Critical Analysis of the Diacritic /'/ in Afan Oromo

Abstract

This study argues on Qubee hudhaa 3 [k’ube: huɗa:] in use, in Afan Oromo. While inlinguistics, /'/ is origionally called a diacritic; this symbol currently is called 'qubee'. Itseems that the symbol has been named in such a way that it represents a glottal sound inthe language though it may not actually represent a speech sound than being diacritics.However, the assumption in the mind of the linguists who formulated the orthographicrepresentation of this sound for Afan Oromo, and which is accepted and is being used bythe user of the language particularly in writing system is the symbol /'/, which is expectedto represent the glottal sound /ʔ/, which is used in International Phonetic Alphabet,specifically while transcription. Considering this confusion, the researchers attempt tocritically expose its usage to the research community for discussion. The data are elicitedby the researchers as they are native speakers of the language. There are also secondarysources for the data. It is believed to be better, at least by the researchers, to argue onalternative use of /ʔ/ instead of /'/ because /ʔ/ can possibly represent Afan Oromoconsonant. More explicitly, the recommendation is to leave the finding of this study forscientific community and public discourse to discuss on it and to decide the better one.Therefore, the researchers believe that /ʔ/ sound should be used instead of /'/ since thelatter cannot be a speech sound in Afan Oromo than serving as a diacritic.