Reference and Pedagogical Resources for 'Standard
Volume
Reference and Pedagogical Resources for 'Standard' Somali
Christopher Green
Michelle E. Morrison
Nikki B. Adams
Erin Smith Crabb
Evan Jones
Recommended Citation
Follow this and additional works at; https; //ir; uiowa; edu/ejab
-
See next page for additional authors
Reference and Pedagogical Resources for 'Standard' Somali
Authors
Christopher Green, Michelle E. Morrison, Nikki B. Adams, Erin Smith Crabb, Evan Jones, and Valerie Novak
Reference and Pedagogical Resources for ‘Standard’
Somali
Crabb, Evan Jones, and Valerie Novak, University of Maryland, Center for
Advanced Study of Language (CASL)
Introduction
Somali [Af-Soomaali, iso:som] is perhaps the best documented Cushitic language in the linguistic
literature, with early descriptions dating back to the late nineteenth century (e.g. Hunter 1880;
Schleicher 1892). The language is located genetically within the Eastern Cushitic branch of the larger
Afro-Asiatic language family. It is estimated that Somali is spoken by approximately seventeen million
people, mainly in the Republic of Somalia, but also in neighboring Kenya, Djibouti, and Ethiopia, as
well as by large emigrant populations in the United States, Canada, and in parts of Europe and the
Middle East (Lewis, Simon & Fennig 2013).
Somali was designated an official language of Somalia in 1973, and its Roman-script orthography was
standardized to some degree shortly beforehand in 1972 (Andrzejewski 1978; Caney 1984), though even
today there continues to be significant variation in the application of orthographic conventions among
users of the language. It is well-understood that ‘standard’ Somali is the variety spoken in the northern
regions of the country, including the region that is now referred to by some as Somaliland (Abdullahi
2000). Closely related and considered to be largely mutually intelligible with ‘standard’ Somali is the
Benaadir (coastal or southern) dialect, which is also spoken in the national capital, Mogadishu
(Muqdisho). Another widely spoken but less mutually intelligible language variety within the ‘Somali’
group of Eastern Cushitic is Maay [Af-Maay, iso:ymm]. As implied by the fact that Maay has its own
iso code, while Benaadir does not, Maay is often considered to be a separate language. Several other
small languages spoken by clans in southern Somalia include Dabarre [iso:dbr], Garre [iso:gex], Jiiddu
[iso:jii], and Tunni [iso:tqq].
While Somali has been fairly well-documented, at least in comparison with most other African
languages, materials describing the language are often difficult to access for a variety of reasons. For
instance, much of the early foundational documentation of Somali is found in books and monographs
that have long since fallen out of publication. Other descriptive works are located in difficult to obtain
conference proceedings. A further issue to tackle is that the literature on Somali is written in a wide
variety of languages, including English, French, Russian, Italian, German, and Somali itself. A number
of important articles on Somali are found in journals and other periodicals that are no longer published,
and are therefore somewhat difficult obtain. Finally, some of the more sophisticated, contemporary work
on the language that addresses longstanding controversies or anomalies about Somali are yet
unpublished, being located in conference handouts and unpublished dissertations and theses. The sum
total of this state of affairs makes it prohibitively difficult for a linguist or pedagogue with interest in
descriptive, analytical, or theoretical topics in Somali to continue work on the language or to explore it
further.
Motivations and Scope
This bibliography, to the best of our ability, compiles and accounts for the current state of knowledge on
Somali, with a particular focus on characteristics of the ‘standard,’ northern variety of the language. The
purpose of undertaking this work is to complement our own ongoing descriptive work on Somali with
the goal of producing a comprehensive, contemporary reference grammar for the language. We include
in this bibliography all published materials (e.g. journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings)
on standard Somali known to us, as well as a number of unpublished materials (e.g. conference talks,
theses, dissertations) to which we have been able to gain access via the internet and university services
such as interlibrary loan.
In order to keep the scope of the bibliography and its contents relevant to the contemporary study of
Somali, we begin our annotations with Armstrong’s seminal (1934) book on Somali phonetics and
continue through the literature ending with materials so recent that some are still ‘to appear.’ We have,
nonetheless, included citations for several older resources, for the reference of those interested. Our
annotations cover resources in both English and French while setting aside (but still providing references
for) what we find to be the most often-cited wo (...truncated)