Somali Interpreters & Translation Services

Somali (Af Soomaali) is a Lowland East Cushitic language with an estimated 20-25 million speakers concentrated in the Horn of Africa and in global diasporas. Its principal dialect groups include Northern (which is the basis for the standard in many contexts), Maay, and Benadiri varieties. Somali is an official language in Somali and Ethiopia, as well as a national language in Djibouti and a recognized minority language in Kenya.

The written standard you’ll see now – the Somali Latin alphabet – was adopted as the official orthography during a national standardization effort in the early 1970s. Prior to that, locally invented alphabets (for example, Osmanya) and Arabic-script practices were used. Distinctions between major dialects affect grammar and vocabulary to such an extent that some varieties (notably Maay) are sometimes treated separately in linguistic descriptions.

Five Interesting Facts about Somali:

• The Somali language is full of highly specialist terms that are rooted in traditional livelihoods. For example, there are many words that denote very specific things about camels and even examples of academic literature showing long lists of camel terms! This highlights how language evolves out of lived experience and practical need.
• Grammatically, Somali is interestingly marked: it shows a “marked-nominative” case system (a trait shared with some Cushitic relatives) rather than the straightforward nominative/accusative you might expect from Indo-European languages. That influences how subjects and objects are formed and identified.
• Before the Latin alphabet there were home-grown scripts. The most well-known of these is likely Osmanya, invented in the 1920s by a Somali scholar and prince. It serves as a striking reminder that Somalis devised their own writing systems long before the national standard.
• Osmanya wasn’t the only local script – there are also the Borama and Kaddare alphabets (each the product of Somali inventiveness). They never replaced the Latin standard, but they’re an important part of Somali’s written history.
• The Somali Latin alphabet was chosen for practicality: it borrows almost all the same letters you see in English (but not p, v, or z), and it uses an apostrophe to show the glottal stop. – a tiny “catch” in the throat.