Macaafa Qulqulluu / Oromo Holy Bible pulbished as Afaan Oromoo - Hiikaa Haaraa / New Translation in Latin Script / Bible Society of Ethiopia 1997 / Black Vinyl Bound / Oromo Latin Bible BSE-UBS / CL042LT

• VinylBound 1997
• ISBN: 9789966274038 /  978-9966274038
• ISBN-10: 9966274030
• PAGES: 1610
• PUBLISHER: Bible Society of Ethiopia
• LANGUAGE: Oromo
• Dimensions: 17 x 11 x 3 cm

English Description:

Oromo (/ˈɒrəmoʊ/ or /ɔːˈroʊmoʊ/; Oromo: Afaan Oromoo) is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch. It is native to the Ethiopian state of Oromia and spoken predominantly by the Oromo people and neighbouring ethnic groups in the Horn of Africa.

With 33.8% Oromo speakers, followed by 29.3% of Amharic speakers, Oromo is the most widely spoken language in Ethiopia. It is also the most widely spoken Cushitic language and the fourth-most widely spoken language of Africa, after Arabic, Hausa and Swahili. Forms of Oromo are spoken as a first language by more than 35 million Oromo people in Ethiopia and by an additional half-million in parts of northern and eastern Kenya. It is also spoken by smaller numbers of emigrants in other African countries such as South Africa, Libya, Egypt and Sudan.

Oromo serves as the official working language of the Oromia, Harar and Dire Dawa regional states and of the Oromia Zone in the Amhara Region. It is a language of primary education in Oromia, Harar, Dire Dawa, Benishangul-Gumuz and Addis Ababa and of the Oromia Zone in the Amhara Region. It is used as internet language for federal websites along with Tigrinya.

Writing systems

Oromo is written with a Latin alphabet called Qubee which was formally adopted in 1991. Various versions of the Latin-based orthography had been used previously, mostly by Oromos outside of Ethiopia and by the OLF by the late 1970s (Heine 1986). With the adoption of Qubee, it is believed more texts were written in the Oromo language between 1991 and 1997 than in the previous 100 years. In Kenya, the Borana and Waata also use Roman letters but with different systems.

The Sapalo script was an indigenous Oromo script invented by Sheikh Bakri Sapalo (1895-1980; also known by his birth name, Abubaker Usman Odaa) in the late 1950s, and used underground afterwards. Despite structural and organizational influences from Ge'ez and the Arabic script, it is a graphically-independent creation designed specifically for Oromo phonology. It is largely alphasyllabic in nature, but lacks the inherent vowel present in many such systems; in actual use, all consonant characters are obligatorially marked either with vowel signs (producing CV syllables) or with separate marks used to denote long consonants and consonants not followed by a vowel (e.g. in word-final environments or as part of consonant clusters).

The Arabic script has also been used intermittently in areas with Muslim populations.