The Omotic languages are a group of languages spoken in southwestern

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

, in the Omo River region. The Ge'ez script is used to write some of the Omotic languages, the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...

for some others. They are fairly

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative l ...

and have complex tonal systems (for example, the

Bench language Bench (''Bencnon'', Shenon or Mernon, formerly called Gimira Rapold 2006) is a Northern Omotic language of the "Gimojan" subgroup, spoken by about 174,000 people (in 1998) in the Bench Maji Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People ...

). The languages have around 6.2 million speakers. The group is generally classified as belonging to the

Afroasiatic language family 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 su ...

, but this is disputed by some. Four separate "Omotic" groups are accepted by '' Glottolog'' 4.0 and Güldemann (2018): Ta-Ne-Omotic, Dizoid (Maji),

Mao Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC ...

, and Aroid ("South Omotic").

Languages

The

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north ...

and South Omotic branches ("Nomotic" and "Somotic") are universally recognized, with some dispute as to the composition of North Omotic. The primary debate is over the placement of the Mao languages. Bender (2000) classifies Omotic languages as follows: * South Omotic / Aroid ( Hamer-Banna, Aari, Dime,

Karo Karo may refer to: Ethnic groups * Karo people (East Africa), a group of tribes in East Africa * Karo people (Ethiopia), an ethnic group from Ethiopia * Karo people (Indonesia), the indigenous people of the Karo Plateau in North Sumatra Languag ...

) *

North Omotic The North Omotic (Nomotic) or Ta-Ne Omotic languages, belong to the Omotic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family and are spoken in Ethiopia. Dizoid is left out in later classifications, but included in earlier ones. A relatively comprehensive com ...

/ Non-Aroid **

*** Bambassi ***West Mao ( Hozo, Seze, Ganza) ** Dizoid ( Dizi, Sheko, Nayi) ** Gonga–Gimojan *** Gonga/Kefoid ( Boro, Anfillo, Kafa, Shekkacho) *** Gimojan ****'' Yemsa'' **** Ometo–Gimira *****'' Bench'' *****'' Chara'' ***** Ometo languages Apart from terminology, this differs from Fleming (1976) in including the Mao languages, whose affiliation had originally been controversial, and in abolishing the "Gimojan" group. There are also differences in the subclassification of Ometo, which is not covered here. Linguistic Diagram- Cushitic and Omotic

Hayward (2003)

Hayward (2003) separates out the Mao languages as a third branch of Omotic and breaks up Ometo–Gimira: * South Omotic *

** Dizoid **

Ta–Ne languages The North Omotic (Nomotic) or Ta-Ne Omotic languages, belong to the Omotic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family and are spoken in Ethiopia. Dizoid is left out in later classifications, but included in earlier ones. A relatively comprehensive comp ...

*** Gonga *** Gimojan ****'' Yemsa'' ****'' Bench'' **** Ometo–Chara

Blench (2006)

Blench (2006) gives a more agnostic classification: * South Omotic *

** Dizoid ** Gonga (Kefoid) **'' Yem'' ** Gimira ** Ometo (? Chara)

Bosha Bosha may refer to: * The Kingdom of Garo * Bosha (Roma) The Lom people or tr, Lomlar, also known in tr, Poşa as (Bosha or Posha) by non-Loms ( hy, Բոշա, ka, ბოშა, tr; russian: Боша) or Romani (russian: армянские � ...

† is unclassified; ''Ethnologue'' lists it as a dialect of Kafa but notes it may be a distinct language.

Classification

Omotic is generally considered the most divergent branch of the

Afroasiatic languages 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 ...

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

Cushitic The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As o ...

. 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

remaining part of Cushitic. Blench (2006) notes that Omotic shares honey-related vocabulary with the rest of Afroasiatic but not cattle-related vocabulary, suggesting that the split occurred before the advent of

pastoralism Pastoralism is a form of animal husbandry where domesticated animals (known as "livestock") are released onto large vegetated outdoor lands ( pastures) for grazing, historically by nomadic people who moved around with their herds. The anim ...

. A few scholars have raised doubts that the Omotic languages are part of the Afroasiatic language family at all, and Theil (2006) proposes that Omotic be treated as an independent family.Rolf Theil (2006
''Is Omotic Afro-Asiatic?
' pp 1–2: "I claim to show that no convincing arguments have been presented or the inclusion of Omotic (OM) in Afro-Asiatic (AA) and that OM should be regarded as an independent language family. No closer genetic relations have been demonstrated between OM and AA than between OM and any other language family." However, the general consensus, based primarily on morphological evidence, is that membership in Afroasiatic is well established.

''Glottolog''

Hammarström, et al. in '' Glottolog'' does not consider Omotic to be a unified group, and also does not consider any of the "Omotic" groups to be part of the Afroasiatic phylum. ''Glottolog'' accepts the following as independent language families. * Ta-Ne-Omotic * Dizoid (Maji) *

* Aroid (Ari-Banna; "South Omotic") These four families are also accepted by Güldemann (2018), who similarly doubts the validity of Omotic as a unified group.

Reconstruction

Bender (1987: 33–35)Bender, Lionel M. 1987. "First Steps Toward proto-Omotic." ''Current Approaches to African Linguistics'' 3 (1987): 21–36. reconstructs the following proto-forms for Proto-Omotic and Proto-North Omotic, the latter which is considered to have descended from Proto-Omotic.

Comparative vocabulary

Sample basic vocabulary of 40 Omotic languages from Blažek (2008):Blažek, Václav. 2008. A lexicostatistical comparison of Omotic languages. In Bengtson (ed.), 57–148.

Notes

Sources cited

*Bender, M. Lionel. 2000. ''Comparative Morphology of the Omotic Languages''. Munich: LINCOM. *Fleming, Harold. 1976. Omotic overview. In ''The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia'', ed. by M. Lionel Bender, pp. 299–323. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University. *Newman, Paul. 1980. ''The classification of Chadic within Afroasiatic''. Universitaire Pers Leiden.

General Omotic bibliography

* Bender, M. L. 1975. ''Omotic: a new Afroasiatic language family''. (University Museum Series, 3.) Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University. *Blench, Roger. 2006. ''Archaeology, Language, and the African Past.'' AltaMira Press *Hayward, Richard J., ed. 1990. ''Omotic Language Studies''. London: School of Oriental and African Studies. *Hayward, Richard J. 2003. Omotic: the "empty quarter" of Afroasiatic linguistics. In ''Research in Afroasiatic Grammar II: selected papers from the fifth conference on Afroasiatic languages, Paris 2000'', ed. by Jacqueline Lecarme, pp. 241–261. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. *Lamberti, Marcello. 1991. Cushitic and its classification. ''Anthropos'' 86(4/6):552-561. *Zaborski, Andrzej. 1986. Can Omotic be reclassified as West Cushitic? In Gideon Goldenberg, ed., ''Ethiopian Studies: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference'' pp. 525–530. Rotterdam: Balkema. *

External links

Is Omotic Afro-Asiatic?
by Rolf Theil {{DEFAULTSORT:Omotic Language Agglutinative languages Afroasiatic languages Languages of Ethiopia Proposed language families