The Lowland East Cushitic languages comprise two dozen languages of the Cushitic family within Afro-Asiatic. They are spoken mainly in Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti, but also in parts of Kenya.

Lowland East Cushitic is often grouped with Highland East Cushitic (the Sidamic languages), Dullay, and Yaaku as East Cushitic, but that group is not well defined and considered dubious.

The most prominent Lowland East Cushitic language is Oromo, with about 21 million speakers. Other prominent languages include Somali (spoken by ethnic Somalis in Somalia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Djibouti, and Kenya) with about 15 million speakers, and Afar (in Eritrea and Djibouti) with about 1.5 million.

Robert Hetzron has suggested that the Rift languages (South Cushitic) are a part of Lowland East Cushitic,^{[citation needed]} and Maarten Mous has suggested more specifically that they be linked to a Southern Lowland branch, together with Oromo, Somali, and Yaaku-Dullay^{[citation needed]}.

Unclassified within the Lowland languages are Komso-Gidole and the endangered Boon language.

See also

• Languages of Ethiopia

References

Roland Kießling & Maarten Mous. 2003. The Lexical Reconstruction of West-Rift Southern Cushitic. Cushitic Language Studies Volume 21

External links

• Ethnologue entry for East Cushitic languages

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