Talk:Lowland East Cushitic languages

East Cushitic
The Lowland East Cushitic languages is a branch of the "East Cushitic languages', it is unfair that East Cushitic is redirecting towards Lowland East Cushitic languages. Why not to the Highland East cushitic languages? And the subdivisions of the Cushitic language family are East, Central, North and South. If you look into the Cushitic language family article, you will see it is a big mess and nearly unsourced. The divisions of this language family:
 * "The Cushitic languages are generally thought of as forming a distinct family of the Afroasiatic superfamily or phylum,comprising four branches in distribution from north to south: Beja, Central Cushitic or Agaw, East Cushitic, and South Cushitic"-, you can also see an image giving a synoptic view of the language family.

And about the East Cushitic languages:
 * "Of these, East Cushitic is by far the largest both in terms of number of languages and of the overall number of speakers of those languages. East Cushitic is also the most complex branch insofar as it is further divided into several discrete sub-branches: Saho-Afar, Lowland East Cushitic, Highland East Cushitic"-Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World
 * "To conclude this section, I shall look at the case of Bayso (Cushitic: East Cushitic: South Lowland East Cushitic: Omo-Tana)."-Dialectology Meets Typology: Dialect Grammar from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective
 * "''East Cushitic comprises a number of languages spoken in the Horn of Africa and divided into Highland and Lowland East Cushitic.-Semitic languages: outline of a comparative grammar
 * "The second largest group within East Cushitic is the /Lowland East Cushitic languages. Hetzron (1980) classified H.E.C. together with the /Agaw languages (Central Cushitic) in a group which he labelled Highland Cushitic languages, but this classification was later rejected.."-Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: He-N,

I hope this shed more light. The Cushitic language family has four major subdivisions; North(beja), Central (Agaw), East(wich could be divided into Highland and Lowland) and Southern(Rift languages):
 * "Cushitic has four deep divisions: Beja, Agäw, Eastern Cushitic, and Southern Cushitic."-History and the Testimony of Language

By the way in the South Cushitic languages article, the template is showing that South Cushitic is a branch of the Lowland East Cushitic languages, that is an stupendous error, as the Southern languages are a direct branch of the Cushitic languages and not a subdivision of the Lowland East wich is an subdivision of the Eastern Cushitic languages. And the article has references but are just added below and not to its coresponding statements. Here are some sources about the South Cushitic languages:
 * "Indeed, some now prefer to see South Cushitic (minus Dahalo) as a further sub-branch of East Cushitic and not a separate branch of the family."-Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World
 * "The status of South Cushitic is debated; many consider it a separate main branch, but it may also be a southern offshoot of Lowland Cushitic."-The Major Languages of South Asia, the Middle East and Africa

It is not a fact that the South Cushitic languages is seen as a sub branch of the Eastern branch but some see it in that way, while many see it as a subdivision of the Cushitic family. Runehelmet (talk) 20:42, 5 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Almost everything about Cushitic is disputed by someone or other. The branches we list are the ones which are generally undisputed. East Cushitic is not generally accepted, just as placing South Cushitic within Lowland is not generally accepted. — kwami (talk) 22:03, 5 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Runehelmet...I was on my way to asking for an update of the article with the relevant info you posted. A lot of the Afroasiatic related articles are in great need of updating. Beja/ Bedauye People, Ongota, Omotic, Kujarge Talk page. Some Chadic classifications besides Kujarge also. A.Tamar Chabadi (talk) 17:34, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

'East Cushitic' Urheimat
You seem much more well versed in your understanding of linguistics than me- So, could you please tell me where you think the most likely origin point for the Highland East & Lowland East Cushitic languages is and also when they all diverged from one another? Also, would you say Somalis, Afars and Sahos were at the regions of the Afar triangle and Northern Somalia by at least the 1st Century AD or 1000 BC. I've read that the dubious East Cushitic grouping has its origins in South-central Ethiopia and that "Macro-Somali" and "Saho-Afar" diverged from this group several thousand years ago. Ehret seems to say "5,500 years ago" for Saho-Afar and "3000 years ago" for Somali but he works under the assumption that Afro-Asiatic has its origins in the Horn and came to be more than 10,000 years ago (though I'm getting this from a secondary source and have yet to read his book) and I think you and I both know that it's more likely the language family came from further up North similar to the Cushitic branch itself (unless you disagree with that?). So what do you say for the origin place for the HE and LE Cushitic languages? All the sources I've looked up seem to be rather sure Somalis, Afars and Sahos were the first "East Cushites" to utterly dominate the coastline area from Djibouti to Northern Somalia, do you agree? Awale-Abdi (talk) 22:46, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I never understood the claim that the Somali language is close to Oromo. I understand that they are both East Cushitic, however Somalis and the lamguage originated in Northern Somalia/Djibouti while Oromo orginated in southeast Ethiopia. So I don't understand this close relation. Afar and Saho would seem more linguistically related do to proximate. Afars and Sahos also look very similar to Somalis as well than to Oromos. It's only recently that I have heard this supposed close relations. Most books I read up to that would state that the closest language to Somali is Afar, Saho then Oromo. AcidSnow (talk) 04:01, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Oromo is a related language to Somali. However, the people who speak it today are very heterogeneous. This is due to both assimilation of and admixture with other populations, especially Omotic groups. Middayexpress (talk) 17:44, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, "Oromos" can be rather diverse in their looks to be honest with you. I think to some extent this is due to the fact that they clearly assimilated other Horn ethnic groups such 'Highland East Cushitic' speakers like the Hadiya and some Sidamas historical records tying the Sidama to Sheikh Hussein and the Sidama substrate in languages like Harari which is Ethio-Semitic suggest even further that peoples like Sidamas were further East until the Oromo expansions decimated them into living chiefly where they live now), they are even as we converse now assimilating Agrobbas who as time goes by tend to be dropping their South Ethio-Semitic language for Afaan Oromo, they've even assimilated some Amharas from what I know. Many Oromos can very strongly overlap with or resemble Somalis in my experience though most of the Horn ethnic groups of Cushitic and Ethio-Semitic speaking origins look remarkably similar and overlap quite a bit.

'':I never understood the claim that the Somali language is close to Oromo. I understand that they are both East Cushitic, however Somalis and the lamguage originated in Northern Somalia/Djibouti while Oromo orginated in southeast Ethiopia.''

To my knowledge; no one is entirely sure where our languages came to be but I've seen some linguists suggest they began in Southwest and Central Ethiopia (think Addis to the Stephanie wildlife sanctuary) and then I suppose the working theory would be that Somalis, Afars & Sahos broke off from there and hit the coast while the Oromo went to Southeast Ethiopia around the Juba and Shebelle riverine area where they indeed remained for some time until their later expansion, and I suppose it's believed that the other "East Cushitic" speakers remained in the general Eastern-Central-Southwest Ethiopia region (Sidamas, Hadiyas etc.).

A lot of evidence ties Somalis, Afars and so on to the Northern Somalia and Afar triangle region for example the posed Ancient South Arabian loan words in the Northern Somali dialects/ accents and the lack of any evidence of a population change from the ancient Berbers noted roughly around 100 BC to over 300 AD and then the birthing of the Somali clans coinciding with the prominence of Islam in the region, the carried etymology of the term "Berber" and well the fact that Afars and Somalis carried on many of the old trade & practices noted in the region prior to Islam like incense gathering and salt-mining (things they actively do to this day). But yeah, Afaan Oromo is related to the Somali language, in that there is no doubt (but I can't say if it's closer to Somali than Saho and Afar are... I can only say that the Saho and Afar languages are closer to each other than they are to the Somali language, hence the Saho-Afar grouping) and the Oromo people at large too, whether assimilated or not seem to be as well but in the end my point is that all of this was seriously starting to confuse me and I wanted to know where midday stood on the origin place for our languages (I'm talking mostly just about Lowland East and Highland East and I also want to know if grouping Highland and Lowland East as "East Cushitic" is even valid). Awale-Abdi (talk) 04:50, 5 September 2014 (UTC)


 * It is indeed likely that the Afro-Asiatic family originated in or near the Nile Valley. However, it's difficult to say where exactly the East Cushitic urheimat is based on linguistic data alone. Linguists quite rightly only analyse linguistic data when trying to classify a language. When it comes to determining that language's urheimat, though, it often makes sense to adopt a multidisciplinary approach. What we can gather from such an analysis is that, after the southward migrations from the Nile Valley urheimat, there were two broad groups of Cushitic speakers: populations which penetrated the Great Lakes region and areas further south early on, and populations that generally remained in Northeast Africa. Ehret suggests that Southern Cushites were responsible for most of the southernmost migrations, which is probably accurate. For example, the most common variant of the lactase persistence allele found amongst the Iraqw (admixed Southern Cushitic speakers in Tanzania) is C-14010, which is believed to have originated in situ in East Africa . This is also virtually the only LP variant that the Nilotic, Bantu and Khoisan populations in the Great Lakes area and Southern Africa who are lactose tolerant carry. The latter groups are invariably populations, such as the Maasai, that have assimilated many neighboring Cushitic speakers. On the other hand, Nilotes to the north in the Sudan area, like the Dinka, don't carry the allele at all. This suggests that the C-14010 variant was originally associated with Cushitic pastoralists who migrated southwards. By contrast, the most common lactase persistence alleles found amongst both Somalis and Bejas are C-13907 and G-13915 . These latter two LP variants are believed to have originated in Northeast Africa and the Middle East, respectively . Altogether, this suggests that there wasn't a single dispersal of Cushitic speakers into the Horn from the Afro-Asiatic urheimat in the Nile Valley, but instead likely several such waves of migration during different periods. Somalis and Bejas (carrying the Northeast Africa and Middle East LP variants) were probably among the later waves, while the original Southern Cushites apparently arrived earlier, long enough for the C-14010 variant (which is absent in the Nile Valley) to have both evolved in situ in East Africa and then spread from there to Southern Africa. Middayexpress (talk) 17:44, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
 * So you're saying it's difficult altogether to surmise where 'East Cushitic' speakers originally spread from other than the North (I'm aware that we all came from the North as the origin place of Afro-Asiatic and our non-African admixture suggest)? But that's some very very interesting and useful data btw, thanks. What's interesting is that this leaves a dent in the idea that the South Cushitic languages spread from the LE Cushitic languages at around Southern-Central Ethiopia.... But from what you know- how long have Somalis, Afars & Sahos been where they are now? And what evidence have you found that supports whatever habituation period you may believe in? Awale-Abdi (talk) 21:52, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The Afro-Asiatic languages are themselves associated with non-African components; so what you describe as admixture is in actuality foundational ancestry. I have no idea how long Somalis, Afars and Saho have been in the Horn. I.M. Lewis excavated some burial mounds in northern Somalia, analysed the skeletal remains in them, and found that they likely belonged to Somali individuals. However, he wasn't able to determine anything beyond that or pinpoint the age of the burials. There's also a Cushitic substratum in the Modern South Arabian languages, which complicates matters further. Middayexpress (talk) 18:38, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

I see... Well, thank you anyway. You've shared some interesting information nonetheless. Gratitude... Awale-Abdi (talk) 19:23, 6 September 2014 (UTC)