Cushitic

However, Hayward thinks that East Cushitic may not be a valid node and that its constituents should be considered separately when attempting to work out the internal relationships of Cushitic.

They have traditionally been assigned to an East Cushitic branch along with Highland (Sidamic) and Lowland East Cushitic.

It is part of the Cushitic branch in the Afro-Asiatic language.

According to Ehret (1996), tonal languages appear in the Omotic and Chadic branches of Afroasiatic, as well as in certain Cushitic languages.

Between three and six thousand years ago, they were joined by Cushitic -speaking people who came from the north, into whom the Khoisan peoples were slowly absorbed.

Cushitic peoples introduced basic techniques of agriculture, food production, and later, cattle farming. citation About 2000 years ago, Bantu-speaking people began to arrive from western Africa in a series of migrations.

Cushitic speakers, partially turning away from cattle herding, domesticated teff and finger millet between 5500 and 3500 BCE.

Extinct languages A number of extinct populations are thought to have spoken Afro-Asiatic languages of the Cushitic branch.

Greenberg (1963) and others considered it a subgroup of Cushitic, whereas others have raised doubts about it being part of Afroasiatic at all (e.g. Theil 2006).

He thus divided Afroasiatic into two major branches, Omotic and Erythraean, with Erythraean consisting of three sub-branches, Cushitic, Chadic-Berber-Egyptian-Semitic-Beja, and Ongota.

However, it is more often included within the Cushitic branch.

In other words, it would appear that the Ongota people once spoke a Nilo-Saharan language but then shifted to speaking a Cushitic language but retained some characteristics of their earlier Nilo-Saharan language.

Leo Reinisch (1909) proposed linking Cushitic and Chadic, while urging a more distant affinity to Egyptian and Semitic, thus foreshadowing Greenberg, but his suggestion found little resonance.

Many ethnic groups that had already formed settlements in the region were forcibly displaced by the incoming Maasai, citation while other, mainly Southern Cushitic groups, were assimilated into Maasai society.

Most of the rest of the population belong to other Afro-Asiatic -speaking communities of the Cushitic branch.

Other Afro-Asiatic languages belonging to the Cushitic branch are also widely spoken in the country.

Other Cushitic languages with more than one million speakers are Afar (1.5 million) and Beja (1.2 million).

Paucal number has also been documented in some Cushitic languages of Ethiopia, including Baiso, which marks singular, paucal, plural. citation.

Somali is the best documented of the Cushitic languages, citation with academic studies of it dating from before 1900.

Some Cushitic languages also have tone systems.