Overview The phylum was first designated as
Cushitic in 1858. Traditionally, Cushitic has been divided into North Cushitic (consisting solely of
Beja), Central Cushitic (the
Agaw languages), and the large
East Cushitic group. Greenberg (1950) argued for the inclusion of the
South Cushitic group. The
Omotic languages, once classified as West Cushitic, have almost universally been reclassified as a separate branch of Afroasiatic. •
Cushitic • North Cushitic (
Beja) • Central Cushitic (
Agaw) •
East Cushitic •
South Cushitic This classification has not been without contention. For example, it has been argued that Southern Cushitic belongs in the Eastern branch, with its divergence explained by contact with
Hadza- and
Sandawe-like languages. Hetzron (1980) and Fleming (post-1981) exclude Beja altogether, though this is rejected by other linguists. Some of the classifications that have been proposed over the years are summarized here: For debate on the placement of the Cushitic branch within Afroasiatic, see
Afroasiatic languages.
Beja Beja constitutes the only member of the Northern Cushitic subgroup. As such, Beja contains a number of linguistic innovations that are unique to it, as is also the situation with the other subgroups of Cushitic (e.g. idiosyncratic features in
Agaw or Central Cushitic).
Hetzron (1980) argues that Beja therefore may comprise an independent branch of the Afroasiatic family. However, this suggestion has been rejected by most other scholars. The characteristics of Beja that differ from those of other Cushitic languages are instead generally acknowledged as normal branch variation.
Blemmyan, an early form of Beja – mostly attested through
onomastic evidence, but also directly by a small text on an
ostracon from
Saqqara – was spoken by the
Blemmyes, an ancient people of Lower Nubia that appears in the Egyptian historical records from the 6th century BCE onwards. It is also likely that the
Medjay spoke a language that was ancestral to Beja.
Omotic Cushitic was formerly seen as also including most or all of the
Omotic languages. An early view by
Enrico Cerulli proposed a "Sidama" subgroup comprising most of the Omotic languages and the Sidamic group of Highland East Cushitic. Mario Martino Moreno in 1940 divided Cerulli's Sidama, uniting the Sidamic proper and the Lowland Cushitic languages as East Cushitic, the remainder as West Cushitic or
ta/ne Cushitic. The
Aroid languages were not considered Cushitic by either scholar (thought by Cerulli to be instead
Nilotic); they were added to West Cushitic by
Joseph Greenberg in 1963. Further work in the 1960s soon led to the putative West Cushitic being seen as typologically divergent and renamed as "Omotic". Today the inclusion of Omotic as a part of Cushitic has been abandoned. Omotic is most often seen as an independent branch of Afroasiatic, primarily due to the work of
Harold C. Fleming (1974) and
Lionel Bender (1975); some linguists like
Paul Newman (1980) challenge Omotic's classification within the Afroasiatic family itself.
Other divergent languages There are also a few languages of uncertain classification, including
Yaaku,
Dahalo,
Aasax,
Kw'adza,
Boon,
Ongota and the Cushitic component of
Mbugu (Ma'a). There is a wide range of opinions as to how the languages are interrelated. The positions of the Dullay languages and of Yaaku are uncertain. They have traditionally been assigned to an East Cushitic subbranch along with Highland (Sidamic) and Lowland East 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. The Afroasiatic identity of
Ongota has also been broadly questioned, as is its position within Afroasiatic among those who accept it, because of the "mixed" appearance of the language and a paucity of research and data.
Harold C. Fleming (2006) proposes that Ongota is a separate branch of Afroasiatic. Bonny Sands (2009) thinks the most convincing proposal is by Savà and Tosco (2003), namely that Ongota is an East Cushitic language with a
Nilo-Saharan substratum. In other words, it would appear that the Ongota people once spoke a Nilo-Saharan language but then shifted to speaking a Cushitic language while retaining some characteristics of their earlier Nilo-Saharan language.
Hetzron (1980) and
Ehret (1995) have suggested that the South Cushitic languages (Rift languages) are a part of Lowland East Cushitic, the only one of the six groups with much internal diversity. ==Hypothesized Cushitic substrate languages==