Wolaitta or Wolayttatto Doonaa is a North Omotic language of the Ometo group spoken in the Wolayita Zone and some other parts of southwestern Ethiopia.
Some hold that Melo, Oyda, and Gamo-Gofa-Dawro are also dialects, but most sources, including Ethnologue and ISO 639-3 now list these as separate languages.
[2] A variety called Laha is said to be 'close' to Wolaytta in Hayward (1990) but listed as a distinct language by Blench; however, it is not included in Ethnologue.
Wolaytta has existed in written form since the 1940s, when the Sudan Interior Mission first devised a system for writing it.
[5] Fikre Alemayehu's 2012 MA thesis from Addis Ababa University provides an analysis of Wolaytta proverbs and their functions.
The sound written ⟨nh⟩ is described by Wakasa (2008:44) as a 'nasalized glottal fricative'; it is said to be extremely rare, occurring in only one common noun, an interjection, and two proper names.
The status of the sound written ⟨D⟩ is apparently in dispute; Adams (1983:48) and Lamberti and Sottile (1997:23, 25-26) claim that it is implosive, thus presumably [ɗ ].