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 The Taita Hills, sometimes also spelled as Teita Hills, are a mountain range located in the Taita-Taveta County in south-eastern Kenya. The hills consist of three massifs: Dawida, Sagalla in the southern side of Voi township and Kasigau in ...

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

. It is closely related to the

Chaga languages Chaga, also ''Kichaga'' or ''Kichagga'', is a Bantu dialect continuum spoken by the Chaga people of northern Tanzania, south of Mount Kilimanjaro. They also speak 9 dialects: Kivunjo, Kimarangu, Kirombo, Kimachame, Kisiha, Kikibosho, Kiuru, Kioldi ...

of Kenya and

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands and ...

. 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

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...

s from two different South Cushitic languages, called Taita Cushitic, which are now extinct. It is likely that the Cushitic speakers were assimilated fairly recently, since

lateral obstruent A lateral is a consonant in which the airstream proceeds along one or both of the sides of the tongue, but it is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth. An example of a lateral consonant is the English ''L'', as in ''Larr ...

s 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 However, those consonants have now been replaced by Bantu sounds.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 {{Bantu-lang-stub