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SayidSomal

Standard Somali or Dialect Somali?

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Which of the following words in somali would you say are standard - i.e - everyone would understand regardless of region. unfortunately -i understand all of them and use them interchangeable.

 

Also on the debate over the 'r' verses the 'dh', which one would you say is more of word-distinguisher?? e.g. do you say "weedh" or "weer" for the word "sentence" in somali??

 

 

  • shaati/shaadh

    gabar/gabadh

    sameysaan/qabataan

    tagtaa/aaddaa?

    gaari/gaadhi?

    weyday/weysay

    akhrinayaa/ akhriyayaa

    akhridaa/ akhrisaa

    akhrinta/akhriska

    huruud/jaalle

    shandad/boorso

    koodh/jaakad

    quraarad/dhalo

    eeg or fiiri

    roodhi/rooti

    madbakhaa/jikada

    baaskiil/bushkaleeti

    saldhig/istaanka

    dhaqaa/maydhaa

thanks guys for your anticipated help in this matter.

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B   

who cares. anyways we should cater for diversity. people are different. i am proud of my regional accent.

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^ i do.

 

uztaad, there was committee in somalia that was working on standardising the academic language and they were doing well until the disruption.

nevertheless, what i wanted was the COMMON somali.

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B   

disruption? that was 19 years ago. with no proper education system and war. peoples accents have taken a turn for the worse. lol

 

koodh/jaakad - i use both but they have different meaning.

 

koodh = coat

jaakad = jacket.

 

these words are not even somali. lol. and you talk about standard somali.

 

how do you say coat in italian, wasnt somalia an italian colony? how comes all these word are all english. is that because of english being a lingua franca of the world.

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UZTAAD   

yes, i have seen some high school science text books written in Somali language. they used combination of different regional dialect for example walax (substance) instead of wax, which southern word.

they also extensively used DH in place of R eg, gabadh instead of gabar

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Uztaad - yes the committee succeeded in creating textbooks using somali as the medium of instructions in all subjects from primary upto senior high school and was working on the university level when the civil upheaval occured.

 

re 'walax' vs. 'wax' - the later means 'thing' where as the first means 'kind of thing (material)' which is the correct word for substance.

 

B&H learn to distinguish between 'origin' of the words and what they metamorphosed into in somali.

no language in the wold can claim to be free from words from foreign languages.

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Haatu   

I don't think there is Standard Somali. If there were, I'd suspect majority of the words to be Northern

 

shaati

 

gabar

 

sameysaan/qabataan - I use both

 

tagtaa/aaddaa? - both again

 

gaari

 

weyday

 

akhrinayaa

 

akhridaa/ akhrisaa - both

 

akhrinta/akhriska - both

 

jaalle

 

boorso

 

jaakad

 

dhalo

 

eeg or fiiri - both

 

rooti

 

jikada

 

baaskiil

 

saldhig

 

dhaqaa

 

Che I don't think anyone understands what you say :D

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