There are six clearly valid groups of languages which are usually included in the Cushitic family ( Beja, Agaw, Sidamic, Lowland East Cushitic, Dullay, and South Cushitic ), as well as a few poorly classified languages ( Yaaku, Dahalo, Aasax and Kw ' adza, Boon, and the Cushitic element of Mbugu ).

Hetzron ( 1980: 70ff ) and Ehret ( 1995 ) have suggested that the Rift languages ( South Cushitic ) are a part of Lowland East Cushitic, the only one of the six groups with much internal diversity.

Cushitic was traditionally seen as also including the Omotic languages, then called West Cushitic.

* Ethnologue entry for Cushitic languages

There are three minority languages in East Africa which use clicks: Sandawe and Hadza of Tanzania, as well as Dahalo, an endangered South Cushitic language of Kenya which has clicks in only a few dozen words.

These permanent villages and towns predate those of southern Eritrea and northern Ethiopia suggesting, according to Peter Schmidt, "... it is they, not sites in Arabia that were the vital precursors to urban developments ... likewise students of evolution and distribution of languages now believe that Semitic and Cushitic languages are of African origin.

Other Afro-Asiatic languages belonging to the Cushitic branch are also widely spoken in the country.

Most people in Ethiopia speak Afro-Asiatic languages, mainly of the Semitic or Cushitic branches.

# Cushitic languages ( Somali, Oromo, etc.

The Chadic, Omotic, and to some extent Cushitic branches of Afroasiatic are tonal — the Omotic languages heavily so — though their sister families of Semitic, Berber, and Egyptian are not.

* Many Afroasiatic languages in the Chadic, Cushitic and Omotic families have register-tone systems, such as Chadic Hausa.

However, many other languages in these families, such as the Cushitic language Somali, have minimal tone.

Beginning in the 9th century with the Jewish grammarian Judah ibn Quraysh, a relationship between the Semitic and Cushitic languages was seen ; modern linguists group these two families, along with the Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, and Omotic language groups into the larger Afro-Asiatic language family.

Like most other Ethiopian languages, whether Semitic, Cushitic, or Omotic, Oromo has a set of ejective consonants, that is, voiceless stops or affricates that are accompanied by glottalization and an explosive burst of air.

As a consequence of these movements, there are no longer any Southern Cushites left in Kenya ( the Dahalo originally being Bushman peoples who adopted the language of their dominant Southern Cushitic neighbors sometime toward the last millennium BCE ).

In Ethiopian Orthodox tradition, the third of these Shebas ( Joktan's son ) is considered the primary ancestor of the original Semitic component in their ethnogenesis, while Sabtah and Sabtecah, sons of Cush, are considered the ancestors of the Cushitic element.

Such alignments are only clearly documented in northeastern Africa ( e. g. in Cushitic languages ) and the southwestern United States ( Yuman languages ).

The links with Sandawe, for example, are Cushitic loan words, while the links with southern Africa are so few and short ( usually single C V syllables ) that they could easily be coincidence.

It is a member of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, and its nearest relatives are the Afar and Oromo languages.

The Agaw languages or Central Cushitic languages, are spoken by small groups in Ethiopia and, in one case, Eritrea.

The Central Cushitic languages are classified as follows ( after Appleyard ):

Two, Chadic is closest to Cushitic and Omotic than any other branch.

These have traditionally been assigned to an East Cushitic branch along with Highland ( Sidamic ) and Lowland East Cushitic.

Most of the rest of the population belong to other Afro-Asiatic-speaking communities of the Cushitic branch.

With 30 million members, they constitute the single largest ethnicity in Ethiopia and approximately 34. 49 % of the population according to the 2007 census .< ref name =" census2007p66 "> Their native language is Oromo ( also called Afaan Oromoo and Oromiffa ), which is part of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family.

Greenberg ( 1963 ) had classified it as the Western branch of Cushitic.

Fleming ( 1969 ) argued that it should instead be classified as an independent branch of Afroasiatic, a view which Bender ( 1971 ) established to most linguists ' satisfaction, though a few linguists maintain the West Cushitic position,

or that only South Omotic forms a separate branch, with North Omotic remaining part of Cushitic.

It is the most widely spoken tongue in the family's Cushitic branch.

The Somali language (; ) is a member of the East Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family.

The Beja speak Beja or To Bedawie, an Afro-Asiatic language usually classified as Cushitic, but sometimes seen as an independent branch.

The French linguist Didier Morin ( 2001 ) has made an attempt to bridge the gap between Beja and another branch of Cushitic, namely Lowland East Cushitic languages and in particular Afar and Saho, the linguistic hypothesis being historically grounded on the fact that the three languages where once geographically contiguous.

It is usually seen as Cushitic, but several scholars, notably Robert Hetzron ( 1980 ), have regarded it as an independent branch of Afro-Asiatic.

The latter complex is typically associated with speakers of languages belonging to the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family.

The overwhelming majority of Somalis speak the Somali language, which is part of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family.

The Somali language is a member of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family.

Robert Hetzron has suggested that the Rift languages ( South Cushitic ) are a part of Lowland East Cushitic, and Kießling & Mous ( 2003 ) have suggested more specifically that they be linked to a Southern Lowland branch, together with Oromo, Somali, and Yaaku – Dullay.

Blench ( 2006 ) reclassified Bussa from the Dullay to Konsoid branch of Cushitic, but left the Mashole, Lohu, and Dobase ( D ' oopace, D ' opaasunte ) dialects in Dullay as the Dobase language.

Kießling restricts South Cushitic to West Rift as its only indisputable branch, stating that Dahalo has too many East Cushitic features to belong, Ma ' a has too much Bantu and East Cushitic admixture, and that Kw ' adza and Aasax are insufficiently described.

Greenberg ( 1963 ) and others considered it a subgroup of Cushitic, while others have raised doubts about it being part of Afroasiatic at all ( e. g. Theil 2006 ).

Of the other Afroasiatic branches, Egyptian shows its greatest affinities with Semitic, Berber, and to a lesser extent Cushitic.

This has since been emended by changing the status of " Western Cushitic ", making it an independent subfamily of Afroasiatic called Omotic.