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Bambassi (native name: Màwés Aasʼè) is an Omotic Afroasiatic language spoken in Ethiopia around the towns of Bambasi and Didessa in the area east of Asosa in Benishangul-Gumuz Region. The parent language group is the East Mao group. Alternative names for the language are Bambeshi, Siggoyo, Amam, Fadiro, Northern Mao, Didessa and Kere.

The most current information on the number of Bambassi speakers is not known, as the 2007 census grouped the Mao languages together, despite low lexical similarity. 33,683 mother tongue speakers of Maogna (covering Bambassi, Hozo and Seze) were listed.

Similarities

Bambassi has a 31% lexical similarity with other Omotic languages.

Phonology

Bambassi has 5 vowels: /a, e, i, o, u/. The vowels have lengthened forms, and Bambassi has contrastive vowel length.

Orthography

Vowels and tones

• a -
• aa -
• e -
• ee -
• i -
• ii -
• o -
• oo -
• u -
• uu -
• á - high tone
• a - middle tone
• à - low tone

Consonants

• b -
• c' -
• ch -
• d -
• g -
• h -
• k -
• k' -
• l -
• m -
• n -
• ng -
• p -
• p' -
• r -
• s -
• sh -
• t -
• t' -
• w -
• y -
• z -

Morphology

This section of morphology gives information of different word types in the Bambassi language and how they relate to each other. It splits up in nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns and numbers and will give information about tense, aspect and mood.

Verbs

In the Bambassi language we find three oppositions affecting the structure of verb forms, namely the infinitive and the finite verb forms, the realis and irrealis forms and final and non-final forms.

Starting with the irrealis and realis verb forms, the following table summarizes the most important aspects:

Adverbs

Màwés Aasʼè has adverbs of time, manner and location. They can modify clauses or verbs. Some of them will be named in the following:

hóllá - 'now'

kwalla - 'yesterday'

háʦʼà - 'tomorrow'

wó - 'like this'

pàtʼwáne - 'again'

hòʃkján - 'only'

zèːpʼés - 'together'

ʃené - 'before'

bekʼà - 'end'

Numbers

Northern Mao number system is a 10-base-system. Numbers 11-19 are formed from parts of kú:sé "hand" and túget "foot".

200 numbo-ku:s-an kú:s-án

Morphosyntaxe

Word order

The usual word order in the Bambassi language is subject - object - verb, the verb comes last. The following sentences are given as an example:

(1) íʃ es-ìʃ ʃóːʃ-ná ha-pí-↓á

DEF person-SBJ snake-OBJ AFF-kill-DECL

‘The person killed a snake.’

(2) múnts’-ìʃ p’iʃ-(na) ha-kaːm-á

woman-SBJ child-OBJ AFF-love-DECL

‘A woman loved a child.’

Notes

1. "Màwés Aasʼè". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2018-08-01.
2. Güldemann, Tom (2018). "Historical linguistics and genealogical language classification in Africa". In Güldemann, Tom (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of Africa. The World of Linguistics series. Vol. 11. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 58–444. doi:10.1515/9783110421668-002. ISBN 978-3-11-042606-9.
3. Bambassi language at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
4. Ethiopia 2007 Census
5. Michael, Ahland (2012). A Grammar of Northern Mao (Màwés Aas'è) (Thesis). University of Oregon.
6. "Bambassi language and pronunciation". Omniglot. Retrieved 30 July 2021.
7. ^ Ahland, Michael (2023). 42 Northern Mao (Màwés Aatsʼè), In: The Oxford Handbook of Ethiopian Languages. p. 1018. ISBN 9780198728542.
8. Ahland, Michael (2023). 42 Northern Mao (Màwés Aatsʼè), In: The Oxford Handbook of Ethiopian Languages. pp. 1017–1018.
9. Ahland, Michael (2012). A grammar of Northern Mao (Màwés Aas'è). pp. 295–299.
10. Ahland, Michael (2012). A grammar of Northern Mao (Màwés Aas'è). pp. 324–327.

Further reading

• Ahland, Michael. 2009. "Aspects of Northern Mao (Bambassi-Diddesa) phonology."Linguistic Discovery 7: 1-42.
• Alemayehu Dumessa. 2007. Word Formation in Diddessa Mao. Addis Ababa University, MA thesis. Web access
• Wedekind, Charlotte, Klaus Wedekind and Ralph Siebert. 2002. "Third S.L.L.E. survey on languages of the Begi/Asosa area.", SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2002-056

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