| Sheko | |
| States: | Ethiopia |
| Region: | Bench Maji Zone, Kafa region |
| Date: | 2007 census |
| Ref: | e25 |
| Familycolor: | Afro-Asiatic |
| Fam2: | Omotic |
| Fam3: | North |
| Fam4: | Dizoid |
| Iso3: | she |
| Glotto: | shek1245 |
| Glottorefname: | Sheko |
Sheko is an Omotic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken in the area between Tepi and Mizan Teferi in western Ethiopia, in the Sheko district in the Bench Maji Zone. The 2007 census lists 38,911 speakers; the 1998 census listed 23,785 speakers, with 13,611 identified as monolinguals.[1]
Sheko, together with the Dizi and Nayi languages, is part of a cluster of languages variously called "Maji" or "Dizoid".
The language is notable for its retroflex consonants (Aklilu Yilma 1988), a striking feature shared with closely related Dizi and nearby (but not closely related) Bench (Breeze 1988).
Apart from the above-mentioned retroflex consonants, the phonology of Sheko is characterized by a total 28 consonant phonemes,[2] five long vowels and six short vowels,[3] plus four phonemic tone levels.[4]
Hellenthal (2010, p. 45) lists the following consonant phonemes of Sheko:
| Labial | Alveolar | Post- alveolar | Retroflex | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | Ejective | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Voiceless | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Voiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Affricate | Ejective | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Voiceless | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Fricative | Voiceless | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Voiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| tap | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
Unlike other Dizoid languages, Sheko has no contrast between pronounced as //r// and pronounced as //l//.[5] Consonants are rarely geminated,[6] and there is a syllabic nasal pronounced as //n̩//[7]
Hellenthal (2010, p. 56) lists the following long and short vowels of Sheko: pronounced as //i//, pronounced as //iː//, pronounced as //e//, pronounced as //eː// pronounced as //ə//, pronounced as //a//, pronounced as //aː//, pronounced as //u//, pronounced as //uː//, pronounced as //o//, pronounced as //oː//.
Sheko is one of very few languages in Africa that have four distinct phonemic tone levels.[8] Tone distinguishes meaning both in the lexicon and in the grammar, particularly to distinguish persons in the pronominal system.[9]
Ethnologue lists the following morphosyntactic features: "SOV; postpositions; genitives, articles, adjectives, numerals, relatives after noun heads; question word initial; 1 prefix, 5 suffixes; word order distinguishes subjects, objects, indirect objects; affixes indicate case of noun phrases; verb affixes mark person, number, gender of subject; passives, causatives, comparatives."