CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES AND FUTURE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Ngaalam is a language spoken by a minority group of approximately over a thousand and
a half people of hunter-gatherers that survived in the forest belt of Southwest Ethiopia,
one of the remotest areas in the country until recently. The language has now been
exposed to threat due to a conspiracy between external and internal factors. The external
factors include the accessibility of the area due to the construction of infrastructural
facilities, the establishment of large scale commercial farms in the area, the resettlement
policy of the government and the massive flow of peoples of different cultures and
languages from the north.
The penetration of major religions such as Islam and Christianity into the Ngaalamer
community and the opening of schools in which Amharic is the medium of instruction are
factors corollary to the external forces. On top all these, Amharic is the language of
administration at local level and the language of the media as well.
Internal factors are related to the change of the life style of the Ngaalam community
triggered by external pressures. According to the oral traditions, the Ngaalamer were
once semi-pastoralists keeping cattle in the area but gave up cattle-keeping due to the
continuous cattle raid by their more powerful neighbors that resulted in huge losses in
terms of human and material resources. These incidents must have reduced the number of
Ngaalam speakers over time and eventually weakened their economic bases turning them
into hunter-gatherers. Besides, the frequent intermarriage with their dominant neighbors
such as the Baale, who are cattle-keepers and, who are economically better-off, must
have put the Ngaalam in a subordinate position. The subordinate social and economic
position and the subsequent survival strategy adopted by the Ngaalamer must have led to
the pattern of multilingualism that is readily observable among the Ngaalam speakers
today. The sociolinguistic situation can, therefore, be described as “bilingualism in
diglossia”, where the Ngaalam speak Baale whereas the latter do not speak Ngaalam. For
example, our principal language consultant, Getachew Ojulu, was born from a Baale
father and a Ngaalam mother. While his mother speaks Baale as a second language his
father does not speak Ngaalam.
The process of language shift to Baale has been in progress for some time now and this
ongoing process seems to be accelerated by the encroachment of Amharic into the
Ngaalam society as a language of administration, education and the media. It is also
important to note at this juncture that Amharic is perceived by the Ngaalamer as the
vehicle of upward social and economic mobility signaling the inevitable assimilation of
the Ngaalam community into the mainstream society. At any rate, “A language that can
no longer be maintained, perpetuated, or revitalized still merits the most complete
documentation possible. This is because each language embodies unique cultural and
ecological knowledge in it” (UNESCO 2003:6).