The Assa are an ethnic group based on the Maasai Steppe in

Manyara Region Manyara Region (''Mkoa wa Manyara'' in Swahili) is one of Tanzania's 31 administrative regions. The regional capital is the town of Babati. According to the 2012 national census, the region had a population of 1,425,131, which was lower than th ...

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands ...

. In 1999, they were estimated to number around 300 individuals, after the eastern Assa were assimilated into the Maasai.Ethnologue report for language code: aas
/ref> The Assa once spoke the Aasáx language, ambiguously called "

Dorobo Dorobo (or ''Ndorobo'', ''Wadorobo'', ''dorobo'', ''Torobo'') is a derogatory umbrella term for several unrelated hunter-gatherer groups of Kenya and Tanzania. They comprised client groups to the Maasai and did not practice cattle pastoralism. Et ...

", which probably belonged to the

Afro-Asiatic The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic s ...

language family,Linguist List - Description of Aasáx
/ref>

References

Ethnic groups in Tanzania Indigenous peoples of East Africa Cushitic-speaking peoples {{Tanzania-ethno-group-stub

See also

References