Morphophonological and Lexical Variations of the Waqooyi and Maay Dialects of Somali

Abstract

This was research was about the variations that the Maay and the Waqooyi dialects have. The variations discussed were in phonology, lexis and morphology. The research aimed at bringing out these variations that exist in these two dialects. Data were collected through interviewing people online. Informants were sampled from the people who speak these two dialects. The interview was recorded, transcribed and the variants were identified by the researcher. The research used one part of the comparative methodology which is comparing words or cognates to identified the similarities and differences that the Maay and Waqooyi dialects have. The study established that the two dialects have many variations in terms of phonology, lexis and morphology. For example, there are some sounds that can’t be found in Maay dialect which are there in the Waqooyi dialects, sounds like /ʕ/ and /ħ/. The word watermelon is considered to be <xabxab> in Waqooyi and <qare> in Maay. The inflectional morphemes in the two dialects are different. For example, the future tense inflectional morpheme in the Waqooyi is –doon together with –aa while the one in Maay is –fadaahaaye together with the infinitive form of the verb.