Wolaytta is a NorthOmotic language of the Ometo group spoken in the Wolayita Zone and some other parts of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region of Ethiopia. It is the native language of the Welayta people. The estimates of the population vary greatly because it is not agreed where the boundaries of the language are. There are conflicting claims about how widely Wolaytta is spoken. The Ethnologue identifies one smaller dialect region: Zala. Some hold that Melo, Oyda, and Gamo-Gofa-Dawro are also dialects, but most authorities, including Ethnologue and ISO 639-3 now list these as separate languages. The different communities of speakers also recognize them as separate languages. A variety called Laha is said to be 'close' to Wolaytta in Hayward but listed as a distinct language by Blench; however, it is not included in Ethnologue. Wolaytta has existed in written form since the 1940s, when the Sudan Interior Mission first devised a system for writing it. The writing system was later revised by a team led by Dr. Bruce Adams. They finished the New Testament in 1981 and the entire Bible in 2002. It was one of the first languages the Derg selected for their literacy campaign, before any other southern languages. Welaytta pride in their written language led to a fiercely hostile response in 1998 when the Ethiopian government distributed textbooks written in Wegagoda – an artificial language based on amalgamating Wolaytta with several closely related languages. As a result the textbooks in Wegagoda were withdrawn and teachers returned to ones in Wolaytta. In speaking their language, the Wolaytta people use many proverbs. A large collection of them, in Ethiopian script, was published in 1987 by the Academy of Ethiopian Languages. Fikre Alemayehu's 2012 MA thesis from Addis Ababa University provides an analysis of Wolaytta proverbs and their functions.
The language is the official language in the Wolayita Zone of Ethiopia. The Ethnologue cites statistics that 5% to 25% of the population are literate in this language. Portions of the Bible were produced in 1934, the New Testament in 1981, and the entire Bible in 2002.
Phonology
Consonants
Wakasa gives the following consonant phonemes for Wolaytta. Items in show the Latin alphabet, where this differs from the IPA: Two consonants require further discussion. The sound written is described by Wakasa as a 'nasalized glottal fricative'; it is said to be extremely rare, occurring in only one common noun, an interjection, and two proper names. The status of the sound written is apparently in dispute; Adams and Lamberti and Sottile claim that it is implosive, thus presumably. Wakasa denies that this consonant is implosive, and calls it 'glottalized'.
Vowels
Wolaytta has five vowels, which appear both long and short:
Front
Central
Back
High
,
,
Mid
,
,
Low
,
Grammar
Word order
Like other Omotic languages, the Wolaytta language has the basic word order SOV, as shown in the following example : It has postpositional phrases, which precede the verb : Nouns used adjectivally precede the nouns that they modify Numerals precede the nouns that they quantify over
