Some Preliminary Observations on the Borana Dialect of Galla

The only publications in this dialect 1 of the Galla language are translations of the Gospels of St. Luke 2 and St. John 3 and the Acts of the Apostles. 4 The orthography used in these texts, obviously, has practical aims in view and dispenses with much of the phonetic detail which would be of interest to a linguist. As far as I know, there are no published works which would give a description of this dialect. The grammars of Borello, 5 Hodson and Walker, 6 Moreno, 7 Nordfeldt, 8 and Tutschek 9 all deal with other dialects of Galla, which differ from Borana in many details.