Beja language facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Beja
Bidhaawyeet, Tubdhaawi, تُبڈاوِ
Native to	Sudan, Eritrea, Egypt
Region	Red Sea
Ethnicity	Beja
Native speakers	2.76 million  (2022–2023)e27
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Cushitic North Beja
Early forms:	Blemmyan Beja
Dialects	Hadendoa Hadareb Amarar Bisharin Beni-Amer
Writing system	Latin alphabet (limited use) Arabic alphabet (limited use)
Recognised minority language in	Eritrea  Sudan

Beja (also called Bidhaawyeet or Tubdhaawi) is a language spoken by the Beja people. It belongs to the Afroasiatic language family, specifically the Cushitic branch. You can find people speaking Beja along the western coast of the Red Sea. These speakers live in parts of Egypt, Sudan, and Eritrea. In 2022 and 2023, about 2.75 million people spoke Beja across these three countries.

What is the Beja Language Called?

The name Beja is the most common name for the language in English. It comes from an Arabic word, bijā. However, people who speak Beja call their language Bidhaawyeet (when it's not specific) or Tubdhaawi (when it's specific).

Where Does Beja Language Come From?

Most language experts agree that Beja is part of the Cushitic branch. This branch is part of the larger Afroasiatic family. Beja is the only language in its own special group within Cushitic, called "Northern Cushitic." This means it has some unique features not found in other Cushitic languages.

Some experts, like Christopher Ehret, think Northern Cushitic might be more closely related to South Cushitic languages. This idea is based on how certain sounds changed over time.

The idea that Beja is its own unique branch of Cushitic was first suggested by Enrico Cerulli many years ago. While some other ideas came up, Cerulli's view is still the most accepted today.

A Look at Beja Language History

This ancient pot shard might have writing in an older form of the Beja language.

Experts believe that the Beja language has changed a lot over time. They study how sounds in an older language, called Proto-Cushitic, changed to become the sounds we hear in modern Beja. This helps them understand the language's journey.

Some linguists and historians think they have found signs of an even older version of Beja. They call it "Old Bedauye" or "Old Beja." For example, Helmut Satzinger found names on ancient pot shards (called ostraca) from the 3rd century CE that he believes are from the Blemmyes, an ancient group who likely spoke an early form of Beja. Later texts from the 5th and 6th centuries also seem to show this older language.

Another interesting discovery was an ostracon found in a monastery in Saqqarah. Experts like Gerald Browne and Klaus Wedekind believe this text is a translation of Psalm 30 written in Old Beja.

How Beja Sounds are Made

Beja has a set of sounds that make it unique. Like English, it has consonants and vowels. Some of its sounds are similar to those in Arabic, especially in words borrowed from Arabic.

Beja uses five main vowel sounds: a, e, i, o, u. Some of these vowels can be long or short. For example, the "a" sound can be short like in "cat" or long like in "car."

The language also uses something called "pitch accent." This means that the meaning of a word can change depending on how high or low your voice is when you say certain parts of it.

How Beja is Written

Beja can be written using both the Latin alphabet (like English) and the Arabic alphabet. The Eritrean government uses a Latin way of writing Beja. This system was also used in a program at Red Sea University in Port Sudan to help people learn to read and write Beja.

Several ways of writing Beja with the Arabic alphabet have been tried, but none have become widely used. The Latin script is the only system that has been used in books by more than one writer.

Even though there are different ways to write Beja, no single system has been fully accepted by everyone. This means that writing Beja can sometimes be a bit tricky!

Understanding Beja Grammar

Beja grammar has some interesting rules for nouns, adjectives, and verbs.

Nouns and Adjectives

In Beja, nouns (like "house" or "camel") and adjectives (like "big" or "small") have:

• Gender: They can be masculine or feminine.
• Number: They can be singular (one) or plural (more than one).
• Case: This shows their role in a sentence, like who is doing the action (nominative) or who is receiving it (oblique).

The gender, case, and whether a noun is definite (like "the house") or indefinite (like "a house") are often shown by small words or endings attached to the noun.

Making Words Plural

Making a noun plural in Beja can happen in a few ways:

• Adding an ending: For example, gaw (house) becomes gawaab (houses).
• Changing the sound of the last part of the word: kaam (camel) becomes kam (camels).
• Changing where the stress is in the word: hadhaab (lion) might sound the same but have a different stress for plural.
• Sometimes, a word doesn't change for plural, or it has a completely different plural form.

Showing Ownership

To show that something belongs to someone, Beja uses a special ending. For example, if you want to say "the man's friend," you would add an ending to the word for "man." The ending changes depending on if the friend is masculine or feminine, and if there's one friend or many.

How Verbs Work

Beja verbs are how you show actions (like "go" or "open"). They change depending on who is doing the action, when it happened (past, present, future), and how it happened.

There are two main types of verbs:

• Strong verbs: These verbs change their form a lot, sometimes by adding beginnings and endings, and sometimes by changing sounds within the word.
• Weak verbs: These verbs are simpler and mostly change by adding endings.

Giving Commands (Imperatives)

When you tell someone to do something, you use the imperative form of a verb. For example, "go away" or "open."

• For weak verbs, you might add a long "aa" sound at the end.
• For strong verbs, it might be a short "a" sound.
• To say "don't go" or "don't open," you add special prefixes like baa- or bii-.

Action Nouns and Adjectives from Verbs

Every Beja verb also has a special noun form, which describes the action itself. For example, from "to sleep," you get "sleeping." From "to forgive," you get "forgiving."

You can also make adjectives from verbs. For example, from "to sleep," you can get "asleep." These forms can also be used to create negative sentences.

Talking About Time (Tenses)

Beja verbs have different forms to show when an action happens:

• Past Continuous / Aorist: This is used for actions that happened regularly in the past or for stories.
• Past / Perfective: This is for actions that were completed in the past.
• Present / Imperfective: This is for actions happening now or actions that are ongoing.
• Future: This is for actions that will happen. It often uses another verb meaning "to say" to help form the future tense.

For negative sentences (like "I did not go"), Beja uses different verb forms rather than just adding "not."

Expressing Wishes and Possibilities

Beja also has ways to show if you want to do something, or if something is possible or likely. These are called "intentional" or "desiderative" forms, and "potential" or "optative" forms. They often involve adding specific endings or using helper verbs.

Beja Words and Where They Come From

Experts have studied Beja words to see how they relate to other languages.

• David Cohen found that Beja shares about 20% of its basic words with East Cushitic languages like Afar and Somali, and Central Cushitic languages like Agaw.
• Václav Blažek's study showed that Beja has about 40% similar words with Proto-East Cushitic (a very old form of East Cushitic) and about 20% with Central Cushitic.

Many Beja words have been borrowed from Arabic. In Eritrea and Sudan, some words also come from the Tigre language. There are also some interesting links between Beja and ancient Egyptian words.

There aren't many Beja dictionaries available. The first independent one was printed in 1895. More recently, some scholars have worked on new dictionaries, but many of them haven't been published yet.

Common Beja Words (Swadesh List)

Here are some basic words in Beja:

Counting in Beja

Here are the numbers in Beja:

Numbers from 11 to 19 are made by adding to the word for "ten." For example, "fourteen" is tamna fadhig. "Twenty" is tagwuugw. For numbers like "thirty" or "forty," you combine the number with the word for "ten" (e.g., "three tens" for thirty). For very large numbers, Beja speakers often use Arabic words.

Beja Stories and Poems

Beja has a rich tradition of oral stories and poems. This means many stories and poems are passed down by speaking and listening, not by writing them down.

One famous epic story is about a hero named Mhamuud Oofaash. Parts of this story have been written down by scholars. In the 1960s and 70s, a Beja scholar named Muhammed Adarob Ohaj recorded many of these oral stories and poems. These recordings are now kept at the University of Khartoum.

More recently, between 2010 and 2013, the Red Sea University and an organization called Uhaashoon worked with storytellers to create collections of short stories and readers in Beja. This helps keep the language and its traditions alive.

Images for kids

• 

  The ostracon which Francis Llewellyn Griffith believed bore writing in the Blemmye language. Gerald M. Browne and Klaus Wedekind believe this to be the ancestor of the modern Beja language.

See also

In Spanish: Idioma beya para niños