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Glite Dictionary
Cushitic

Cushitic

1 9.9
A group of languages spoken in Ethiopia, Somalia and northwestern Kenya
  • noun
  • /ˈkʊʃɪtɪk/
  • Specialized
: cushítico
  • Afar is a Lowland East Cushitic language spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti.

Examples

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

  • Before the 1700s, the dry foothills and plains surrounding South Pare were populated by Cushitic-speaking peoples and small Bantu-speaking groups.

    Academic text (1998)

  • If the language belonged to a family that existed in East Africa prior to the arrival of the Bantu there, such as Khoisan or Cushitic, a hypothesis of pre-Indonesian arrival could be supported.

    Academic text (1991)

  • Somali is the best documented of the Cushitic languages, with academic studies beginning before 1900.

Surface Forms

Cushitic singular
Cushitics plural

Morphology

Cushitic = Cushite (semi-transparent) = Cushite + itic

Formed regularly with the suffix '-itic' from the ethnonym 'Cushite', but the base is a rare/proper ethnonym that many learners will not know.

Etymology

Cushitic comes from Cush, an old name for parts of northeast Africa, plus the ending -itic, like in Semitic, which is used to name a language group. So Cushitic means 'related to Cush' and is the name for the family of languages spoken in the Horn of Africa, for example in Ethiopia and Somalia.