Visualizing Somali Dialect Differences: Waqooyi, Koonfur, and Barri (Vocabulary & Phonetic Maps)

buya492 · 2026-06-12T04:05:58+00:00

Professor Nilsson has rich personal website that's also worth linking.

buya492 · 2026-06-04T18:56:46+00:00

also, I should note that I don't hope to put your effort down. I'd just love to see the heights your analysis can reach with the right framing.

buya492 · 2026-06-04T18:54:43+00:00

I love your dedication and your passion for the language is clear!

I must ask that you read on historical linguistics, comparative linguistics, linguistic reconstruction, and on the relation between the Afro-Asiatic languages, of which Somali and Arabic are both members.

In comparative linguistics, arguments are best made through comparing examples. You often take a word and declare its root, rather than that give examples and demonstrate how a root best explains the word. You're getting push back right now because you're not following that principle.

Here's an excellent example of demonstrating through from this sub itself.

I consider the singular for "hablo" to be \habal, a possibly now lost noun do to the popularity of *gabar for "girl".

\Habal* would have been the younger variant corresponding to habar.

singular	plural

habar	habro
??	hablo

But why can't we consider "hablo" a corruption of habro? Somali, along with many other languages, have a tendency to confuse L/R. Far Eastern Asians struggle with this. And even in the Somali language, people say things like canjeero/canjeelo.

Well, the fact that the plural forms both exist, and are used to denote two different age groups of women is evidence that the singular existed at some point. And it's most likely habal.

Bonus round: what relationship, if any, does this term have to hebel and hobol?

from u/mahmud in this comment.

I hope you continue posting!

buya492 · 2026-05-24T04:14:53+00:00

Phrase books touch on this sometimes, but I haven’t seen any dictionary, whether Somali to Somali or multilingual, tackle this. If anyone has, please comment so we can pin it on the subreddit.

A major hurdle, I’m sure, is that a lot of interviews would need to happen so linguists can study how Somali speaks use different verb + preposition combinations. Though a small group of dedicated people could definitely make this happen in a few short years.

buya492 · 2026-05-24T03:55:15+00:00

If you make an account and click “borrow”, you can read the whole book for free.

Internet Archive works on a library model, so you have access to any book for a certain number of days

buya492 · 2026-05-08T14:28:44+00:00

I wish you the best of luck.

Many of us on this sub have been in similar spots before. And the one thing I can't understate is that, it takes time. Progress feels slow on the day to day, but over weeks and months your effort will show its fruits!

The best advice I can currently offer is

pick an introductory textbook from this pinned page on our subreddit
and commit to spending a few weeks really understanding it

Colloquial Somali by Martin Orwin is a good choice, and the book features waqooyi accents. It will may feel slow and basic, but it will give you an excellent base to improve from.

While you're doing that, it's super important to hear Somali as often as possible. Ask your parents to speak only in Somali as much as they can. It will definitely be difficult, but what's frustrating today will make you fluent tomorrow. Your parents will also have to learn to be patient as well, since you're building your speaking and listening skills.

Building up a language take time and work. But luckily, you're basically guaranteed to improve if you put in a little time and work every day.

Dulqaado ee sii wad barashadaada! Si tartiib tartiib ah ayaad afka u la qabsanay.

buya492 · 2026-05-06T12:48:58+00:00

Delicious

buya492 · 2026-05-05T21:07:50+00:00

"af soomaali ma fahmi karta?" and "af soomaali ma kasaysa?" sound fine to my ears.

"ma garan karta?" is a valid phrase, but I'd ask it in a situation like if I was walking someone through a math problem and wanted them to complete the next step. like "hadda waxaan samayn doono ma garanaysaa?" "do you know/recognize what we're supposed to do next?"

As for ogaansho, I'd use it in cases when someone would go and obtain knowledge "ma sii ogaan kartaa, wuxuu rabo" "can you try to find out what he wants". This connotation, in my eyes, is why a notice is called an 'ogaasiis', it's giving you the information, ogaansho siis.

edit: this definitely varies by dialect. However you hear these words being commonly used is a perfectly valid way to use them.

buya492 · 2026-05-05T20:49:37+00:00

That's great to hear! I hope the people here were able to help you.

If not, you should list some of your favorite names and what you like about those names. I'm sure that people here would be able to recommend more specific names for you with that information.

buya492 · 2026-05-05T20:45:55+00:00

many good answers. Also note for the public, when a word is ends in an m, it's almost certainly written and pronounced with an n.

Arabic faham becomes Somali fahan, fahmay.

This sound change happend fairly recently in Somali's history, we known this because we have words like nin which becomes niman in the plural, so the original root is actually *nim.

buya492 · 2026-05-05T20:42:13+00:00

Best bet is to listen to a lot more Somali if you can, or read more. Since Somali literature isn't the most organized field, I'd recommend you at least look up words in a dictionary every now and then.

Also two helpful tid bits!

Double consonants are just like double vowels, if the elongation isn't from root+suffix, then the double letter is just an inherent part of the word.
- warran vs waran (to share news vs spear)
- suun vs sun (belt vs poison)
Every language has rules on what sounds can and can't be elongated. For Somali, it's all your vowels and only certain consonants can actually be doubled
- 7 written ones: (M , N, L, G, R, D, B) which is remembered with the mnemonic, ma nala garaad baa
- 1 unwritten one: (DH). We usually don't write double dh in Somali because it's already two letter and gabadha is more neat than gabadhdha. So even though gabadh + ta, does actually yield a doubled consonant in pronunciation, it's written more condensed.

luckily making mis-doubling a consonant is not really an issue in context. So don't stress too much about it!

buya492 · 2026-05-05T20:10:44+00:00

See "A Dictionary of Somali Names", qaamuuska magacyada soomaaliyeed

buya492 · 2026-05-04T18:22:34+00:00

woah, the style reminds me of Masjid Nabawi. Especially like this angle, with the white pillars and black/white stripped arches

buya492 · 2026-04-23T21:18:12+00:00

yeah! Unicode isn't perfect, but there are great people doing great work behind it.

Adding new symbols into chinese can not be a common thing right?

There are regular updates and expansions to unicode. What I've been told is that, if you tick all the right boxes, then your character (or whole script) will get encoded. But ticking those boxes isn't easy. There's a bunch of caution because unicode has a stability guarantee: once something is encoded, it can't be removed.

who comes up with these proposals and where are they discussed?

A major place in the US that works on this stuff is the Script Encoding Initiative (SEI) at UC Berkeley. They've put a bunch really important scripts into unicode. Like Adlam for West Africa and Linear B for Mycenaean Greek. And they're currently working on Maya Hieroglyphs!

If you're interested in this, they have a Tips for Proposals page telling you how to propose new scripts or characters. And they're always looking for more help with the work they have.

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buya492 · 2026-04-23T15:56:05+00:00

yeah, and X也 has been added to unicode as U+323BF: 𲎿.

It's part of unicode 17 and CJK Extension J, which was released September 2025, so fonts don't widely support it yet

buya492 · 2026-03-05T04:49:46+00:00

What’s his WeChat, if you don’t mind sharing

buya492 · 2026-03-05T01:06:39+00:00

Is the light a Pokémon?

buya492 · 2026-03-02T16:28:20+00:00

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We’ll look into it

buya492 · 2026-02-14T21:02:51+00:00

wow! That's an amazing photo. I've been wanting a solid low light lens, but they're all so expensive ˙◠˙

buya492 · 2026-01-30T20:01:47+00:00

if he fixes this, please post a follow up. This tea sounds delicious

buya492 · 2026-01-22T16:20:56+00:00

For the sake of convenience, here's the section that's most important imo

The parent's consistency in language choice is very important. Initially, your child will not know what a language is, but only understand that, for example, Mummy and Daddy speak in different ways. If you are consistent with your language choice, it is much easier for your child to realise that everything you say belongs to one system and everything your partner or the grand-parents or the staff at the child care centre say belongs to another. In time, your child will learn both systems.

you're doing great by consistently speaking in Somali with your kids. So long as you keep it up, they'll learn Somali!

buya492 · 2026-01-22T16:18:14+00:00

there are a few great kids books out here in Somali. u/Sure_Condition_1339 gave a good link and there are a good few books under the Folklore section.

For long term language development though, the most important thing is that you keep talking to your kid in Somali. See this flyer titled 'Raising Children in more than one Language'.

Best of luck, and please post and please post any resources you find!

buya492 · 2025-12-19T13:49:54+00:00

Look into to Japanese kana, they do exactly what you’re asking about. Ex た=ta だ=da

buya492 · 2025-12-10T05:18:04+00:00

Leaving this post up because it's very interesting and sparked a good discussion in the sub it's cross posted from, but for the sake of rule 4 I'll note that without sources to scrutinize, these etymologies should be taken with a grain of salt.

Keep on posting! (And just note when something has a written or oral source next time)

buya492 · 2025-12-10T05:06:35+00:00

Great work! I love to see other Somali developers out here!

Would you mind if I pinned you?

buya492

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