Lowland East Cushitic is a group of roughly two dozen diverse languages of the

Cushitic The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As o ...

branch of the

Afro-Asiatic The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...

family. Its largest representatives are Somali and Oromo.

Classification

Lowland East Cushitic classification from Tosco (2020:297):Tosco, Mauro. 2020. East Cushitic. In: Vossen, Rainer and Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds.). 2020. ''The Oxford Handbook of African Languages'', 290-299. Oxford: Oxford University Press. *Lowland East Cushitic ** Saho–Afar **Southern ***Nuclear **** Omo–Tana **** Oromoid ***Peripheral (?) **** Dullay **** Yaaku

Highland East Cushitic Highland East Cushitic, or Sidamic, is a branch of the Afroasiatic language family spoken in south-central Ethiopia. They are often grouped with Lowland East Cushitic, Dullay, and Yaaku as ''East Cushitic'', but that group is not well defined ...

is a coordinate (sister) branch with Lowland East Cushitic in Tosco's (2020) classification. 'Core' East Cushitic classification form Bender (2020

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91). Saho–Afar is excluded, making it equivalent to Tosco's Southern Lowland East Cushitic, and Yaaku is moved into Western Omo–Tana ('Arboroid'): * 'Core' East Cushitic ** Dullay ** SAOK *** Eastern Omo–Tana ( Somaloid) *** Western Omo–Tana ( Arboroid) ncl. Yaaku*** Oromoid ( Oromo–Konsoid) Highland East Cushitic and Afar–Saho are coordinate (sister) branches with Lowland East Cushitic, together forming East Cushitic.

Overview

Lowland East Cushitic is often grouped with

(the Sidamic languages), Dullay, and Yaaku as ''East Cushitic'', but that group is not well defined and considered dubious. The most spoken Lowland East Cushitic language is Oromo, with about 35 million speakers in

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

and

Kenya ) , national_anthem = "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...

. The Konsoid dialect cluster is closely related to Oromo. Other prominent languages include Somali (spoken by ethnic Somalis in

Somalia Somalia, , Osmanya script: 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘𐒕𐒖; ar, الصومال, aṣ-Ṣūmāl officially the Federal Republic of SomaliaThe ''Federal Republic of Somalia'' is the country's name per Article 1 of thProvisional Constituti ...

Somaliland Somaliland,; ar, صوماليلاند ', ' officially the Republic of Somaliland,, ar, جمهورية صوماليلاند, link=no ''Jumhūrīyat Ṣūmālīlānd'' is a ''de facto'' sovereign state in the Horn of Africa, still conside ...

, Ethiopia,

Djibouti Djibouti, ar, جيبوتي ', french: link=no, Djibouti, so, Jabuuti officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country in the Horn of Africa, bordered by Somalia to the south, Ethiopia to the southwest, Eritrea in the north, and the Red ...

, and Kenya) with about 30 million speakers, and Afar (in Ethiopia,

Eritrea Eritrea ( ; ti, ኤርትራ, Ertra, ; ar, إرتريا, ʾIritriyā), officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of Eastern Africa, with its capital and largest city at Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia ...

and Djibouti) with about 1.5 million.

Robert Hetzron Robert Hetzron, born Herzog (31 December 1937, Budapest – 12 August 1997, Santa Barbara, California), was a Hungarian-born linguist known for his work on the comparative study of Afro-Asiatic languages, as well as for his study of Cushitic ...

has suggested that the

Rift languages The South Cushitic or Rift languages of Tanzania are a branch of the Cushitic languages. The most numerous is Iraqw, with half a million speakers. These languages are believed to have been originally spoken by Southern Cushitic agro-pastoralists ...

''(South Cushitic)'' are a part of Lowland East Cushitic,Robert Hetzron, "The Limits of Cushitic", ''Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika'' 2. 1980, 7–126. and Kießling & Mous (2003) have suggested more specifically that they be linked to a Southern Lowland branch, together with Oromo, Somali, and Yaaku– Dullay. The vocabulary of the mixed

register Register or registration may refer to: Arts entertainment, and media Music * Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc. * ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller * Registration (organ), th ...

Mbugu Maʼa is a Bantu language of Tanzania. The Mbugu people speak two divergent register (sociolinguistics), registers, which have been treated as separate languages by some authorities (e.g. Tucker and Bryan): Mbugu or "Normal Mbugu" (autonym kiM ...

(Ma'a) may also be East Cushitic (Tosco 2002), though the grammatical basis and the other register are Bantu. Unclassified within the Lowland languages are Girirra and perhaps the endangered

Boon Boon may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Boon (game), a trick-taking card game * ''Boon'' (novel), a 1915 satirical work by H. G. Wells * ''Boon'' (TV series), a British television series starring Michael Elphick * The Ultimate Boo ...

. Savà and Tosco (2003) believe Ongota is an East Cushitic language with a Nilo-Saharan

substratum In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...

—that is, that Ongota speakers shifted to East Cushitic from an earlier Nilo-Saharan language, traces of which still remain. However, Fleming (2006) considers it to be an independent branch of Afroasiatic.

References

*Roland Kießling & Maarten Mous. 2003. ''The Lexical Reconstruction of West-Rift Southern Cushitic.'' Cushitic Language Studies Volume 21 *Tosco, Mauro. 2000. 'Cushitic Overview.' ''Journal of Ethiopian Studies'' 33(2):87-121. *Savà, Graziano and Mauro Tosco. 2003. "The classification of Ongota". In Bender ''et al.'' eds, ''Selected comparative-historical Afrasian linguistic studies.'' LINCOM Europa.

Classification

Overview

See also

References

Further reading