Cushitic languages

The Cushite, Kushite or Cushitic languages are a subgroup of languages of the Afroasiatic phylum whose name derives from the Biblical character Kush, eldest son of Cam. They are spoken mainly in the Horn of Africa, as well as in the Nile Valley and parts of the Great Lakes region of Africa.

The most important language of this family is Oromo with more than 25 million speakers, followed by Somali spoken by 15 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya, Sidamo spoken by 2 million people in Ethiopia and the afar or afaro spoken by a million and a half people in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti.

Classification

The Cushitic and Omotic languages are distantly related to the rest of the Afroasiatic languages and there are lexical cognates and grammatical forms that testify to a clear common origin. More controversial is the relationship between the different Cushitic languages and their exact place within Afroasiatic. In fact, the internal classification of the Cushitic languages is one of the most debated classification problems of the Afroasiatic languages.

Apart from the Omotic languages, which were historically considered Cushitic (Western "Cushitic") languages, the Cushitic languages are the most divergent languages from the rest of Afroasiatic by which is conjectured that they were one of the first branches to separate from the common trunk (along with the omotic). There are some doubts as to whether the Cushitic languages constitute one branch or several. Some authors such as Orel and Ostolva (1995) proposed one of the most complete reconstructions of Proto-Afroasiatic and reject the existence of a Proto-Cushite. Instead, they propose that the different cuchita branches have independent origins and are only a typological grouping within Afroasiatic.

Traditionally, the Omotic languages were included within the Cushite languages, under the name western Cushite languages. This point of view has been abandoned by most experts.

Internal sorting

Cushite languages are commonly divided into six phylogenetic units, some of which differ markedly from others. The six groups are:

1. Northern cush or beya, formed by a single language the bedja (castellanized: beya) or bedawi, spoken by more than a million speakers (1.148 million in 2000), which is spoken in adjacent areas of Egypt, Eritrea and Ethiopia.
2. Central or agaw languages, which is a well-defined group that includes spoken varieties in the NW of Ethiopia and Eritrea. It includes kemamnt-kwara (pursuant 1 million), awngi (400 thousand), bilin, xamtanga and other extinct varieties.
3. Eastern Cushtic Highlandswith the exception of the burji, it consists of a group of closely related languages. They are spoken in the centre of southern Ethiopia, in addition to some Burji speakers in northern Kenya. The group includes the burji (80 thousand), the AIDS (1.5 million), the kambata and the haddiya (with about one million speakers each).
4. Eastern Cushistic of the Lowlands. This group comprises three subgroups:
   1. Northern Subgroup (Saho-Afar), which includes saho (144 thousand) and afar (1.2 million).
   2. Oromide Subgroup that includes the varieties of Oromo (14 million) spoken between the Tana River in Kenya to the border with Sudan and the tigrai area in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the group konsoide a geolectal chain extending west of the Southern Rift Valley. The main variety of this group is konso (200 thousand).
   3. Omo-Tana Subgroup comprising an Eastern and Western division. The eastern division includes the rendille (32 thousand) and the boni (5 thousand) and the numerous varieties of Somali (8.4 million), spoken in Somalia, Djibouti, East and Northeast Kenya. The Western division includes the daasenech (30 thousand), the arbore (between 1 and 5 million) and probably the extinct elmolo. The berry spoken in the region of Lake Abaya, geographically removed from other varieties, shares features with the western and eastern division.
5. Dullay. It represents a geolectal chain in the vicinity of the Wäyt'o valley west of the konsoide group (see Eastern Cushistic of the Lowlands). Includes Gawwada (65-70 thousand) and tsamay (7 thousand).
6. Southern Quash. These languages are spoken in Tanzania, where they are represented by the raqw group, which includes the raqw (365 thousand) properly said, the gorowa (30 thousand) and the burunge (31 thousand), in addition to the mbugu/ma'a (32 thousand) cited as a genuine example of "mixed tongue", besides the extingo asax and probably the extinct kw'adaza. The dahalo (3 million) is a language located outside Tanazania spoken along the mouth of the Tana River, which has the peculiarity of presenting clicks.

Some authors consider that Highland Cushitic, Lowland Cushitic, and Dullay would form a hypothetical Eastern Cushitic group. The ASJP Systematic Comparison Project, which classifies languages based on lexical similarity, entails the following cladistic tree:

Family languages

Location of different cushita languages.

It is divided into the following subgroups according to Joseph Greenberg, reviewed by Harold Fleming and other authors:

• Beya, Northern Cushita English Beja; often placed outside the strict cusita group)
• Central cushita languages or agaw languages. Talked by small groups in Ethiopia and Eritrea. They form the substrate of the amharic and other Semitic languages of Ethiopia.
  • Awngi (awngi, about 490 thousand speakers)
  • Kemant-Kwara (about 1 million speakers)
  • Xamtanga (about 80 thousand speakers)
  • Bilin (about 70,000 speakers)
• Eastern Cushite Languages (includes Oromo, Somali, AIDS and Afar)
  • Eastern Highland Languages
    • Burji (about 87 thousand speakers)
    • Sidamo (about 1.5 million)
    • Kambata
    • Hadiyya
  • Eastern lowland languages
    • North
      • Saho (about 144 thousand speakers)
      • Afar (1.2 million speakers)
    • Oromoid Group
      • Oromo
      • Konso
    • Rendille-boni Group
      • Rendille
      • Boni
    • Omo-Tana Group
      • Daasenech
      • Arbore
  • Languages dullay
    • Gawwada
    • Tsamay (about 7,000 speakers)
• Southern Cushite Languages or rift languages
  • Maga languagema'a)
  • (approximately 1 800 000 speakers)
  • Burunge language (31 thousand speakers)
  • Slavic languagealawa in English; about 11 000 speakers)
  • Language dahalo

Robert Hetzron has suggested that the southern Cushitic languages are a subgroup of the eastern ones. Others have suggested the possibility of dividing the Eastern group into Sidamic or Highland, Somalic or Lowland (which would include Oromo) and Yaaku- dullay, leaving Cushite with five branches: agaw, sidemic, somalic, yaaku-dullay, and rift.

Linguistic description

Phonology

The work on the Cushitic languages has made it possible to carry out more or less comprehensive reconstructions of the Proto-Cushite language, whose diversification gave rise to the different branches of Cushitic languages. According to C. Ehret (1987), the inventory of the proto-cushitic would be given by this phonological distribution:

		Labial	Dento-Alveol.	Palato-Alveol.	Velar	Labio-Velar	Faríngea	Gloss
oclusive	ejectiva	♪	*t, ʼ	*c	♪	♪kw
	sorda	♪	*t, (*))		♪	♪		*
	Sonora	♪	*d, (*))		♪	♪
cold	sorda	♪	♪	♪	♪	*xw	*	♪
	somora		♪z, ♪		*	*	*
Nose		♪	♪		*	(*GUEW)
Sounding			*l, *r	♪		♪

The signs in parentheses are of more insecure reconstruction and may only be allophones of other similar phonemes. As for the vowels, they are /*a, *e, *i, *o, *u, *ā, *ē, *ī, *ō, *ū/. This reconstruction like others by Ehret have been criticized and discussed. As mentioned, some authors such as Orel and Ostolva (1995) even deny the existence of a proto-Cushite, considering that there were several proto-languages derived from Proto-Afroasiatic that gave rise to the Cushite languages.

Grammar

The Cushitic languages have a number of Afroasiatic morphological features. In the verb, for example, the conjugation distinguishes gender in the third person singular, and the suffixes used correspond to person marks from other branches of Afroasiatic. A peculiarity of the Cushitic languages is that the conjugation mainly uses suffixes, unlike, for example, what happens in Semitic. The following table compares the suffixes used in the present in different cushitic branches:

		Beya	Proto- Agaw	Proto-B. Cush. Orient
Singular	1. a	- Yes.	*-	♪
	2nd	-taà(-y)	*-ta	*-taa
	3rd masc.	- and.	♪-a	♪
	3rd fem.	- You.	*-ta	*-taa
Plural	1. a	- No.	♪	*-naa
	2nd	-taàna	*-tan	*-taani
	3a	- Yan.	*-aan	*-aani

Lexical comparison

The reconstructed numerals for different groups of Cushitic languages are:

GLOSA	CUSHITSEPTENTR.	PROTO-CUSHITOCENTRAL	PROTO-CUSHÍTICORIENTAL			PROTO-CUSHITIONAL	PROTO- CUSHITIC
			PROTO-DULLAY	PROTO-SOMALÍ	PROTO-SIDAMICO
1	##	*la urgew	*tokko	♪	*mitt		♪ La--
2	ımal	*la️	♪ lakki	♪	♪	♪ you're gonna	*
3	mhe devotedy	*ssにwa	*izzaħ	*siddaħ	*sas	*Tami	*saK- / *sedeh-
4	^faigig	♪	♪ Salary ♪	♪ afar-	*so wander	♪ I'll be right	*sal--
5	evolvy	*	*χubin	♪	*omut	*ko bombardment	♪ken-
6	a^sagwir	*w *lta	♪	♪ Li--	*	*lalao devoted	*lala국
7	asa markrama	*laكان	♪	♪ Tadba	♪	*fa wandernqw	*-ama-ta(?)
8	Asylum	*sθ	*seccen	♪	*saddit	*daka devotedt	*sedeh-ta
9	a/	*s--ta	♪	♪	*hons	♪gwalel...
10	^tamin	*eeka	♪	♪ta *an	*tanm	*mib-	*tamn-

Note the similarity of some numerals in eastern Cushitic languages to those found in part of the southern Nilotic languages: 6 *lah-, 7 tisɑp, 8 *sisiːt, 9 *sɑkɑːl, 10 *taman. And also some numerals from the omotic languages: 6 *laxi (southern omotic), 8 (dizoid), 10 *taɓ- (general). These similarities are undoubtedly due to lexical borrowings between these groups of languages.