Derek Nurse and
Christopher Ehret propose that Taita Cushitic must have comprised two distinct Southern Cushitic
substrate languages, which they term "Taita Cushitic A" and "Taita Cushitic B". Ehret and Nurse (1981) suggest that Cushitic-speaking peoples reached the
Taita Hills as early as the second millennium BC. South Cushitic
loanwords that are found today in the Dawida and Saghala varieties of the
Bantu Taita language indicate that at least three such South Cushitic communities previously inhabited the Taita area. Analysis of the type of South Cushitic loanwords that were adopted by Bantu speakers in the Taita Hills indicates that these South Cushitic communities probably formed a majority of the region's population prior to the arrival of Bantu peoples. Nurse adds that it is likely that the Taita Cushites were completely assimilated only recently since the
lateral consonants in South Cushitic loanwords that were borrowed by speakers of the Bantu Taita language were still pronounced as such within living memory. However, those laterals have now been replaced. Additionally, Nurse suggests that certain South Cushitic loanwords that are today found in the Bantu
Mijikenda language are also of Taita Cushitic origin. He adds that these word-borrowings may have been adopted indirectly via
Taita Bantu intermediaries, who had themselves borrowed the terms from South Cushites at an earlier date. According to E. H. Merritt (1975), oral traditions of the Taita Bantus likewise assert that two populations, which are usually identified as South Cushitic-speaking peoples, in the past inhabited the Taita Hills before the arrival of their own ancestors. These Cushitic former residents are remembered by a variety of often interchanging names, including the "Bisha", "Sikimi", "Nyamba" and "Wasi". ==Notes==