The Politics of Qubee in Ethiopia Rationales and Criticisms to the Adaption of Qubee as an Official Orthography of Afaan Oromoo

Abstract

Afaan Oromoo is spoken by more than 40 million people as mother tongue. In Ethiopia, it is spoken as a lingua franca by other people who are in contact with Oromoo people. Besides, Afaan Oromoo is the second widely speared indigenous language in Africa south of the Sahara. Despite of these facts, Afaan Oromoo had been written by using different scripts such as Latin, Geez and Arabic. However, in 1991 Latin Script, Qubee was adapted as an official orthography of Afaan Oromoo writing. Since then, there have been arguments in favor and against this adaption. Hence, this review article explored rationales and criticisms on the adaption of Qubee for Afaan Oromoo writing. To achieve this purpose, document analysis was used as a main tool of data collection. The analysis of the documents revealed that reasons to adapt Qubee was mainly based on linguistic suitability, pedagogical easiness and the adaptability of Qubee to computer technology. Besides, those in favor of Latin script argued that Geez script has several limitations to adapt for Afan Oromo writing; lack of marking germination for the consonants to indicate strong and weak syllables, failure of the Geez to show the length of vowels and inadequacy of the orthography to represent some Afan Oromo sounds. However, the choice of Latin alphabet for writing Afaan Oromoo has encountered serious criticisms from those who favor Geez script for Afaan Oromoo writing. The proponents of Geez argue that the use of Geez script will unite the Ethiopian people, the use of other scripts than Geez affect the unity of Ethiopia and Geez is an indigenous script of Ethiopia. Consequently, they advocate that Geez script should be used to write any Ethiopian language including Afaan Oromoo. The critics against the use of Qubee are not based on a linguistic analysis and technical strengths and weakness of using Qubee. Thus, the claim against the use of Qubee seems subjective and not scientific, and are not convincing. Accordingly, it can be recommended that Qubee should be continued to be used for Afaan Oromoo writing.