Alternate Names: Mekan, Men, Meqan, Mie’en, Mieken
Dialects: Banio, Bodi (Mela, Podi), Koruwo. Lexical similarity: 65% with the Chai and Tirma dialects of Suri ,, 30% with Murle ,. Lexical differences between highland and lowland.
Genealogy:
Demographics: 151,000 (2007 census), increasing. 6,990 Bodi (2005 SIL). 143,000 monolinguals. L2 users: 6,300.
Language Use: All domains. All ages. Positive attitudes. Amharic [amh] is used in education and for reading the Bible. Used as L2 by Kwegu [xwg].
Language Development: Literacy rate in L1: More than 1%. Literacy rate in L2: 4%. Literates increasing. Amharic [amh] used in education and for reading the Bible. New media. Bible portions: 2008.
Typology: SVO; postpositions; genitives, adjective, articles, and relatives follow noun heads; question word final; prefixes and suffixes; verbs inflected; tonal.
Writing System: Ethiopic, Latin
Nation of Origin: Ethiopia
Other Comments: Ethnonym: Suro by the Kafa , and Bench ,. ‘Tishena’ (Teshina, Teshenna, Tishana), hello, in Me’en ,, is a name given by Amhara settlers and is not well-received. Ethnic autonym: Mela by Bodi. Traditional religion.