摘要：Oromo is an East Cushitic Language that belongs to the Afroasiatic phylum. It is
spoken by more than 17.000.000 native speakers in Ethiopia, Kenya and south-western
Somalia, from eastern Tigray to the Kenyan coast south of Malindi, and from
Wollegga to the region of Harar. It is now called Oromiffaa or Afaan Oromoo by its
speakers, and Oromi..a or Galli..a in Amharic, the most widely spoken language in
Ethiopia. It has been written both in Ethiopian, Arabic and Latin scripts in the past, but
in the ¡¯70s and ¡¯80s, during the Derg government, the Oromo opposition movements
opted for the so-called qubee, a Latin orthography without diacritics, and introduced it
among the diaspora and in some areas of Ethiopia. After 1991, when Ethiopia replaced
its previous centralized organization with its new system of ¡°ethnic federalism¡±,
Oromo written in qubee was introduced in the administration and the elementary
schools of the Oromo Region. As a consequence, Oromo is thus now a well
established written language, with several published periodicals, novels, essays,
dictionaries and collections of traditional oral literature. There are different regional
varieties of Oromo, but the present-day language written in Ethiopia is based
essentially upon Western and Shewan varieties, with a few elements from the East.
