The Language Studies Centre gives priority for public needs. Almost all ethno-linguistic communities are currently showing great interest to upgrade their respective languages for formal communication domains like in education, mass media and administration. The primary tasks to be carried out for such missions are developing orthography and describing the basic grammar of those languages. The Centre is, therefore, attempting to design orthographies of the languages in response to the demand of the societies. It develops the alphabets of the languages based on the scientific approach but finally, the owner of the language, the community decides on the type of the script. Secondly, the Centre prepares grammar books and delivers to the communities to their students and general public for reference purpose.

Currently there are various projects which are under investigation. Dr. Wondwosen is attempting to compare and contrast the ‘so-called’ Konsoid Sub-family Languages. The work is believed to have great importance for typological and genealogical classification studies in the field of linguistics. Dr. Yohannes Adigeh is participating in the project called, “Documenting and Describing Gurage Languaes Common Features”. He is also participating in Mother-tongue education in relation to education, language planning and policy frame-work. Melkeneh is analyzing the dialect of Aari, a dominant language in South Omo Zone. He is also doing his PhD work in the Gayel dialect of Aari language, which is going to be finished in the near future. Dr. Teshome Yehualashet has a project called Lexical Documentation in Mesqan, a language variety under Gurage cluster. He is also dealing with the preparation of a trilingual dictionary that involves Masqan, Amharic and English. Dr. Alemayehu Gurmu is engaged in a project entitled “The Quest for a Zonal Language for Primary Education among the Gurage Varieties in the Gurage Zone”. This study will help the Gurage community to deal with its own problems with ideas suggested after a thorough investigation is made and help to resolve current primary education related problems. W/ro Rawda Siraj is dealing with Halaba Proper names analysis and its implications for the societal indigenous knowledge.

Research Publications: The members of the Centre are contributing peer-reviewed articles for the journal published under the Academy and for other outside publishers. Their publications and research contributions are posted along with their personal profiles.