# Somali: angero



## Pajapatak

Hi everybody,
I'm translating a book from Italian into Serbian about the famous Somali Olympic athlete Samia Yusuf Omar who drowned while attempting to reach Europe on a migrant boat. The author leaves some words in Somali language (I suppose), for ex. hooyo, aabe, wiilo... so I wonder if someone could help me with them as I can't find them on the net.

The first one is _angero._ It is some sort of cookies, because it is made with chocolate. 

Thanks in advance for your help.


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## Oranje

Angeera sounds to me like Ethiopian Injera. It's a pancake like pastry. Traditionally it's not eaten with chocolate or sweet foods, as far as I know. It's a simple carbohydrate eaten with wet foods, just like bread. In standard Somali the word is canjeero, but when I changed the g to a j and the o to an a, to give anjera I got results. I suppose some dialects must use the Amharic word. Hooyo and aabe mean mother and father respectively. I don't know about willo.

I'm not Somalian myself but I've known a fair few. I hope this will suffice until a native shows up.


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## Pajapatak

Thanks a lot Oranje. It could be Injera indeed, it makes sens.
The author explains the meaning of some words (_aabe, hooyo, wiilo_ - tomboy), but some words are left without explanation or translation. 
You helped me a lot (I'll try your "method" with changing g to j, o to a...).


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## Dib

Oranje said:


> Angeera sounds to me like Ethiopian Injera. It's a pancake like pastry. Traditionally it's not eaten with chocolate or sweet foods, as far as I know. It's a simple carbohydrate eaten with wet foods, just like bread. In standard Somali the word is canjeero, but when I changed the g to a j and the o to an a, to give anjera I got results. I suppose some dialects must use the Amharic word. Hooyo and aabe mean mother and father respectively. I don't know about willo.
> 
> I'm not Somalian myself but I've known a fair few. I hope this will suffice until a native shows up.



Hi Oranje, actually he mentioned "angero", which, to me, seems simply like an Italianate phonetic transcription (as the original text is in Italian) of the Standard Somali word you have mentioned - "canjeero".

NOTE: For those who are wondering about dropping the initial c of the Somali word (the rest is more or less obvious), remember that in Somali script "c" represents ʕayn (IPA: ʕ), a sound typically dropped in transcribing into European languages (presumably because Europeans simply don't hear it, unless specially trained). I have practically no idea about Somali language, but there are some more or less familiar words/names of Arabic origin which show this phenomenon too - ʕarab itself, but also ʕeid, ʕali, ʕumar, ʕuthman, etc.


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## Oranje

That makes a lot of sense, thank you.


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