ururka Badbaadinta iyo Mideynta Jubbada Hoose.E-mails: waamogroup1@hotmail.com ama
Kismaayo: Baaq ku socda Maleeshiyooyinka ku dagaalamaya Degaanka Kudha
Dhamaan Gudiga iyo Xubnaha Ururka Badbaadinta Iyo Mideynta Jubbada Hoose ee ku kala Sugan Kismaayo, Bariga Dhexe, Bariga Afrika, Yurub, W/Ameerika, Australia waxaan talo iyo waano u direynaa dhamaan dadka walaalaha ah ee ku dagaalamaya marsada Kudhaa inay si shuruud la,aan ah ay u joojiyaan dagaalka...
KA: GUDIGA URURKA BADBAADINTA IYO MIDDEYNTA JUBBADDA HOOSEKU: DHAMAAN KOOXAHA KU DAGAALAMAYA GOBOLKA JUBBADA HOOSE KHAASATAN MARSADA KUDHAA. BISMILLAAHI RAXMAANI RAXIIMDhamaan Gudiga iyo Xubnaha Ururka Badbaadinta Iyo Mideynta Jubbada Hoose ee ku kala Sugan Kismaayo, Bariga Dhexe, Bariga Afrika, Yurub, W/Ameerika, Australia waxaan talo iyo waano u direynaa dhamaan dadka walaalaha ah ee ku dagaalamaya marsada Kudhaa inay si shuruud la,aan ah ay u joojiyaan dagaalka una wada hadlaan, dhibaatada dhexdooda ahna ay ku xaliyaan si walaalnimo ah, kana digtoonaadan in uu cadowgooda kaga faa,iideysto dagaalka ka dhex alooshan dhexdooda.Waxaan kaloo baaq u direynaa dhamaan waxgaradka iyo cuqaasha, siyaasiyiinta, isimada, dhalinyarada iyo waliba intii garaad fiyoow leh in ay si deg deg ah u joojiyaan dagaalka ay ku le,anayaan dadka walaalaha ah,Waxaa ka mamnuuca qofka muslinka ah inuu daadiyo dhiiga walaalkiisa kale ee muslinka ah, waxaan u aragnaa dagaaladan haddii aan nahay Ururka Badbaadinta iyo Mideynta Jubbada Hoose wax waxashnimo ah oo ay ku kaceen dad aan garaad fiican lahayn.Hadaba dhamaan dadka ehelada ah ee ka soo jeeda Gobolka Jubbada Hoose waxaan ku boorinaynaa inay ka qeyb qaataan joojinta dhiiga ku daadanaya marsada Kudhaa. Mahadsanidiin dhamaantiin.Ururka Badbaadinta iyo Mideynta Jubbada Hoose.E-mails: waamogroup1@hotmail.com ama
Thursday, March 20, 2008
kismayo
Kismaayo: War deg deg ah: Markab Dhuxul lagu raray oo uu dab ku qabsaday Dekeda Magaalada Kismaayo.12. februar 2008
APL
Tool
Kismaayo (AllPuntland)- Wararka naga soo gaaraya Magaalada Kismaayo ee Xarunta Gobolka Jubada Hoose ayaa sheegaya in Markab kuwa xamuulka ah oo saaka dhuxul lagu raray uu Dab ku qabsaday Dekeda Magaalada Kismaayo.Wararka oo isa soo taraya ayaa intaa ku daraya in Markab uu qeyb ka mid ah uu Dabku baabi'iyay, isla markaana uu iminka dabka sii socda, waxaana ilaa iyo hada jirin isku day lagu daminayo Dabka.Dabka oo ah mid wali holcaya ayaa qarka u saaran Markab qeybihiisa kale uu u gudbo, iyadoona dabeylahana ay sii hurinayaan dabka.Magaalada Kismaayo ayaa maalmahan aheyd meel si weyn Dhuxusha looga dhoofinayo, iyadoona Deegaanada Jubooyinka ay ka soconeysay jarista dhisrta.Wareegto horay ugu soo baxday Xafiiska Madaxweynaha Dowladda Federaalka Mudane C/llaahi Yuusuf ayaa lagu mamnuucay jarista Dhirta iyo Dhoofinta Dhuxusha, iyadoona amarkaas uu ka dhaqan galay meelo ka mid ah Dalka, laakiin Magaalada Kismaayo oo ay gacanta ku hayaan Maleeshiyo beeleedyo ayaa u muuqda mid aan loogaga hogaansamin amarka Madaxweynaha.wixii warar ah ee ku soo kordha dabka sii holcaya ee qabsaday Markabka dhuxusha lagu rarayay kala soco wararkeena DambeC/casiis MaxamedAllPuntland
APL
Tool
Kismaayo (AllPuntland)- Wararka naga soo gaaraya Magaalada Kismaayo ee Xarunta Gobolka Jubada Hoose ayaa sheegaya in Markab kuwa xamuulka ah oo saaka dhuxul lagu raray uu Dab ku qabsaday Dekeda Magaalada Kismaayo.Wararka oo isa soo taraya ayaa intaa ku daraya in Markab uu qeyb ka mid ah uu Dabku baabi'iyay, isla markaana uu iminka dabka sii socda, waxaana ilaa iyo hada jirin isku day lagu daminayo Dabka.Dabka oo ah mid wali holcaya ayaa qarka u saaran Markab qeybihiisa kale uu u gudbo, iyadoona dabeylahana ay sii hurinayaan dabka.Magaalada Kismaayo ayaa maalmahan aheyd meel si weyn Dhuxusha looga dhoofinayo, iyadoona Deegaanada Jubooyinka ay ka soconeysay jarista dhisrta.Wareegto horay ugu soo baxday Xafiiska Madaxweynaha Dowladda Federaalka Mudane C/llaahi Yuusuf ayaa lagu mamnuucay jarista Dhirta iyo Dhoofinta Dhuxusha, iyadoona amarkaas uu ka dhaqan galay meelo ka mid ah Dalka, laakiin Magaalada Kismaayo oo ay gacanta ku hayaan Maleeshiyo beeleedyo ayaa u muuqda mid aan loogaga hogaansamin amarka Madaxweynaha.wixii warar ah ee ku soo kordha dabka sii holcaya ee qabsaday Markabka dhuxusha lagu rarayay kala soco wararkeena DambeC/casiis MaxamedAllPuntland
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
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