The Omotic languages are a group of languages spoken in southwestern

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 ...

, in the

Omo River The Omo River (also called Omo-Bottego) in southern Ethiopia is the largest Ethiopian river outside the Nile, Nile Basin. Its course is entirely contained within the boundaries of Ethiopia, and it empties into Lake Turkana on the border with Keny ...

region. The Ge'ez script is used to write some of the Omotic languages, the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...

for some others. They are fairly

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative langu ...

and have complex tonal systems (for example, the Bench language). The languages have around 6.2 million speakers. The group is generally classified as belonging to the

Afroasiatic language family 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 ...

, but this is disputed by some. Four separate "Omotic" groups are accepted by ''

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is a bibliographic database of the world's lesser-known languages, developed and maintained first at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute for ...

'' 4.0 and Güldemann (2018): Ta-Ne-Omotic, Dizoid (Maji), Mao, and

Aroid The Araceae are a family (biology), family of monocotyledonous flowering plants in which flowers are borne on a type of inflorescence called a spadix (botany), spadix. The spadix is usually accompanied by, and sometimes partially enclosed in, a s ...

("South Omotic").

Languages

The

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography. Etymology T ...

and

South Omotic The Aroid or Ari-Banna (formerly South Omotic or Somotic) languages possibly belong to the Afro-Asiatic family and are spoken in Ethiopia. Languages There are five Aroid languages: * ''Aari-Gayil languages'' ** Aari ** Gayil * ''Hamer-Karo ...

branches ("Nomotic" and "Somotic") are universally recognized, with some dispute as to the composition of North Omotic. The primary debate is over the placement of the

Mao languages The Mao languages are a branch of the Omotic languages spoken in Ethiopia. The group had the following categories: * Bambasi, spoken in the Bambasi woreda of Benishangul-Gumuz Region, * Hozo and Seze (often described together as 'Begi Mao'), sp ...

. Bender (2000) classifies Omotic languages as follows: *

( Hamer-Banna,

Aari Aari or AARI may refer to: * Aari (actor) (born 1985), Indian Tamil film actor * Aari language, an Omotic language *Aari people Aari or Ari are a tribal Omotic people indigenous to Omo Valley of Ethiopia. According to 2007 census there are 289 ...

, Dime, Karo) *

North Omotic The North Omotic (Nomotic) or Ta-Ne Omotic languages, belong to the Omotic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family and are spoken in Ethiopia. Dizoid is left out in later classifications, but included in earlier ones. A relatively comprehensive com ...

/ Non-Aroid ** Mao *** Bambassi ***West Mao ( Hozo, Seze, Ganza) ** Dizoid ( Dizi, Sheko, Nayi) ** Gonga–Gimojan *** Gonga/Kefoid (

Boro __NOTOC__ Boro may refer to: People * Boro people, indigenous peoples of Amazonas, Brazil * A variant spelling for the Bodo people of northeast India * Charan Boro, Indian politician * Isaac Adaka Boro, a celebrated Niger Delta nationalist and Nig ...

, Anfillo, Kafa, Shekkacho) *** Gimojan ****'' Yemsa'' **** Ometo–Gimira *****'' Bench'' *****'' Chara'' ***** Ometo languages Apart from terminology, this differs from Fleming (1976) in including the Mao languages, whose affiliation had originally been controversial, and in abolishing the "Gimojan" group. There are also differences in the subclassification of Ometo, which is not covered here. Linguistic Diagram- Cushitic and Omotic

Hayward (2003)

Hayward (2003) separates out the Mao languages as a third branch of Omotic and breaks up Ometo–Gimira: *

* Mao *

** Dizoid **

Ta–Ne languages The North Omotic (Nomotic) or Ta-Ne Omotic languages, belong to the Omotic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family and are spoken in Ethiopia. Dizoid is left out in later classifications, but included in earlier ones. A relatively comprehensive com ...

*** Gonga *** Gimojan ****'' Yemsa'' ****'' Bench'' **** Ometo–Chara

Blench (2006)

Blench (2006) gives a more agnostic classification: *

** Mao ** Dizoid ** Gonga (Kefoid) **'' Yem'' ** Gimira ** Ometo (? Chara)

Bosha Bosha may refer to: * The Kingdom of Garo The Kingdom of Garo, also known as Bosha after its ruling dynasty, was an Oromo-Sidama kingdom in the Horn of Africa. Established by the Sidama people, it was situated on the periphery of the Gibe regi ...

† is unclassified; ''Ethnologue'' lists it as a dialect of Kafa but notes it may be a distinct language.

Classification

Omotic is generally considered the most divergent branch of the

Afroasiatic languages 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 ...

. Greenberg (1963) had classified it as the Western branch of

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 ...

. Fleming (1969) argued that it should instead be classified as an independent branch of Afroasiatic, a view which Bender (1971) established to most linguists' satisfaction, though a few linguists maintain the West Cushitic position or that only

forms a separate branch, with

remaining part of Cushitic. Blench (2006) notes that Omotic shares honey-related vocabulary with the rest of Afroasiatic but not cattle-related vocabulary, suggesting that the split occurred before the advent of

pastoralism Pastoralism is a form of animal husbandry where domesticated animals (known as " livestock") are released onto large vegetated outdoor lands (pastures) for grazing, historically by nomadic people who moved around with their herds. The a ...

. A few scholars have raised doubts that the Omotic languages are part of the Afroasiatic language family at all, and Theil (2006) proposes that Omotic be treated as an independent family.Rolf Theil (2006
''Is Omotic Afro-Asiatic?
' pp 1–2: "I claim to show that no convincing arguments have been presented or the inclusion of Omotic (OM) in Afro-Asiatic (AA) and that OM should be regarded as an independent language family. No closer genetic relations have been demonstrated between OM and AA than between OM and any other language family." However, the general consensus, based primarily on morphological evidence, is that membership in Afroasiatic is well established.

''Glottolog''

Hammarström, et al. in ''

'' does not consider Omotic to be a unified group, and also does not consider any of the "Omotic" groups to be part of the Afroasiatic phylum. ''Glottolog'' accepts the following as independent language families. * Ta-Ne-Omotic * Dizoid (Maji) * Mao *

(Ari-Banna; "South Omotic") These four families are also accepted by Güldemann (2018), who similarly doubts the validity of Omotic as a unified group.

Reconstruction

Bender (1987: 33–35)Bender, Lionel M. 1987. "First Steps Toward proto-Omotic." ''Current Approaches to African Linguistics'' 3 (1987): 21–36. reconstructs the following proto-forms for Proto-Omotic and Proto-North Omotic, the latter which is considered to have descended from Proto-Omotic.

Comparative vocabulary

Sample basic vocabulary of 40 Omotic languages from Blažek (2008):Blažek, Václav. 2008. A lexicostatistical comparison of Omotic languages. In Bengtson (ed.), 57–148.

Notes

Sources cited

*Bender, M. Lionel. 2000. ''Comparative Morphology of the Omotic Languages''. Munich: LINCOM. *Fleming, Harold. 1976. Omotic overview. In ''The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia'', ed. by M. Lionel Bender, pp. 299–323. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University. *Newman, Paul. 1980. ''The classification of Chadic within Afroasiatic''. Universitaire Pers Leiden.

General Omotic bibliography

* Bender, M. L. 1975. ''Omotic: a new Afroasiatic language family''. (University Museum Series, 3.) Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University. *Blench, Roger. 2006. ''Archaeology, Language, and the African Past.'' AltaMira Press *Hayward, Richard J., ed. 1990. ''Omotic Language Studies''. London: School of Oriental and African Studies. *Hayward, Richard J. 2003. Omotic: the "empty quarter" of Afroasiatic linguistics. In ''Research in Afroasiatic Grammar II: selected papers from the fifth conference on Afroasiatic languages, Paris 2000'', ed. by Jacqueline Lecarme, pp. 241–261. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. *Lamberti, Marcello. 1991. Cushitic and its classification. ''Anthropos'' 86(4/6):552-561. *Zaborski, Andrzej. 1986. Can Omotic be reclassified as West Cushitic? In Gideon Goldenberg, ed., ''Ethiopian Studies: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference'' pp. 525–530. Rotterdam: Balkema. *

External links

Is Omotic Afro-Asiatic?
by Rolf Theil {{DEFAULTSORT:Omotic Language Agglutinative languages Afroasiatic languages Languages of Ethiopia Proposed language families