Proto-Cushitic language

Proto-Cushitic is the reconstructed proto-language common ancestor of the Cushitic language family. Its words and roots are not directly attested in any written works, but have been reconstructed through the comparative method, which finds regular similarities between languages not explained by coincidence or word-borrowing, and extrapolates ancient forms from these similarities.

There is no consensus regarding the exact location of the Proto-Cushitic homeland; Christopher Ehret hypothesizes that it may have originated in the Red Sea Hills. The Cushitic languages are a branch of the broader Afroasiatic macro-family.

Hypothesis and origins
The branch of Cushitic languages is named after the Biblical character Cush, who was traditionally identified as an ancestor of the speakers of these languages as early as 947 CE in Al-Masudi's Meadows of Gold. According to the Hebrew Bible, Cush was a brother of Mizraim and Canaan. He was also the father of Biblical character Nimrod, mentioned in the Table of Nations.

The first studies of a Cushitic language goes back to the 1840s when the attention of European travellers visiting East Africa was drawn to the Oromo people. Since the 1950s, scholars have renamed the Afroasiatic language family from its previous designation; Hamito-Semitic.

Phonology
A preliminary phonological reconstruction of Proto-Cushitic was proposed by Ehret (1987).

Consonants
Ehret notes that in particular the affricates *ts, *dz, and the velar nasals *ŋ, *ŋʷ rely on fairly little evidence, and that *p, *pʼ are difficult to distinguish from other consonants in the comparative material; these are shown on a darker background above.


 * *p is based on South Cushitic. Ehret proposes it has elsewhere, with a possible exception of Awngi, fallen together with *b.
 * *ts (in nine examples) differs from *s in being preserved in Kw'adza and Dahalo, and in yielding rather than  in Oromo.
 * (four examples) yields Agaw or, East Cushitic , South Cushitic . One example suggests  in Beja.
 * (ten examples), (two examples) are again based on South Cushitic, and they merge with  in most languages, but might be reflected as  in Oromo, Arbore and Yaaku in a few cases. The velar nasal  is reconstructed also for Agaw, but Ehret finds it mostly unrelated and seems to arise there mainly from Proto-Cushitic.

Most of the remaining consonants have exact equivalents in reconstructed Proto-East Cushitic, with the exception of those marked here with following question mark. A system given by Appleyard as "widely accepted" excludes these questioned segments, but includes, and a contrast of  and. Bender tentatively supports Ehret's, , and labialized velars, but in his survey does not find unambiguous etymologies for these, nor for lateral, velar and pharyngeal fricatives or any ejectives.

The following basic correspondences of obstruent consonants follow Sasse (1979), with Beja and Agaw correspondences from Ehret (1987) and Dahalo correspondences from Tosco (2000):


 * ,, , are preserved in Ts'amakko.
 * 1)  is preserved northern Saho. Within Highland East Cushitic,  appears in Alaba and Kambaata,  in other languages.
 * 2) Word-initially,  usually does not contrast with zero.

The sonorants, , , , , normally continue unchanged in all Cushitic languages, with the exception of ,  > ,  in Dahalo and a merger of  and  in the Highland East language Hadiyya.

Major conditional sound laws involve palatalization, especially in all Somaloid languages as well as Oromo, and several simplifications of consonant clusters.

Glottalized consonants
Ejective and implosive consonants show multifarious correspondences between the Cushitic languages, particularly in Oromo, the Konsoid languages, the Dullay languages and the Highland East Cushitic languages, and it is likely that more segments than must be reconstructed, which have however fallen together as  or  in most Lowland East Cushitic languages.

Appleyard does not posit any glottalized consonants for Proto-Agaw, and reconstructs uvular *q, *qʷ for sound correspondences of,  in Bilin, respectively, with e.g. ,  or ,  in the rest of the subfamily. Fallon (2009) argues that the Bilin value is preserved from Proto-Cushitic and that *kʼ, *kʼʷ should be reconstructed still for Proto-Agaw.

The glottalized bilabials, are not common in Cushitic. In Oromo, seems to arise from  plus a laryngeal consonant,  or, e.g. Oromo  'enemy' < PEC *neʕb-, akin to Saho-Afar  'to hate'; Oromo  'clay', Rendille /sub/ 'mud' < PEC *subʔ-. Ehret finds in Dahalo as grounds to reconstruct  for Proto-South Cushitic, and finding moreover  in Yaaku, proposes that it occurred as a rare phoneme already in Proto-Cushitic. Most other languages show.

Vowels
Most Cushitic languages agree on a simple vowel system of, , , , as well as vowel length. This system is reconstructed as already Proto-Cushitic by Ehret. Bender does not find the mid vowels *e, *ee, *o, *oo to be supported by clear etymologies outside of East Cushitic.

Further instances of long vowels arise in many languages through the vocalization of the laryngeal consonants *ħ, *ʕ, *h, *ʔ and monophthongization of the combinations *ay, *ey, *aw.

A rather different vowel system appears in the Agaw languages, which is identical to the neighboring Ethiopian Semitic languages. Ehret proposes the following development:

At least the distinction between *i and *u often remains in the appearence of palatalization or labialization on adjacent consonants.

Personal pronouns
A personal pronoun system with six grammatical persons can be reconstructed, with distinct masculine and feminine forms for at least the third person singular, as well as two distinct forms: an "independent" form, normally used in the nominative case, as well as a "dependent" form, often used as an oblique stem e.g. for the accusative case. This distinction appears to be inherited already from Proto-Afro-Asiatic.

An exclusive "we" pronoun has developed in a number of East Cushitic languages, but cannot be reconstructed even for their common ancestor.

Comparative vocabulary and reconstructed roots
See Proto-Cushitic reconstructions (Appendix in Wiktionary).