Эфиопияның солтүстік Омотика тілі: Бенч тілінің ерекшеліктері

Northern Omotic language of Ethiopia

Bench (Bencnon, Shenon or Mernon, formerly called Gimira) is a Northern Omotic language of the "Gimojan" subgroup, spoken by about 174,000 people (in 1998) in the Bench Maji Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region, in southern Ethiopia, around the towns of Mizan Teferi and Shewa Gimira. In a 2006 dissertation, Christian Rapold described three varieties of Bench (Benchnon, Shenon, and Mernon) as " mutually intelligible varieties of one and the same language". In unusual variance from most of the other languages in Africa, Bench has retroflex consonant phonemes. The language is also noteworthy in that it has six phonemic tones, one of only a handful of languages in the world that have this many. Bench has a whistled form used primarily by male speakers, which permits communication over greater distances than spoken Bench. The whistle can be created using the lips or made from a hollow created with both hands. Additionally, this form of the language may be communicated via the 5 stringed krar.

Plurals may optionally be formed by adding the suffix ; however, these are rarely used except with definite nouns. E. g.: "her relatives"; "all the people".

Adjectives are sometimes intensified by changing the tone to top; e. g. "big" → "very big".

Verbs with monosyllabic roots can have three different forms of their active stems: the singular imperative, which is just the root; the past stem, usually identical to the root but sometimes formed by adding k (with changes to the preceding consonant); and the future stem, usually identical to the root but sometimes formed by changing the tone from mid 3 to high 4 or from bottom 1 to top 5. Some have causative (formed by adding or , and changing mid tone to high) and passive (formed by adding , , or to the causative) forms. Verbal nouns are formed from the stem, sometimes with tone change or addition or
Verbs with polysyllabic roots have at least two forms, one with an intransitive or passive meaning and one with a transitive or causative meaning; the former ends in , the latter in A passive may be formed by ending in Verbal nouns are formed by taking the bare stem without or
Compound verbs are formed with "say" or "cause to say", a formation common among Ethiopian languages. The primary tenses are simple past (formed from the past stem), future (future stem plus ), present perfect (from present participle stem); negative (future stem plus .) E. g.: → "he went"; "he will go"; "he has gone". There are four corresponding participles: past (formed from the past stem), present perfect (formed from the past stem with the suffix , , or ), imperfect (formed from the future stem with the stative suffix ), and negative (formed from the future stem with the negative suffix or or a person/number marker.) The order of affixes is: root (tense) (negative) (foc. pn.) person/number marker.

A Latin based orthography was adopted in 2008. Previously, the New Testament had been published in the Bench language using an orthography based on the Ethiopian syllabary. Tones were not indicated. Retroflex consonants were indicated by such techniques as using extra symbols from the syllabary (the "nigus s") and forming new symbols (the addition of an extra arm on the left side for "t").