Even though his scripts had serious short-comings and could not be considered for writing Oromiffa now, it had gained popularity in some parts of eastern Oromia in the 1950s, before it was discovered by the colonial authorities and suppressed.
His scripts were different in form but followed the symbol-sounds forming patterns of the Sabean system. The work of Sheikh Bakri Saphalo is one such attempt. A number of Oromo scholars in the past attempted to discover scripts suited for writing Oromiffa. Every Oromo word has historical or contextual meanings. With the development of the Oromo national movement, Oromo intellectuals, linguists, political and cultural groups have strongly advocated the use of Roman alphabet with necessary modifications The Latin script was adopted for this language in the early l970s. An Italian scholar, Cerulli (1922), who attempted to write in Oromiffa using both Sabean and Roman, expressed the short comings of the language with letters of the Ethiopic (Sabean) alphabet, which express very imperfectly even the sounds of the Ethiopian language, is very near impossible "reading Galla language written in Ethiopic alphabet is very like deciphering a secret writing.". Hence, the Roman script is relatively best suited for transcription of Oromiffa. Moreover, it has seven vowels against ten for Oromiffa. The Sabean script does not differentiate gemination of consonants and glottal stops. The main deficiency of the Arabic script is the problem of vowel differentiation. None of them fit well the peculiar features of the sounds (phonology), in Oromiffa. Roman, Arabic and Sabean scripts are all foreign to Oromiffa. The Bible itself was translated into Oromiffa in Sabean script about a century ago by an Oromo slave called Onesimos Nasib, alias Hiikaa, (Gustave, 1978). Printed material in Oromiffa include the Bible, religious and non-religious songs, dictionaries, short stories, proverbs, poems, school books, grammar, etc. Several works have been written in Oromiffa using Roman, Sabean and Arabic scripts. Much has been written about Oromiffa by foreigners who visited or lived in Oromia, particularly European missionaries. All these activities and experiences have enriched Oromiffa. The various customs pertaining to marriage, paternity, dress, etc. They have very comprehensive plant and animal names. Oromo have an extraordinarily rich heritage of proverbs, stories, songs and riddles. Pastoralism and agriculture were well developed. Trade and various kinds of skills such as wood and metal works, weaving, pottery and tannery flourished. It is a language spoken in common by several members of many of the nationalities like Harari, Anuak, Barta, Sidama, Gurage, etc., who are neighbors to Oromo.īefore colonization, the Oromo people had their own social, political and legal system. In fact Oromiffa is a lingua franca in the whole of Ethiopian Empire except for the northern part. Perhaps not less than two million non-Oromo speak Oromiffa as a second language. It is the mother tongue of about 40 million Oromo people living in the Ethiopian Empire and neighbouring countries. It is the third most widely spoken language in Africa, after Arabic and Hausa. Taking into consideration the number of speakers and the geographic area it covers, Oromiffa, most probably rates second among the African indigenous languages. Oromiffa is considered one of the five most widely spoken languages from among the approximately 1000 languages of Africa, (Gragg, 1982). The Oromo language is very closely related to Konso, with more than fifty percent of the words in common, closely related to Somali and distantly related to Afar and Saho. The Oromo language, afaan Oromoo or Oromiffa, belongs to the eastern Kushitic group of languages and is the most extensive of the forty or so Kushitic languages. The Oromo nation has a single common mother tongue and basic common culture.