The Borana Language is classified as an Afro-
There are approximately 3,634,000 in Ethiopia who speak Oromo. Borana is a dialect of Oromo. There are approximately 150,000 Borana speakers in Kenya.
The Borana language has masculine and feminine nouns. You use one set of articles and adjectives for the masculine nouns and another set of articles and adjectives for the feminine nouns. It also has many sounds that we do not have in our English language. Every Borana verb has more than 120 different endings. Most English verbs change their tense by adding a word to the verb. For example. You can say "I run fast." or "I will run fast." The verb "run" did not change its form, you added a word to make the verb change from present tense to future tense.
English verbs also do not change with the personal pronoun used. For example you can say "I ran to town" or "She ran to town" or "He ran to town" or "They ran to town." The verb "ran" never changes. In Borana the verb changes with every tense and then inside of every tense it changes for every personal pronoun. So the Past Tense has seven different endings for every verb. The future tense has seven different endings for every verb and so on.
Probably one of the most difficult things about the Borana language is the sounds that are used. Most words end in a vowel. There are vowels that you "pretend" to say. This means that you make your mouth make the shape of saying the vowel without actually saying it. Then there are times when the ending vowels which have a soft ending and times when they have a hard ending. These have been very difficult for us to learn to hear. Our teacher can have his back to us and if we don't make the shape with our mouth and put the "pretend" vowel on the end of a word, he can hear that we have not done it. And it changes the meaning of the word. We cannot hear that. This has caused us many difficulties. Pray for us to be able to hear and make all the sounds to speak Borana accurately.
We believe that in order for us to be effective in reaching the Borana People, we must learn their language. We are resuming our language study in September and we hope to complete the classroom study in 2 or 3 months. When we complete our language study we will work on learning a series of Bible stories designed to help the Borana people understand who Jesus is and make a faith response. Once we have learned those stories, we will feel we will be ready to go out.
Borana Language Study
Listen to the Lord's Prayer in Borana
Aabbo keenna ka gubba jirtu,
maqa kanke qulqullo ha guddisani;
Finni kanke ha d'ufu,
fed'i tante lafati ha guutani aka gubbaa guutani.
Liqimsa teenna ta arra nuu kenni;
ch'ubbu teenna nuu araarami,
akuma nuleeni nama nuti ch'ubbame araaramnu
Ilaalacha nutiini ind'ufini,
ammo wann hamtu nuraa d'owi.
Wann finafii, mnafii guddanilee
kanke titiifii hegerillee Amen
