The fortified historic city of Harar is a UNESCO World Heritage site located on a highland ridge between the Red Sea and the Ethiopian highlands. “For centuries, Harar has been a major commercial centre, linked by trade routes with the rest of Ethiopia, and the entire Horn of Africa”.
Historically, the city is known in Arabic as “the City of Saints”; on record` as the fourth holiest city of Islam, it’s home to a multitude of shrines of Muslim saints (over 102) and 82 mosques.
Moreover, this old Jugol (“city wall”) town, with it’s winding narrow streets, spectacular cultural architecture adorned with unique exterior and interior designs “bears exceptional testimony to cultural traditions related to Islamic and African roots”.
One of the smallest ethnic groups in Ethiopia, the Harari people, who refer to themselves as Gey‘usu (meaning: “People of the City” in the Harari language) and known to their ethnic neighbors (the Somali, Oromo, Argobba, and Amhara) as Aderes, more than a cliché, are known for their generosity and their all-welcoming spirit. “Small remnants of a unique, pre-industrial urban culture that has existed since the 1500’s”, they were “once thought to be descended from an Aksumite military outpost”. Besides, according to present-day researchers, there are suggestions that Harari’s are “a composite population formed by a fusion of Cushitic speakers,” with further presumptions that some of these Semitic-speaking groups may have possible entered the area from the northern direction.
As for the Harari culture, historians speak highly of Harar’s well-developed culture and how migrants were very much drawn to it. And the language, known to its people as Gey’Senan (“language of the city”) and Aderegna to its ethnic neighbors, is an Afro-Asiatic language of the Semitic branch.
Today, if you visit the stone walled city, you’ll find most of its inhabitants have migrated. The Hararis, until about the late 60s lived exclusively inside the stonewalled Harar, at present though, you’ll find they reside mostly outside of their walled city.
With the exodus of the Harari people, it may be fair to say that the majority of the descendants of this culture are born and raised abroad. Consequently, this plight leaves the language of this already small group fragile and at-risk of dying out.
Providing solution to this state, in a model-centered approach, recently, the Gangora Learning Group, an Australian based educational platform stands as a pioneer. On a preservation mission, the application developer has innovatively created an application called “LearnHarariFull”, to teach the Harari language. The app is available on Apple’s digital distribution platform designed to run on iOS devices including iPhones, iPads, or directly onto the computer via iTunes. The teaching materials are appropriately created for both children and Adults. Their aim is “to provide children of today and those raised outside of the homeland”, through this platform, a unique opportunity “to learn their mother tongue.” The idea, according to the developer “was born from an obvious need for some sort of fun materials that teaches children basic Harari language”.
To learn the Harari language, download the application –LearnHarariFull.