Talk:Cushitic languages

Real numbers

Afars also live in Djibouti as well as Eritrea and Ethiopia, so their number should be slightly larger than 1.5 million, but do not know by how much. Also Somalis reside in the Northeastern part of Kenya, which should make their number slightly larger than 15 million if not more than 20 million.

It's good to know that others have suggested these five branches, but... which others? - Mustafaa 23:29, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hey, I was wondering also. Who could it be? Wedekind? Andrezjewski? I'm going to look into it, but if I don't find anything soon I'm going to move the statement to talk pending verification. — mark ✎ 13:02, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This is Hayward's rather agnostic position in Heine & Nurse. Wasn't claiming that these were necessarily independent branches, just that they were all that could be assumed with present knowledge, and that any claims for relationships between them (or for the validity of Cushitic itself) need to consider them separately. kwami 04:58, 2005 Jun 27 (UTC)

Ditto. Greenberg isn't reliable, and a lot of work has been done since Fleming. kwami (talk) 02:31, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Proto-Cushitic language?

Has anyone here heard of a Proto-Cushitic language? I've come across vague references on the internet. Gringo300 (talk) 19:09, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Within historical linguistics, a "Proto-" language is the reconstructed ancestor of a group of languages. Thus, we have Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Cushitic is the reconstructed ancestor of the Cushitic languages. (Taivo (talk) 20:02, 13 February 2009 (UTC))

Could it go back to the first Homo sapiens, before they migrated out of Africa? 2A00:23C1:C11A:D500:E0A5:9324:40CF:A2B4 (talk) 21:22, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

What Taivo said above is a good explanation of a proto-language. Christopher Ehret attempted a reconstruction of Proto-Cushitic in 1987, with a 1995 update.

Pathawi (talk) 06:03, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

References

Irrelevant Material

To the anonymous IP who added some questionable material: This article is about Cushitic, not about whatever POV you are pushing with that last addition. I will assume good faith, but you must demonstrate how that information you added is relevant to the topic at hand. Rewrite it or discuss it here first or I will continue to remove it as irrelevant. It is so far-fetched from the topic, I don't even know where to begin to rewrite it. Make it relevant or leave it out. Perhaps it is more relevant at Afar language. (Taivo (talk) 16:47, 20 November 2009 (UTC))

Continuing to add irrelevant and unsourced material to this article is not proper practice. What is the relevance of the material you are insisting on adding? It is not at all clear why it is here. Please elaborate before you go adding it back in. As far as I can tell, it might be relevant on the Afar language page, but without a paragraph describing its relevance, it doesn't appear to belong here. Stop your personal attacks. (Taivo (talk) 18:54, 20 November 2009 (UTC))

Etymology

Adding all that material about Nilo-Saharan languages in ancient Cush is immaterial to this article. The name "Cushitic" is from the ancient region of "Cush" and that's all that need be said. The article does not claim that all the languages of the ancient region of Cush were Cushitic or even Afro-Asiatic. It just says that's the source of the name. Entering all that irrelevant information about Nilo-Saharan languages being spoken in Cush as well borders on POV pushing. --Taivo (talk) 15:33, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Needs linguistic description

This article so far is all about classification but seems to be lacking in linguistic description or analysis such as chracteristic phonology, syntax and so on. Alas I am not qualified to fill the gap but it is surely missing essential information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arberryday (talk • contribs) 02:53, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Subdivisions

The article fails to give a good outline of the subdivisions of the Cushitic language family. The Cushitic languages can be divided into North(Beja), South, Central(Agaw) and East(further divided into Lowland and Highland). Rather then giving the sub-branch of the subdivisions, like the East Lowland and Dahalo. Runehelmet (talk) 17:23, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, they can be. But they're generally not, not in the better sources, because East Cushitic has not been demonstrated. As with Afroasiatic as a whole, we could include a table of various scholars' conceptions of Cushitic. — kwami (talk) 18:12, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

So it looks like this table happened! I've been trying to update it to reflect what I see cited in other scholarly literature. I've removed Ethnologue in keeping with what WikiProject Languages has to say about the source, and the fact that it just reflected another source already in the table. It seems to me that there are two different kinds of categorisations we could be looking at, and that this table kind of muddles them: 1) the position of Cushitic within Afroasiatic (or Afrasian, or whatever term you like); 2) the internal structure of Cushitic. Hetzron gives us all the latter, none of the former; Militarev and Diakonoff, all the former, none of the latter. As it stands, this table was reproduced from Afroasiatic languages, from which it now diverges because of earlier changes I made. Perhaps it would make sense to differentiate: This page handles internal structure, with a link to that page for position within Afroasiatic. There may well be some reduplication between the tables, which is fine, but each table as a whole would focus on a specific question. For the present table, that would mean removing Fleming, Diakonoff, & Militarev. It would be ideal if somebody had a copy of Moreno's 1940 paper on Afaa Sidaamu! Thoughts?

Pathawi (talk) 06:33, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

I bumped this section to the end because I was worried that my proposal hadn't been seen, & I didn't want to start removing material without giving others who care about this article a chance to discuss/object, etc. Does anyone have a reasoned attachment for the current version, or a different vision for what this table should be? I'll get started on this in a couple days if there aren't any objections.

Pathawi (talk) 07:18, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Working on Cushitic articles recently, I notice @Kwamikagami and perhaps some others have been culling mentions of East Cushitic from languages' infoboxes. However, while there's debate on the extent of the group, it seems that almost everyone still continues to identify a group that would be called "East Cushitic" and includes at minimum Afar-Saho, Somali (Somaloid), Oromo (Oromoid) and Highland East. This also seems frankly more stable and better-defined than "Lowland East Cushitic", which looks to me like a wastebasket of any putatively-East languages outside of any groups seen as "divergent" — I have for instance so far not found any proposed Proto-Lowland-East innovations from literature anywhere, while for East Cushitic we have in principle at least Ehret (1987) proposing innovations defining the group. And it is really nearly impossible to find any sources specifically treating Lowland East at all — maybe save for the early reconstruction work of Black (1974) who admits that he only works within said group for the purpose of lacking sufficient data on many other languages. Hence I do not see grounds here to treat the two nodes differently: either we treat both as widely recognized, or neither. Personally I think the 'neither' option might be safer; but pushing this too far out might be risky, since it's also the case that basically everyone thinks there is some kind of a node here and e.g. Somali and Oromo are not in two entirely different branches of Cushitic. We might also include both by default for languages for whose position there's not major dispute, and e.g. give the position of Dullay as C > EC > ? LEC; or that of Dahalo as C > ? EC > ?? LEC. Thoughts? --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 21:29, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Ehret is not a RS. His work is atrocious. He comes up with all sorts of classifications that no linguist accepts, and are regularly dismissed as unsubstantiated even when he claims to have shared innovations.

I can't evaluate Tosco's work, but at least he's a linguist, and AFAICT reasonable well respected. Glottolog at least finds his Cushitic classification authoritative. The lack of shared innovations is of course a red flag, but unfortunately few of the world's putative language families are based on shared innovations. — kwami (talk) 06:58, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Ehret's Cushitic work has controversial reception on many details but should not be dismissed as entirely fringe. (It seems to me his primary problem is bad etymology / comparison, and where he has work by others to rely on, his phonological reconstruction stays in normal scholarly bounds — e.g. Bender's surface comparison passed off as PCush. or ECush. "reconstruction" in his 2020 book is clearly worse.) We should be also able to already dig out reviews of his works, if we e.g. wanted to see what can be usefully cited about Proto-Cushitic reconstruction.

I'm not sure what point about Tosco you want to make, since he's after all one of the people who recognizes also classic East Cushitic. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 12:05, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

(Tangentially; yes, you're of course right that a lack of proposed common innovations is a red flag; seems to me that on Wikipedia we have rarely taken this seriously though and have in general way too many language subgroup articles based only on tertiary sources, which could be easily merged into a discussion under the article for a better-established group. But probably I should take this up at WP:LING instead. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 12:09, 14 March 2024 (UTC))

I disagree with Ehret's conclusions & methods. I don't think that most Cushiticists (all six of 'em) follow his conclusions, but they do, in fact, cite his work. I think it meets Wikipedia's criteria for reliable sources. Venturing into evaluating family attributions based on discipline-internal criteria seems to me probably beyond our purview as Wikipedia editors & ventures into original research. Some of us may conduct research on Cushitic languages in our professional lives, but as Wikipedia editors our task is to report (sensibly) the content of reliable sources. Pathawi (talk) 00:16, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I very much agree with @Pathawi. No matter what we personnally think about a particular researcher and his/her methods, when they have made a sufficient splash in the academic community to the point that everybody cites them, and be it only to shoot them down, we need to report this in the relevant article. Whether Ehret is a trained linguist is neither here nor there. Marvin Bender for example was a trained mathematician before he dabbled in linguistics, and we don't hold that against him, do we? LandLing 08:34, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Agree with both previous commenters. It's not ours to evaluate on our own the evidential basis for East Cushitic. Yes, I haven't really seen innovation-based arguments yet (which isn't to hard to understand when considering the state of the reconstruction Proto-Cushitic at the highest level), and maybe one or all of those individual proposals which consider the remaining branches of Cushitic each to be nested within one of the subbranches of East Cushitic might turn out to be correct (in which case East Cushitic increasingly becomes coterminous to Cushitic). But we reflect, and when good sources like e.g. Tosco's chapter in Vossen & Dimmendahl's Handbook still present East Cushitic as a valid subgroup, we should do so too. –Austronesier (talk) 20:56, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

It's not that he's not a trained linguist, but the consent of the historical linguists I know who say his work is garbage. And these are people who welcome the contributions of amateurs. But that's for Nilo-Saharan and Khoisan, not Cushitic. — kwami (talk) 02:20, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I wish his work were otherwise, as I said above, but I just did a quick survey of work in Cushitic historical linguistics that I think well of, and the first three things I looked at all cited him. (David Appleyard's comparative dictionary for Agaw, Maura Tosco's overview in Frajzyngier & Shay's Afroasiatic volume, & Kießling & Mous's SWRC reconstruction. Of these, only the last is purely critical, but the critique seems to be pretty collegial.) Pathawi (talk) 03:52, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

We don't pre-vet sources by some general "consensus" about their authors. Adventurous academics like Ehret quite often can have good expertise and contributions on some topic while churning out nonsense on another one, and Cushitic is specifically where he has also done his hands-on work. If some of it is still bad (and FWIW also my personal opinion as a historical linguist is that, yes, some of it is), we will require explicit statements to that effect. E.g. Kießling & Mous' critique provides good reasons to not treat his South Cushitic reconstruction as authoritative; but it does not invalidate his basic comparative work on Kw'adza, Aasax, Ma'a and Dahalo.

We are sidetracking from the original question though: it should be obviously clear that Ehret is not so contagiously toxic that "he supports East Cushitic" would count as any argument against it at all. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 14:42, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Talking about the spurious idea of 'devalidation through support by the "wrong" scholars', I feel the urge to mention that it was Greenberg who popularized Moreno's concept of "East Cushitic". But seriously, unless we have multiple and good sources that have trashed the concept of East Cushitic, we have to reflect that it is generally accepted in a wide range of promary and secondary sources. In Tropylium's and my own respective fields (Uralic and Austronesian), there has been a healthy skepticism towards historical subgroups that were introduced either without any evidence based on exclusively shared innovations, or only with weak evidence. This skepticism is reflected in multiple reliable sources and consequently, constructs like "Finno-Volgaic" or "Western Malayo-Polynesian" are labelled as obsolete in Wikipedia and don't appear in infoboxes. However, the current omission of the "East Cushitic" in most (or all?) Cushitic-related infoboxes is not supported by any reliable source and goes against what most good sources say about the internal classification of Cushitic. –Austronesier (talk) 15:36, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree with the above. I am skeptical of the EC branch, but I think it does appear as part of what we should probably take to be the standard account within the field. Pathawi (talk) 18:34, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Official Status

Here are explanations of my most recent revision, concerning official statuses of Cushitic languages:

1. Only Somali is listed as a national language in the Somali constitution. Arabic is also given an official status. It is correct that Somali is the national language of Somalia, & that's the info that's pertinent to this paragraph.
2. I re-checked the Eritrean Constitution, & I can't find any citation of languages by name at all. Where in the Constitution areBeja, Afar, Blin, and Saho recognised? I see 'The equality of all Eritrean languages is guaranteed.'
3. In Djibouti, the Constitution only recognises French and Arabic. I don't know that an e-government portal should be considered a better source. It's clear that the Djiboutian government is involved in active work to promote Somali, such as participation in and hosting of the Regional Somali Language Academy, but this is not a legislative enshrinement of the language's status. English "national language" and French "langue nationale" are not equivalent in the post-colonial African context. When someone writes in French that such-&-such is a "langue nationale" of an African country, it doesn't necessarily follow that that language is official: In fact, it's likely not to be. This is one of the ways "national language" is used in English, but that's clearly not the context of the paragraph. I've tried to clarify this by saying that Somali is the only Cushitic language constitutionally accorded national language status, which should eliminate the need to say anything at all about Djibouti.
4. After undoing Soupforone's revisions, I went back to their most recent revision, copied the population info, & pasted it back into a new revision.

Pathawi (talk) 06:07, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

The constitution of Eritrea indicates that "the equality of all Eritrean languages is guaranteed" [1]. By this, it means the native languages of its officially recognized ethnic groups. Perhaps this is a bit nebuluous, though, so I've rephrased it to Beja, Afar, Bilen and Saho are the Cushitic languages spoken in Eritrea, where all natively spoken languages are equally recognized within the constitution (by the way, we should stick to linguistic sources and/or government sources for the legal status). As to the constitution of Somalia, it indicates that Somali is one of two official languages, alongside Arabic. That is why its Article 5 is pluralized official languages [2]. Also, I am well aware that langue nationale in French does not necessarily denote an official language. That is why I wrote that Somali has official language status at the country level in Somalia rather than that it is simply a national language. This way, the language's status there (official language) is less likely to be confused with its status in Djibouti (national language) and Ethiopia (regional working language). Anyway, I've pointed this to Djibouti Law #96 [3] and arranged the languages by speaker size. Soupforone (talk) 16:10, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

The issue of langue nationale doesn't related to Somali, but to Djibouti—I was referencing your source for the claim of Djibouti's being a national language. (I don't think you had a French-language source for Soamlia.) Your current source doesn't do better for Somali and Afar, as best I can tell: It says that instruction in schools should occur in Somali and Afar, which makes the situation in Djibouti for Cushitic languages equivalent to that of Eritrea. It seems to me that the following kinds of status are meaningfully different:

• national language, as constitutionally defined (Somali in Somalia)
• regional language, as legislatively recognised (Oromo, Somali, Afar in Ethiopia)
• language with some degree of national protection (Afar, Saho, Beja, Blin in Eritrea)
• language without legislative recognition, but with government support thru services and education (Afar, Saho, Beja, Blin in Eritrea & Afar & Somali in Djibouti)
• langue nationale in the unofficial sense

The last of these seems to me to be beside the point for the present location: Whatever claim is being made impressionistically, there, is better made thru the population numbers.

Somali is explicitly, legislatively the national language of Somalia. Arabic is accorded explicitly second language status. The distinction is legislatively—constitutionally—marked. Here, it makes sense to say that Somali is the national language, because it's a meaningful claim & it's true.

That all Eritrean languages' equality is guaranteed doesn't actually say much, especially when those languages aren't named—tho you & I know what they are. I don't know how we can say that the constitution recognises them when the constitution doesn't name them. On the other hand, the Ministry of Education pays people to teach in particular languages & produces materials in these languages. (I was stumped, by the way, for a moment by your comment that we should use government & linguistic sources; I didn't know what you were referring to. The best I can tell, you would like to exclude a UNICEF report on Eritrean language policy. Is that what you're referring to? As this doesn't conflict other sources, & I don't know of any reason that UNICEF should be considered unreliable—unlike, say, Ethnologue—no, I disagree. It's a relevant source.) Pathawi (talk) 18:37, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

The Djibouti Law #96 indicates [4]-- "Article 5 : L’Education et la Formation sont dispensées dans les langues officielles et dans les langues nationales. Un Décret pris en Conseil des Ministres fixe les modalités de l’enseignement en français, en arabe, en Afar et en Somali." -- "Article 5: Education and training shall be provided in the official languages ​​and in the national languages. A decree issued by the Council of Ministers sets the terms for instruction in French, Arabic, Afar and Somali." Given the Djibouti constitution (which indicates that French and Arabic are the official languages [5]), this legal clause establishes three things-- (1) That official languages and national languages are distinct in Djibouti; (2) Afar and Somali are the national languages; and (3) Both the official and national languages serve as languages of instruction. This is not the same as in Eritrea, where all the languages are constitutionally equal (i.e., there's no official/national dichotomy). Also, the constitution of Somalia indicates [6]-- "Article 5. Official Languages[...] The official language of the Federal Republic of Somalia is Somali (Maay and Maxaa-tiri), and Arabic is the second language." This means that both languages are official therein [7], as also established in an earlier government charter ("The official languages of the Somali Republic shall be Somali (Maay and Maxaatiri) and Arabic" [8]). As to UNICEF, it is not a linguistic/expert source nor a governmental source. I've therefore pointed the language of instruction stuff that it indicates for Eritrea to the original paper it cites by the linguists Sava and Tosco. I also arranged the paragraph by language since this is a linguistic subject. Soupforone (talk) 05:22, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Again, as you've agreed above, langue nationale and national language do not have the same implications—as is made very, very clear by the distinction in the Djiboutian law you cite. To translate directly without further comment is to mislead. And, again, Somali's status is constitutionally different from Arabic by the language you cited. (It in fact specifies that Somali is official, and then gives Arabic a status different from that.) I think the Tosco-Sava switch is extraneous & trivial, & I don't think your justification has merit (UNICEF is an educational institution, & I don't think it's academically considered to lack credibility on factual matters such as this), but I don't object to the source in itself, and the information is the same, so I haven't changed it. Pathawi (talk) 06:13, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

There are two official languages (plural) per the Somalia constitution, Somali and Arabic [9]. Also, the national languages in Djibouti are Afar and Somali per the Djibouti Chamber of Commerce [10]. It is national languages≠official languages in the latter country. Soupforone (talk) 14:55, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

The Somali Constitution does not declare two official languages. In both English and the original Somali, the phrase "official language" ("afka rasmiga") is used in the singular, while in the same section Arabic is identified as the "second language" ("luqadda labaad"). It is false to say that Arabic is a co-official language with Somali: It is the second language. A correct statement might be that Somali and Arabic both have constitutional recognition for Somali. In an article on Cushitic languages, the unusual status that only one Cushitic language has—that of official language for a country—seems more pertinent than a less specific status which it shares with Arabic. إنت بتركّز على اللغة العربية كده ليه؟ بتقصد تعمل إيه بالظبط؟

Also, la Chambre de la Commerce de Djibouti is a private sector entity. (I thought you said we should stick to governments & linguists!) Its saying something doesn't make it official. Nonetheless, it doesn't say anything meaningfully different. I don't think facts are in dispute on this one: Djibouti's official languages are French and Arabic. It is possible to find sources that describe Afar and Somali as langues nationales, but this doesn't mean that they have any official status, as "national language" would imply to many English-language readers. I'm sure you can find a government source describing Afar and Somali as langues nationales, but I'm not going to support using the corresponding phrasing in English unless it makes it clear up front that this is in contrast to an official language. Pathawi (talk) 16:17, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Article 5 of the constitution of Somalia is actually labeled Official languages (plural), and Somali and Arabic are the indicated languages therein [11]. These are the official languages in the original constitution [12] and the later governmental charter as well [13]. This is why the CIA describes the official languages as "Somali (official, according to the 2012 Transitional Federal Charter), Arabic (official, according to the 2012 Transitional Federal Charter)" [14]. What there isn't is a law that indicates that Somali is the sole official language of Somalia (an Arab League member state) because it simply is not. As to the Djibouti Chamber of Commerce, it is a government agency [15]. Soupforone (talk) 05:53, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

You are right about the Djiboutian Chamber of Commerce: link. But I don't think facts are in dispute on this one: Djibouti's official languages are French and Arabic. It is possible to find sources that describe Afar and Somali as langues nationales, but this doesn't mean that they have any official status, as "national language" would imply to many English-language readers. I'm sure you can find a government source describing Afar and Somali as langues nationales, but I'm not going to support using the corresponding phrasing in English unless it makes it clear up front that this is in contrast to an official language.

The CIA World Factbook is sometimes useful, but neither it nor prior constitutions supersede the present constitution. In fact, the shift from an older constitution in which English & Italian were second languages while Somali & Arabic were official to one in which English & Italian are out, & Arabic is demoted to second, is significant. The current wording—the wording I used before—mentions Arabic & provides its specific status, as well as Somali's. A correct statement might be that Somali and Arabic both have constitutional recognition for Somali. In an article on Cushitic languages, the unusual status that only one Cushitic language has—that of official language for a country—seems more pertinent than a less specific status which it shares with Arabic. إنت بتركّز على اللغة العربية كده ليه؟ بتقصد تعمل إيه بالظبط؟

At this point, we should either have an explicit conversation about the purpose of the paragraph & the meanings of the terms national language & official language, or we should seek mediation. Pathawi (talk) 07:07, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

I never wrote that Afar and Somali were official languages in Djibouti, but instead that "national languages≠official languages in the latter country". This is exactly what both the Djibouti Law #96 [16] and the Djibouti Chamber of Commerce establish [17]. That interpretation that Arabic in Somalia was demoted to non-official status in the constitution of Somalia is not indicated by the constitution nor by any other relevant legislation. It obviously was not since a prerequisite of membership in the Arab League is having Arabic as an official language. Anyway, it appears that this discussion has gone stale, so I've asked for a Third Opinion. Soupforone (talk) 15:22, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Somaliland

In the past couple weeks, an individual without an account has removed Somaliland from the list of regions where Cushitic languages are spoken multiple times. Each removal has introduced other problems, so I've undone them and requested that if the individual remove Somaliland again they try to be neater and explain the reason for the removal. Again, Somaliland was removed today and again there was a syntax error in the removal, but the individual did include their reasoning: Namely, that Somaliland is not internationally recognised as a state. Mathglot undid that edit, stating in the comment: 'country or not it specifies an area where Cushitic languages are spoken'. I am in favour of retaining Somaliland, but I wonder if there's any policy or MOS guideline that would suggest one course of action or the other. It is not clear to me that there is. Without any specific guideline, it seems like there's no grounds for removal. (In lieu of a policy: Armenian language lists Artsakh as a place where it's an official language; Russian language lists Transnistria. Retaining Somaliland is at least consistent.) Pathawi (talk) 11:50, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Somaliland is a de facto sovereign state who's claimed overlord (Somalia) has no jurisdiction over. Therefore including it makes sense.

However Puntland and other regions don't claim independence from Somalia but rather are part of its federal system. Your inclusion of Puntland for example is unwarranted as Puntland is by default already mentioned through Somalia and Puntland considers itself to be an autonomous region within Somalia and a model for a Somali central government Dabaqabad (talk) 02:18, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

It's not my inclusion of Puntland: It looks like Puntland was added on 12 March by a one-edit user named Isaaqsilibtu in the (continuing) period of Somaliland edit-warring. I have been restoring the info because deleting editors have until today not engaged Talk. I buy your reasoning on Puntland, & won't push for its restoration. It remains unclear to me what the criterion should be for inclusion or removal of a region, & it seems to me that we're inventing a policy on the fly for one article. Pathawi (talk) 02:34, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Dabaqabad on this. Puntland is an autonomous region of Somalia. Because of the de facto status of Somaliland, it may not be clear to everyone if Somaliland is not included in the list. It is also a sensitive issue which can cause offence to some if Somaliland is not mentioned seperately. Amirah talk 02:46, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

• The listing of countries in the lede of this article solely serves the purpose to give readers an adequate picture of the geographical extent where Cushitic languages are spoken. It is not a WP:battleground, nor the place for WP:righting great wrongs. The lede should be concise, but without major omissions. I think that leaving out Puntland is hardly a major omission for the reasons discussed above. As for Somaliland, I checked various sources that provide overviews for the languages discussed here. Not geopolitical sources, but specialized and non-specialized sources about Cushitic languages, and languages in general. I haven't found one that mentions Somaliland. So apparently, most authors do not expect readers to interpret Somalia as "Somalia minus Somaliland". I don't feel strongly about it (nobody should edit a page when feeling strongly about it, unless taking a deep, deep breath and trying as hard as possible to emotionally detach oneself from it), but I consider the addtion of Somaliland not very informative. The example of Russian and Armenian would apply to Somali language (we also mention sub-national legal status of individual languages, so disputed territories are fine in that context), but not for this larger entity which is a scholarly construct.

Sum up: I oppose the inclusion of Puntland. And I disprefer the inclusion of Somaliland; however, I won't be in the way for a consensus about the latter, which AFAICS overall might swing towards inclusion. –Austronesier (talk) 10:52, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

I added neither Somaliland nor Puntland, but have been preventing their removal for the reasons stated above: first, poor editing; then, an attempt to bring an end to a series of undos & reversions thru the Talk page. I don't think there's a clear proposal on the table as to how we should handle this. I'm not clearer on a principle for how we list territories than I was before. However, if we solely wanted to give readers a clear idea of where Cushitic languages were spoken, we could simply say: 'From southern Egypt through the Horn of Africa as far south as Kenya.' or: 'Throughout the Horn of Africa, as well as in parts of Egypt, the Sudan, Tanzania, and Kenya.' As Cushitic languages are spoken in all Horn countries, there's no need to list the countries in the first place if all we want to do is give a sense of location. (Meanwhile, using 'Nile Valley' to characterise Egypt & the Sudan is somewhat misleading, as Beja is spoken along the Red Sea Coast, & nowhere near the Nile aside from minority outposts in Aswan & Daraw.) For comparison, note that Nilo-Saharan languages, Atlantic-Congo languages†, and Khoe–Kwadi languages don't list countries in the lead ¶s. An earlier version of this ¶ included a discussion about where Cushitic languages had official status, which made the inclusion of specific states much more relevant. In this regard, there's actually very good reason to include Somaliland†. I think we're at an intermediate point: The material on official status of languages got moved to a new section a couple years ago, but the names of the countries remained in the lead. Maybe it's time for a little more re-writing: We make this paragraph a more purely geographical description (not a catalogue of states), & expand Cushitic languages#Major and official languages as relevant. My pitch for this ¶ is to replace They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa (Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Somaliland) as well as the Nile Valley (Sudan and Egypt), and parts of the African Great Lakes region (Tanzania and Kenya). with: They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north and south in Egypt, the Sudan, Kenya, and Tanzania.

†I opted for Atlantic-Congo languages over Niger-Congo languages because the latter was just so many countries that I thought people might think I was comparing apples & oranges. The latter page also does not list the countries in which these languages are spoken in the lead ¶.

Yes, that's a good idea! In a section, there is more room for explicit details. "Major and official languages" could be renamed "Languages" to expand on the geographical distribution of the whole family. –Austronesier (talk) 08:19, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

I support this, too. Landroving Linguist (talk) 11:32, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with this too. Amirah talk 18:04, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Status of Beja

I'm a graduate student who works on Beja. I haven't published anything, and I have not incorporated my divergent views into this article or Beja language. The section on the classification of Beja strikes me as really unnecessarily large. Robert Hetzron argued in 1980 that Beja was not Cushitic. Hetzron was a legitimate, influential linguist, & his viewpoint matters, but I think that the identification of Beja as a Cushitic language is basically accepted by all living linguists working on Cushitic languages. Every other linguist mentioned in this section identifies/d Beja as a Cushitic language. This isn't a matter of active dispute. I think this section may have undue prominence from its length. I propose eliminating the second ¶ entirely until the final two sentences, which I'd rewrite as:

Didier Morin (2001) assigned Beja to Lowland Cushitic on the grounds that the language shared lexical and phonological features with the Afar and Saho idioms, and also because the languages were historically spoken in adjacent speech areas. However, among linguists specializing in the Cushitic languages, the standard classification of Beja as North Cushitic is accepted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pathawi (talk • contribs) 08:10, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Agree, this definitely needs to be trimmed. Much of the text leans heavily on Vanhove's overview in the Oxford Handbook of African Languages, bordering on WP:close paraphrasing; maybe you can build in a citation to that chapter for those interested in more detail. –Austronesier (talk) 09:34, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I also agree. But a lot hinges on that Güldemann quote in the first paragraph, where the rejection of Hetzron's hypothesis is summarized, and that reference is currently reported as broken. Landroving Linguist (talk) 11:25, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

BTW, all the best for your studies on Beja! Good to hear that someone is looking into that. Landroving Linguist (talk) 11:28, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I broke everything. I'll fix it. Pathawi (talk) 12:53, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I fixed it. Pathawi (talk) 13:07, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Singulative/plural: better example needed

In the current version of this article, in section 3.2.1 (Typological characteristics/Phonology/Nouns), we read:

Most nouns are by default unmarked for number, but can be explicitly marked for singular ("singulative") and plural number. E.g.in Bilin, dəmmu "cat(s)" is number-neutral, from which singular dəmmura "a single cat" and plural dəmmura "several cats" can be formed.

Unless I'm missing something, this example seems particularly ill-chosen, with the singulative and plural forms identical. Maybe it's a mistake, but even if not, can we get a more appropriate example? --Ekaterina Colclough (talk) 20:11, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

@Ekaterina Colclough: I have checked the source: it's a just typo (I have written the typology section, so my dumb)! Fixed now. –Austronesier (talk) 21:04, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Great. Thanks for fixing that. --Ekaterina Colclough (talk) 07:43, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Edit for Cushitic languages

That wasn't me who added that information that was @105.163.2.211 so I don't know why your mentioning me. Cookiemonster1618 (talk) 21:21, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

@Cookiemonster1618: I am worried that you have serious comprehension problems (not for the first time, see my talk page). I restored the last good version, which happens to be the version after your last edit. Upon reverting, the author of the restored version is automatically mentioned in the edit summary. –Austronesier (talk) 21:42, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

You mentioned my username when you reverted back the edit on the cushitic languages section and I don't have any comprehension issues.Cookiemonster1618 (talk) 22:04, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Tone

@Cookiemonster1618: I'd like to remove the Britannica reference on Cushitic languages being tonal. The Appleyard & Mouss sources describe Cushitic languages as having pitch accent, which can be meaningfully different from tone in some theoretical approaches. Under those approaches, it would be inaccurate to describe any Cushitic language as tonal. I think Britannica, as a tertiary source, doesn't strengthen what's already supported by two secondary sources (WP:RSPRIMARY), & the added term could be confusing. Are you okay with removing this? Pathawi (talk) 00:09, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

I already removed it. Cookiemonster1618 (talk) 00:46, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

@Pathawi Can you archieve it than? Cookiemonster1618 (talk) 13:32, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't follow. Achieve what? Pathawi (talk) 13:36, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Sorry: I misread that! I don't think it needs to be archived yet: It's the most recent conversation on the Talk page. We can just mark it done. In general, we don't blank Talk pages, & they usually get archived in temporal order. Pathawi (talk) 13:38, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Proto-Cushitic language

Just a heads-up for watchers of this page: there is a newly created Proto-Cushitic language. A challenging, but certainly interesting project, but it has been started in an extremely problematic fashion with almost zero information about the proto-language and unsourced claims about the Proto-Cushitic homeland based on an obvious mix up with the question of the homeland of the entire AA family. (Not to talk about apparent (IP-)socking issues). Austronesier (talk) 11:42, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Probably good to have for more development. I have been doing substantial literature review on the just slightly narrower Proto-East Cushitic in recent times (not particularly for Wikipedia purposes but helps for that too) and have been wondering if that too should be its own page or perhaps should be just discussed under that general rubric — given that it's not actually consensus if an East Cushitic distinct from Agaw and Southern even exists. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 12:36, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree that reconstructions of Proto-East Cushitic (and even other branches and subbranches) can well discussed in the general article, for the very reason that you mention. It'll be great to have substantial information about comparitive Cushitic linguistics in WP. –Austronesier (talk) 13:22, 20 July 2024 (UTC)