Bambassi (native name: Màwés Aasʼè[2]) is an Omotic Afroasiatic language spoken in Ethiopia around the towns of Bambasi and Didessa in the area east of Asosa in Benishangul-Gumuz Region.
Alternative names for the language are Bambeshi, Siggoyo, Amam, Fadiro, Northern Mao, Didessa and Kere.
The most current information on the number of Bambassi speakers is not known, as the 2007 census grouped the Mao languages together, despite low lexical similarity.
It splits up in nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns and numbers and will give information about tense, aspect and mood.
Example: tí-ŋ paːlt’-nà ha-nok-á 1SG-GEN girl-OBJ AFF-be.good-DECL ‘My girl (daughter) is good.’ [8] Northern Mao knows personal, possessive and interrogative pronouns.
Starting with the irrealis and realis verb forms, the following table summarizes the most important aspects: The nine aspectual categories on realis verbs are: a perfect with /-ti/, a perfect with /-kòt'/, a past habitual with /-òw/, a non past-habitual formed by reduplication and auxiliary, a progressive present, a progressive past, a completive aspect, a durative and an iterative/continuative.
The following sentences are given as an example: (1) íʃ es-ìʃ ʃóːʃ-ná ha-pí-↓á DEF person-SBJ snake-OBJ AFF-kill-DECL ‘The person killed a snake.’ (2) múnts’-ìʃ p’iʃ-(na) ha-kaːm-á woman-SBJ child-OBJ AFF-love-DECL ‘A woman loved a child.’ [8]