Proto-Cushitic is the reconstructed

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unatte ...

common ancestor of the Cushitic language family. Its words and roots are not directly attested in any written works, but have been reconstructed through the ''

comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards ...

'', which finds regular similarities between languages not explained by coincidence or word-borrowing, and extrapolates ancient forms from these similarities. There is no consensus regarding the exact location of the Proto-Cushitic

homeland A homeland is a place where a national or ethnic identity has formed. The definition can also mean simply one's country of birth. When used as a proper noun, the Homeland, as well as its equivalents in other languages, often has ethnic natio ...

;

Christopher Ehret Christopher Ehret (27 July 1941 – 25 March 2025), was an American scholar of African history and African historical linguistics who was particularly known for his efforts to correlate linguistic taxonomy and reconstruction with the archeologic ...

hypothesizes that it may have originated in the

Red Sea Hills Itbāy () or ʿAtbāy is a region of southeastern Egypt and northeastern Sudan. It is characterized by a chain of mountains, the Red Sea Hills, running north–south and parallel with the Red Sea. The hills separate the narrow coastal plain from ...

. The Cushitic languages are a branch of the broader Afroasiatic macro-family.

Historical settings

Christopher Ehret argues for a unified Proto-Cushitic language in the Red Sea Hills as far back as the Early Holocene. Based on

onomastic Onomastics (or onomatology in older texts) is the study of proper names, including their etymology, history, and use. An ''alethonym'' ('true name') or an ''orthonym'' ('real name') is the proper name of the object in question, the object of onom ...

evidence, the

Medjay Medjay (also ''Medjai'', ''Mazoi'', ''Madjai'', ''Mejay'', Egyptian ''mḏꜣ.j'', a Arabic nouns and adjectives#Nisba, nisba of ''mḏꜣ'') was a demonym used in various ways throughout History of ancient Egypt, ancient Egyptian history to refe ...

and the

Blemmyes The Blemmyes ( or Βλέμυες, ''Blémues'' , Latin: ''Blemmyae'') were an Eastern Desert people who appeared in written sources from the 7th century BC until the 8th century AD. By the late 4th century, they had occupied Lower Nubia and esta ...

of northern Nubia are believed to have spoken Cushitic languages related to the modern

Beja language Beja ( or ) is an Afroasiatic language of the Cushitic branch spoken on the western coast of the Red Sea by the Beja people. Its speakers inhabit parts of Egypt, Sudan and Eritrea. In 2022 there were 2,550,000 Beja speakers in Sudan, and 121,00 ...

. Less certain are hypotheses which propose that Cushitic languages were spoken by the people of the

C-Group culture The C-Group culture is an archaeological culture found in Lower Nubia, which dates from 2400 BCE to 1550 BCE. It was named by George A. Reisner. With no central site and no written evidence about what these people called themselves, Reisner ...

in northern Nubia, or the people of the

Kerma culture The Kingdom of Kerma or the Kerma culture was an early civilization centered in Kerma, Sudan. It flourished from around 2500 BC to 1500 BC in ancient Nubia. The Kerma culture was based in the southern part of Nubia, or "Upper Nubia" (in parts of ...

in southern Nubia.

Phonology

A preliminary phonological reconstruction of Proto-Cushitic was proposed by Ehret (1987).

Consonants

Ehret notes that in particular the affricates *ts, *dz, and the velar nasals *ŋ, *ŋʷ rely on fairly little evidence, and that *p, *pʼ are difficult to distinguish from other consonants in the comparative material; these are shown on a darker background above. Most of the remaining consonants have exact equivalents in reconstructed Proto-East Cushitic, with the exception of those marked here with following question mark. A system given by Appleyard as "widely accepted" excludes these questioned segments, but includes , and a contrast of and . Bender tentatively supports Ehret's , , and labialized velars, but in his survey does not find unambiguous etymologies for these, nor for lateral, velar and pharyngeal fricatives or any ejectives. The following basic correspondences of

obstruent An obstruent ( ) is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well ...

consonants follow Sasse (1979), with Beja and Agaw correspondences from Ehret (1987) and Dahalo correspondences from Tosco (2000): # , , , are preserved in Ts'amakko. # is preserved in northern Saho. Within Highland East Cushitic, appears in Alaba and Kambaata, in other languages. # develops in Konso to before the vowels , ; in the closely related Gidole always to . In Dullay, develops to in Harso, in Gawwada. # Word-initially, usually does not contrast with

zero 0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. Adding (or subtracting) 0 to any number leaves that number unchanged; in mathematical terminology, 0 is the additive identity of the integers, rational numbers, real numbers, and compl ...

. The

sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels a ...

s , , , , , normally continue unchanged in all Cushitic languages, with the exception of , > , in Dahalo and a merger of and in the Highland East Cushitic language Hadiyya. Major conditional sound laws involve

palatalization Palatalization may refer to: *Palatalization (phonetics), the phonetic feature of palatal secondary articulation *Palatalization (sound change) Palatalization ( ) is a historical-linguistic sound change that results in a palatalized articulati ...

, especially in all Somaloid languages as well as Oromo, and several simplifications of

consonant cluster In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...

Glottalized consonants

Ejective In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some l ...

and

implosive Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants (and possibly also some affricates) with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in additi ...

consonants show multifarious correspondences between the Cushitic languages, particularly in Oromo, the Konsoid languages, the Dullay languages and the

Highland East Cushitic Highland East Cushitic or Burji-Sidamo is a branch of the Afroasiatic language family spoken in south-central Ethiopia. They are often grouped with Lowland East Cushitic, Dullay, and Yaaku as East Cushitic. The most popular language is Sida ...

languages, and it is likely that more segments than must be reconstructed, which have however fallen together as or in most Lowland East Cushitic languages. The following East Cushitic correspondences follows Sasse (1979): --> Appleyard does not posit any glottalized consonants for Proto-Agaw, and reconstructs

uvular Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not prov ...

*q, *qʷ for sound correspondences of , in Bilin, respectively, with e.g. , or , in the rest of the subfamily. Fallon (2009) argues that the Bilin value is preserved from Proto-Cushitic and that *kʼ, *kʼʷ should be reconstructed still for Proto-Agaw. The glottalized bilabials , are not common in Cushitic. In Oromo, seems to arise from plus a laryngeal consonant, or , e.g. Oromo 'enemy' < PEC *neʕb-, akin to Saho-Afar 'to hate'; Oromo 'clay', Rendille /sub/ 'mud' < PEC *subʔ-. Ehret finds in Dahalo as grounds to reconstruct for Proto-South Cushitic, and finding moreover in Yaaku, proposes that it occurred as a rare phoneme already in Proto-Cushitic. Most other languages show .

Additional consonants

Sasse tentatively reconstructs as Proto-East Cushitic based on Dullay and Yaaku, but finds correspondences elsewhere to be unclear. Ehret identifies these further with , occurring in South Cushitic and Agaw, and finds in Beja reflexes as the stops , . For corresponding voiced , in Agaw, which occur only word-medially, he proposes correspondences as Beja , ; most East Cushitic , but implosive in Yaaku and Dullay; the voiceless fricatives , in South Cushitic. A remaining word-initial correspondence of , in Beja and Agaw but again , in South Cushitic is then assigned to represent Proto-Cushitic , word-initially. The following are only proposed in detail by Ehret: * *p is based on

South Cushitic The South Cushitic or Rift languages of Tanzania are a branch of the Cushitic languages. The most numerous is Iraqw, with one million speakers. Scholars believe that these languages were spoken by Southern Cushitic agro-pastoralists from Ethiopi ...

. Ehret proposes it has elsewhere, with a possible exception of Awngi, fallen together with *b. * *ts (in nine examples) differs from *s in being preserved in Kw'adza and Dahalo, and in yielding rather than in Oromo. * (four examples) yields Agaw or , East Cushitic , South Cushitic . One example suggests in Beja. * (ten examples), (two examples) are again based on South Cushitic, and they merge with in most languages, but might be reflected as in Oromo, Arbore and Yaaku in a few cases. The velar nasal is reconstructed also for Agaw, but Ehret finds it mostly unrelated and seems to arise there mainly from Proto-Cushitic .

Vowels

Most Cushitic languages agree on a simple vowel system of , , , , as well as

vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual length (phonetics), duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels. On one hand, many ...

. This system is reconstructed as already Proto-Cushitic by Ehret. Bender does not find the mid vowels *e, *ee, *o, *oo to be supported by clear etymologies outside of East Cushitic. Further instances of long vowels arise in many languages through the vocalization of the laryngeal consonants *ħ, *ʕ, *h, *ʔ and monophthongization of the combinations *ay, *ey, *aw. A rather different vowel system appears in the

Agaw languages The Agaw or Central Cushitic languages are Afro-Asiatic languages spoken by several groups in Ethiopia and, in one case, Eritrea. They form the main substratum influence on Amharic and other Ethiopian Semitic languages. Classification The Cen ...

, which is identical to the neighboring

Ethiopian Semitic languages Ethio-Semitic (also Ethiopian Semitic, Ethiosemitic, Ethiopic or Abyssinian) is a family of languages spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan. They form the western branch of the South Semitic languages, itself a sub-branch of Semitic languages, ...

. Ehret proposes the following development: At least the distinction between *i and *u often remains in the

appearance Appearance may refer to: * Visual appearance, the way in which objects reflect and transmit light * Human physical appearance, what someone looks like * ''Appearances'' (film), a 1921 film directed by Donald Crisp * Appearance (philosophy), or ...

labialization Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels invol ...

on adjacent consonants.

Grammar

Personal pronouns

A personal pronoun system with six

grammatical person In linguistics, grammatical person is the grammatical distinction between deictic references to participant(s) in an event; typically, the distinction is between the speaker ( first person), the addressee ( second person), and others ( third p ...

s can be reconstructed, with distinct masculine and feminine forms for at least the third person singular, as well as two distinct forms: an "independent" form, normally used in the nominative case, as well as a "dependent" form, often used as an

oblique Oblique may refer to: * an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / ) *Oblique angle, in geometry * Oblique triangle, in geometry * Oblique lattice, in geometry * Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the ...

stem e.g. for the accusative case. This distinction appears to be inherited already from Proto-Afro-Asiatic. An exclusive "we" pronoun has developed in a number of East Cushitic languages, but cannot be reconstructed even for their common ancestor.

Comparative vocabulary and reconstructed roots

See Proto-Cushitic reconstructions (Appendix in Wiktionary).

Notes

References

Literature

* * * * * {{cite journal, first=Mauro, last=Tosco, title=Cushitic Overview, year=2000, journal=Journal of Ethiopian Studies, volume=33, issue=2, pages=87–121, jstor=41966109 , url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41966109 Proto-languages Languages of Africa Cushitic languages Afroasiatic languages