South Cushitic languages

Classification

The Rift languages are named after the Great Rift Valley of Tanzania, where they are found.

Hetzron (1980:70ff) suggested that the Rift languages (South Cushitic) are a part of Lowland East Cushitic. Kießling & Mous (2003) have proposed more specifically that they be linked to a Southern Lowland branch, together with Oromo, Somali, and Yaaku–Dullay. It is possible that the great lexical divergence of Rift from East Cushitic is due to Rift being partially relexified through contact with Khoisan languages, as perhaps evidenced by the unusually high frequency of the ejective affricates /tsʼ/ and /tɬʼ/, which outnumber pulmonary consonants like /p, f, w, ɬ, x/. Kießling & Mous suggest that these ejectives may be remnants of clicks from the source language.

The terms "South Cushitic" and "Rift" are not quite synonymous: The Ma'a and Dahalo languages were once included in South Cushitic, but were not considered Rift. Kießling restricts South Cushitic to West Rift as its only indisputable branch. He states that Dahalo has too many East Cushitic features to belong to South Cushitic, as does Ma'a. Kw'adza and Aasax are in turn insufficiently described to classify as even Cushitic with any certainty.

Iraqw and Gorowa are close enough for basic mutual intelligibility. Alagwa has become similar to Burunge through intense contact, and so had previously been classified as a Southern West Rift language. Aasax and Kw'adza are poorly attested and, like Dahalo, may be the result of language shift from non-Cushitic languages.

Several additional and now extinct South Cushitic languages are deduced from their influence on the Bantu languages that replaced them. A pair of these, Taita Cushitic, appear to have been more divergent than extant Rift languages, co-ordinate with Proto-Rift within a larger group Nurse (1988) calls "Greater Rift".

The Southern Somali Languages are not pure Afsoomali which is spoken in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti. They Include Languages that are Cushitic but not Somali.

Afsoomali is the Language of Somalis in Kenya , Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia. Somali linguistic varieties differ with tongue in different Somali regions of Kenya, Ethiopia, Djiboouti and Somalia. In Somalia, Unlike Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti, Communities which lived with Somalis such as Raxanweeyn, Somali Bantus and Benadir have other Languages which is difficult or can't be comprehended by an Ordinary Somali from Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia although some have learnt them. That is the Maay Language which is different from Afsoomali which is the official Somali language in all areas inhabited by Somalis in those Countries. Afsoomali spoken in Djibouti, or Northern Somali forms the basis for Standard Somali which is the language of Somalis in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, particularly the Mudug dialect of the northern Darod clan of the Somalis. It is today spoken in an area stretching from northern Somalia to parts of the eastern and southwestern sections of the country. This widespread modern distribution is a result of a long series of southward population movements over the past ten centuries from the Gulf of Aden littoral. Northern and Southern Somalis have frequently been using poetry as a means of expressing Somali words by famous Somali poets as well as the political elite, and thus has the most prestige out of the Somali dialects.

Concotion of Original Somali mixed with some 'other' languages have been spoken in Benadir (also known as Coastal Somali) which is hard to comprehend in Somalis living in Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti but is spoken on the central Indian Ocean seaboard, including parts of Mogadishu. It forms a relatively small Minority Arab Somali group. The dialect is fairly mutually intelligible with Northern Somalis.

Now, A totally different language, slightly with Afsoomali words known as AfMaay is principally spoken by the Digil and Mirifle (Rahanweyn or Sab) clans in some parts of the southern regions of Somalia. Its speech area extends from the shabelle region to close to the coastal strip between Mogadishu and Kismayo, including the city of Baidoa. Maay is not mutually comprehensible with Northern Somali or Benadir, or with Somalis in Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti and it differs considerably in sentence structure and phonology. It is also not generally used in education or media. However, Maay speakers, because are few, often use Standard Somali as a lingua franca, which is learned via mass communications, internal migration and urbanization.

Maay is closely related with the Jiido, Dabarre, Garre and Tunni languages that are also spoken by smaller Rahanweyn communities and which a Normal somali from Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Somalia can't comprehend properly Collectively, these languages present similarities with Oromo that are not found in mainstream Somali Lands. Chief among these is the lack of pharyngeal sounds in the Rahanweyn/Digil and Mirifle languages, features which by contrast typify Somali. Although in the past frequently classified as dialects of Somali, more recent research by the linguist Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi has shown that these varieties, including Maay, constitute separate Cushitic languages. They may thus represent traces of an Oromo substratum in the southern Rahanweyn confederacy.