Harari is an Ethiopian Semitic language spoken by the Harari people of Ethiopia. Old Harari is a literary language of the city of Harar, a central hub of Islam in Horn of Africa. According to the 2007 Ethiopian census, it is spoken by 25,810 people. Harari is closely related to the Eastern Gurage languages, Zay, and Silt'e, all of whom are believed to be linked to the now extinct Semitic Harla language. Locals or natives of Harar refer to their language as Gēy Sinan or Gēy Ritma language of the City (Gēy is the word for how Harari speakers refer to the city of Harar, whose name is an exonym). According to Wolf Leslau, Sidama is the substratum language of Harari and influenced the vocabulary greatly. He identified unique Cushitic loanwords found only in Harari and deduced that it may have Cushitic roots. Harari was originally written with a version of the Arabic script, then the Ethiopic script was adopted to write the language. Some Harari speakers in diaspora write their language with the Latin alphabet.

Phonology

Grammar

Nouns

Number

Wolf Leslau discusses Harari–East Gurage phonology and grammar: The noun has two numbers, singular and plural. The affix -ač changes singulars into plurals: Nouns ending in a or i become plural without reduplicating this letter: /s/ alternates with /z/:

Gender

Masculine nouns may be converted into feminines by three processes. The first changes the terminal vowel into -it, or adds -it to the terminal consonant: Animals of different sexes have different names. and this forms the second process: The third and the most common way of expressing sex is by means of korma male or man and inistí woman, female, corresponding to English "he-" and "she-":

Pronouns

The affixed pronouns or possessives attached to nouns are: Singular. Plural. In the same way attached pronouns are affixed to verbs: The demonstrative pronouns are: The interrogative pronouns are the following:

Verbs

The following are the two auxiliary verbs: Past tense Present tense Imperative Prohibitive Past tense (Affirmative form) (Negative form) Present tense. (Affirmative form) (Negative form)

Writing system

Harari was originally written in an unmodified and later modified Arabic Script. The Ethiopic script was then adopted to write Harari. There is a Latin version of the script used by the Harari diaspora.

Modified Arabic script

Vowel markings table

Modified Ge'ez script

Harari can be written in the unmodified Ethiopic script as most vowel differences can be disambiguated from context. The Harari adaptation of the Ethiopic script adds a long vowel version of the Ethiopic/Amharic vowels by adding a dot on top of the letter. In addition certain consonants are pronounced differently when compared to the Amharic pronunciation. The table below shows the Harari alphasyllabary with the Romanized & IPA consonants along the rows and the Romanized vowel markings along the columns.

Modified Latin script

Numerals