Called an Afro-Asiatic language, Oromo is the most populous langiage in Ethopia. It is also spoken in Somalia and parts of Kenya. 95 percent of the speakers live in Ethiopia, mainly in the Oromia Region.In Africa is it ranked fourth in having the most speakers, after arabic, Swahili and Hausa.

It is written with a Latin alphabet called Qubee which was formally adopted in 1991.

Oromo has the typical Eastern Cushitic set of five short and five long vowels, indicated in the orthography by doubling the five vowel letters. The difference in length is contrastive, for example, hara 'lake', haaraa 'new'. Gemination is also significant in Oromo. That is, consonant length can distinguish words from one another, for example, badaa 'bad', baddaa 'highland'. In the Qubee alphabet, letters include the digraphs ch, dh, ny, ph, sh.