Taita is a
Bantu language
The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages.
The t ...
spoken in the
Taita Hills of
Kenya. It is closely related to the
Chaga languages of Kenya and
Tanzania. The Saghala (Northern Sagala, Sagalla) variety is distinct enough to be considered a language separate from the Daw'ida and Kasigau dialects.
Daw'ida and Saghala contain
loanwords from two different South Cushitic languages, called
Taita Cushitic
Taita Cushitic is an extinct pair of South Cushitic languages, spoken by Cushitic peoples inhabiting the Taita Hills of Kenya, before they were assimilated into the Bantu population after the Bantu Migration into East Africa. Evidence for the l ...
, which are now extinct.
It is likely that the Cushitic speakers were assimilated fairly recently, since
lateral obstruents in the loanwords were still pronounced as such within living memory. However, those consonants have now been replaced by Bantu sounds.
The
Taveta language was mistaken for Daw'ida by Jouni Maho in his (2009) classification of Bantu languages. However, it's a distinct language, lexically and grammatically closest to Chasu (
Pare
Pare may refer to:
People with the name
* Emmett Paré (1907-1973), tennis player
* Pare, former member of Kotak, an Indonesian band
* Pare Lorentz (1905-1992), American film director
* Richard Pare (born 1948), English photographer
* Paré, a ...
).
References
Northeast Bantu languages
Languages of Kenya
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