The Asa (Aasá) language, commonly rendered Aasax (also rendered as Aasá, Aasáx, Aramanik, Asak, Asax, Assa, Asá), is an extinct Afroasiatic language formerly spoken by the Asa people of Tanzania . The language is extinct ; ethnic Assa in northern Tanzania remember only a few words they overheard their elders use, and none ever used it themselves. Little is known of the language; what is recorded was probably Aasa lexical words used in a register of Maasai , similar to the mixed language Mbugu .
51-713: Asa is usually classified as Cushitic , most closely related to Kw'adza . However, it might have retained a non-Cushitic layer from an earlier language shift . The Aramanik (Laramanik) people once spoke Asa, but shifted to Nandi (as opposed to Maasai). Asa is known from three primary sources: two vocabulary lists from 1904 and 1928, and a collection by W. C. Winter from 1974. The following are some example words of Asa, together with probable cognates identified in Kw'adza and Iraqw : Some loanwords in Asa from other languages are known: This Afroasiatic languages -related article
102-466: A glottalic egressive airstream . In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated , voiced and tenuis consonants . Some languages have glottalized sonorants with creaky voice that pattern with ejectives phonologically, and other languages have ejectives that pattern with implosives , which has led to phonologists positing a phonological class of glottalic consonants , which includes ejectives. In producing an ejective,
153-403: A voiceless uvular stop . [pʼ] , on the other hand, is quite rare. That is the opposite pattern to what is found in the implosive consonants , in which the bilabial is common and the velar is rare. Ejective fricatives are rare for presumably the same reason: with the air escaping from the mouth while the pressure is being raised, like inflating a leaky bicycle tire, it is harder to distinguish
204-714: A language belonging to another (non-Northern East Sudanic) branch of the Nilo-Saharan family. Rilly also criticizes proposals (by Behrens and Bechaus-Gerst) of significant early Afro-Asiatic influence on Nobiin, and considers evidence of substratal influence on Nobiin from an earlier now extinct Eastern Sudanic language to be stronger. Julien Cooper (2017) states that in antiquity, Cushitic languages were spoken in Lower Nubia (the northernmost part of modern-day Sudan ). He also states that Eastern Sudanic -speaking populations from southern and west Nubia gradually replaced
255-506: A masculine/feminine gender distinction in third person singular. The most common conjugation type employs suffixes. Some languages also have a prefix conjugation: in Beja and the Saho–Afar languages , the prefix conjugation is still a productive part of the verb paradigm, whereas in most other languages, e.g. Somali , it is restricted to only a few verbs. It is generally assumed that historically,
306-599: A notable exception are the Agaw languages , which do not contrast vowel length, but have one or two additional central vowels . The consonant inventory of many Cushitic languages includes glottalic consonants , e.g. in Oromo , which has the ejectives /pʼ tʼ tʃʼ kʼ/ and the implosive /ᶑ/ . Less common are pharyngeal consonants /ħ ʕ/ , which appear e.g. in Somali or the Saho–Afar languages . Most Cushitic languages have
357-791: A reconstruction of Proto-Agaw, and Roland Kießling and Maarten Mous (2003) have jointly proposed a reconstruction of West Rift Southern Cushitic. No reconstruction has been published for Lowland East Cushitic, though Paul D. Black wrote his (unpublished) dissertation on the topic in 1974. Hans-Jürgen Sasse (1979) proposed a reconstruction of the consonants of Proto-East Cushitic. No comparative work has yet brought these branch reconstructions together. Sample basic vocabulary of Cushitic languages from Vossen & Dimmendaal (2020:318) (with PSC denoting Proto-Southern Cushitic): Comparison of numerals in individual Cushitic languages: Ejective consonants In phonetics , ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with
408-421: A series of allophonically ejective stops. Dahalo of Kenya , has ejectives, implosives, and click consonants . Non-contrastively, ejectives are found in many varieties of British English, usually replacing word-final fortis plosives in utterance-final or emphatic contexts. Almost all ejective consonants in the world's languages are stops or affricates , and all ejective consonants are obstruents . [kʼ]
459-522: A single sound. Often the constriction of the larynx causes it to rise in the vocal tract, but this is individual variation and not the initiator of the airflow. Such sounds generally remain voiced. Yeyi has a set of prenasalized ejectives like /ⁿtʼ, ᵑkʼ, ⁿtsʼ/. In the International Phonetic Alphabet , ejectives are indicated with a "modifier letter apostrophe" ⟨ ʼ ⟩ , as in this article. A reversed apostrophe
510-477: A system of restrictive tone also known as ‘pitch accent’ in which tonal contours overlaid on the stressed syllable play a prominent role in morphology and syntax. Nouns are inflected for case and number . All nouns are further grouped into two gender categories, masculine gender and feminine gender. In many languages, gender is overtly marked directly on the noun (e.g. in Awngi , where all female nouns carry
561-598: A transitive or intransitive sentence. Possession is usually expressed by genitive case marking of the possessor. South Cushitic —which has no case marking for subject and object—follows the opposite strategy: here, the possessed noun is marked for construct case , e.g. Iraqw afé-r mar'i "doors" (lit. "mouths of houses"), where afee "mouth" is marked for construct case. 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)"
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#1732791070088612-404: Is [kʼ] even if it is more difficult to produce than other ejectives like [tʼ] or [pʼ] because the auditory distinction between [kʼ] and [k] is greater than with other ejectives and voiceless consonants of the same place of articulation . In proportion to the frequency of uvular consonants , [qʼ] is even more common, as would be expected from the very small oral cavity used to pronounce
663-771: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Cushitic languages 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 Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As of 2012, the Cushitic languages with over one million speakers were Oromo , Somali , Beja , Afar , Hadiyya , Kambaata , and Sidama . The Cushitic languages with
714-567: Is commonly seen with r , l and nasals, but that is Americanist phonetic notation for a glottalized consonant and does not indicate an ejective.) Other ejective sonorants are not known to occur. When sonorants are transcribed with an apostrophe in the literature as if they were ejective, they actually involve a different airstream mechanism: they are glottalized consonants and vowels whose glottalization partially or fully interrupts an otherwise normal voiced pulmonic airstream, somewhat like English uh-uh (either vocalic or nasal) pronounced as
765-419: Is interpreted by many as having an ejective fricative [sʼ] , at least historically, but it has been also analyzed as now being a sociolinguistic variant (Takkele Taddese 1992). An ejective retroflex stop [ʈʼ] is rare. It has been reported from Yawelmani and other Yokuts languages , Tolowa , and Gwich'in . Because the complete closing of the glottis required to form an ejective makes voicing impossible,
816-465: Is made a primary branch, as also suggested by Kiessling and Mous (2003). Yaaku is not listed, being placed within Arboroid. Afar–Saho is removed from Lowland East Cushitic ; since they are the most 'lowland' of the Cushitic languages, Bender calls the remnant 'core' East Cushitic. These classifications have not been without contention. For example, it has been argued that Southern Cushitic belongs in
867-511: Is number-neutral, from which singular dəmmura "a single cat" and plural dəmmut "several cats" can be formed. Plural formation is very diverse, and employs ablaut (i.e. changes of root vowels or consonants), suffixes and reduplication . Verbs are inflected for person/number and tense/aspect. Many languages also have a special form of the verb in negative clauses. Most Cushitic languages distinguish seven person/number categories: first, second, third person, singular and plural number, with
918-602: Is sometimes used to represent light aspiration, as in Armenian linguistics ⟨ pʼ tʼ kʼ ⟩; this usage is obsolete in the IPA. In other transcription traditions (such as many romanisations of Russian , where it is transliterating the soft sign ), the apostrophe represents palatalization : ⟨ pʼ ⟩ = IPA ⟨ pʲ ⟩. In some Americanist traditions , an apostrophe indicates weak ejection and an exclamation mark strong ejection: ⟨ k̓ , k! ⟩. In
969-460: Is the most common ejective, and [qʼ] is common among languages with uvulars , [tʼ] less so, and [pʼ] is uncommon. Among affricates, [tsʼ], [tʃʼ], [tɬʼ] are all quite common, and [kxʼ] and [ʈʂʼ] are not unusual ( [kxʼ] is particularly common among the Khoisan languages , where it is the ejective equivalent of /k/ ). A few languages have ejective fricatives. In some dialects of Hausa ,
1020-691: The Amhara Region . Somali is the first of two official languages of Somalia and three official languages of Somaliland . It also serves as a language of instruction in Djibouti , and as the working language of the Somali Region in Ethiopia. Beja, Afar, Blin and Saho , the languages of the Cushitic branch of Afroasiatic that are spoken in Eritrea , are languages of instruction in
1071-624: The Medjay and Blemmyes ) spoke Cushitic languages with the latter being related to the modern Beja language . The linguistic affinity of the ancient A-Group culture of northern Nubia—the predecessor of the C-Group culture—is unknown, but Rilly (2019) suggests that it is unlikely to have spoken a language of the Northern East Sudanic branch of Nilo-Saharan, and may have spoken a Cushitic language, another Afro-Asiatic language, or
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#17327910700881122-603: The Medjay and the Blemmyes of northern Nubia are believed to have spoken Cushitic languages related to the modern Beja language . Less certain are hypotheses which propose that Cushitic languages were spoken by the people of the C-Group culture in northern Nubia, or the people of the Kerma culture in southern Nubia. Most Cushitic languages have a simple five-vowel system with phonemic length ( /a a: e e: i i: o o: u u:/ );
1173-468: The Southern Nilotic languages have undergone extensive contact with a "missing" branch of East Cushitic that Heine (1979) refers to as Baz . Christopher Ehret proposed a reconstruction of Proto-Cushitic in 1987, but did not base this on individual branch reconstructions. Grover Hudson (1989) has done some preliminary work on Highland East Cushitic, David Appleyard (2006) has proposed
1224-1065: The stylohyoid muscle and digastric muscle contract, causing the hyoid bone and the connected glottis to raise, and the forward articulation (at the velum in the case of [kʼ] ) is held, raising air pressure greatly in the mouth so when the oral articulators separate, there is a dramatic burst of air. The Adam's apple may be seen moving when the sound is pronounced. In the languages in which they are more obvious, ejectives are often described as sounding like “spat” consonants, but ejectives are often quite weak. In some contexts and in some languages, they are easy to mistake for tenuis or even voiced stops. These weakly ejective articulations are sometimes called intermediates in older American linguistic literature and are notated with different phonetic symbols: ⟨ C! ⟩ = strongly ejective, ⟨ Cʼ ⟩ = weakly ejective. Strong and weak ejectives have not been found to be contrastive in any natural language. In strict, technical terms, ejectives are glottalic egressive consonants. The most common ejective
1275-550: The Cushitic branch. Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst (2000) proposed that the peoples of the Kerma culture – which inhabited the Nile Valley in present-day Sudan immediately before the arrival of the first Nubian speakers – spoke Cushitic languages. She argues that the Nilo-Saharan Nobiin language today contains a number of key pastoralism related loanwords that are of proto-Highland East Cushitic origin, including
1326-517: The Cushitic component of Mbugu (Ma'a). There is a wide range of opinions as to how the languages are interrelated. The positions of the Dullay languages and of Yaaku are uncertain. They have traditionally been assigned to an East Cushitic subbranch along with Highland (Sidamic) and Lowland East Cushitic. However, Hayward thinks that East Cushitic may not be a valid node and that its constituents should be considered separately when attempting to work out
1377-536: The Eastern branch, with its divergence explained by contact with Hadza- and Sandawe -like languages. Hetzron (1980) and Fleming (post-1981) exclude Beja altogether, though this is rejected by other linguists. Some of the classifications that have been proposed over the years are summarized here: For debate on the placement of the Cushitic branch within Afroasiatic, see Afroasiatic languages . Beja constitutes
1428-717: The Eritrean elementary school curriculum. The constitution of Eritrea also recognizes the equality of all natively spoken languages. Additionally, Afar is a language of instruction in Djibouti, as well as the working language of the Afar Region in Ethiopia. Christopher Ehret argues for a unified Proto-Cushitic language in the Red Sea Hills as far back as the Early Holocene. Based on onomastic evidence,
1479-509: The IPA, the distinction might be written ⟨ kʼ, kʼʼ ⟩, but it seems that no language distinguishes degrees of ejection. Transcriptions of the Caucasian languages often utilize combining dots above or below a letter to indicate an ejective. In alphabets using the Latin script, an IPA-like apostrophe for ejective consonants is common. However, there are other conventions. In Hausa ,
1530-561: The Sidamic proper and the Lowland Cushitic languages as East Cushitic, the remainder as West Cushitic or ta/ne Cushitic. The Aroid languages were not considered Cushitic by either scholar (thought by Cerulli to be instead Nilotic ); they were added to West Cushitic by Joseph Greenberg in 1963. Further work in the 1960s soon led to the putative West Cushitic being seen as typologically divergent and renamed as "Omotic". Today
1581-973: The South African Plateau (see Geography of Africa ). In the Americas, they are extremely common in the North American Cordillera . They also frequently occur throughout the Andes and Maya Mountains . Elsewhere, they are rare. Language families that distinguish ejective consonants include: According to the glottalic theory , the Proto-Indo-European language had a series of ejectives (or, in some versions, implosives ), but no extant Indo-European language has retained them. Ejectives are found today in Ossetian and some Armenian dialects only because of influence of
Asa language - Misplaced Pages Continue
1632-613: The South Cushitic languages (Rift languages) are a part of Lowland East Cushitic, the only one of the six groups with much internal diversity. Cushitic was formerly seen as also including most or all of the Omotic languages . An early view by Enrico Cerulli proposed a "Sidama" subgroup comprising most of the Omotic languages and the Sidamic group of Highland East Cushitic. Mario Martino Moreno in 1940 divided Cerulli's Sidama, uniting
1683-611: The allophonic voicing of ejective phonemes causes them to lose their glottalization; this occurs in Blin (modal voice) and Kabardian (creaky voice). A similar historical sound change also occurred in Veinakh and Lezgic in the Caucasus, and it has been postulated by the glottalic theory for Indo-European. Some Khoisan languages have voiced ejective stops and voiced ejective clicks ; however, they actually contain mixed voicing , and
1734-531: The earlier Cushitic-speaking populations of this region. In Handbook of Ancient Nubia, Claude Rilly (2019) states that Cushitic languages once dominated Lower Nubia along with the Ancient Egyptian language. He mentions historical records of the Blemmyes , a Cushitic-speaking tribe which controlled Lower Nubia and some cities in Upper Egypt . He mentions the linguistic relationship between
1785-413: The ejective release is voiceless. Ejective trill s aren't attested in any language, even allophonically. An ejective [rʼ] would necessarily be voiceless, but the vibration of the trill, combined with a lack of the intense voiceless airflow of [r̥] , gives an impression like that of voicing. Similarly, ejective nasals such as [mʼ, nʼ, ŋʼ] (also necessarily voiceless) are possible. (An apostrophe
1836-530: The greatest number of total speakers are Oromo (37 million), Somali (22 million), Beja (3.2 million), Sidamo (3 million), and Afar (2 million). Oromo serves as one of the official working languages of Ethiopia and is also the working language of several of the states within the Ethiopian federal system including Oromia , Harari and Dire Dawa regional states and of the Oromia Zone in
1887-499: 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. There are also a few languages of uncertain classification, including Yaaku , Dahalo , Aasax , Kw'adza , Boon , Ongota and
1938-491: The hooked letter ƙ is used for /kʼ/ . In Zulu and Xhosa , whose ejection is variable between speakers, plain consonant letters are used: p t k ts tsh kr for /pʼ tʼ kʼ tsʼ tʃʼ kxʼ/ . In some conventions for Haida and Hadza , double letters are used: tt kk qq ttl tts for /tʼ kʼ qʼ tɬʼ tsʼ/ (Haida) and zz jj dl gg for /tsʼ tʃʼ c𝼆ʼ kxʼ/ (Hadza). A pattern can be observed wherein ejectives correlate geographically with mountainous regions. Everett (2013) argues that
1989-422: The inclusion of Omotic as a part of Cushitic has been abandoned. Omotic is most often seen as an independent branch of Afroasiatic, primarily due to the work of Harold C. Fleming (1974) and Lionel Bender (1975); some linguists like Paul Newman (1980) challenge Omotic's classification within the Afroasiatic family itself. A number of extinct populations have been proposed to have spoken Afroasiatic languages of
2040-454: The internal relationships of Cushitic. Bender (2020) suggests Yaaku to be a divergent member of the Arboroid group. The Afroasiatic identity of Ongota has also been broadly questioned, as is its position within Afroasiatic among those who accept it, because of the "mixed" appearance of the language and a paucity of research and data. Harold C. Fleming (2006) proposes that Ongota is a separate branch of Afroasiatic. Bonny Sands (2009) thinks
2091-541: The last type. Upper Necaxa Totonac is unusual and perhaps unique in that it has ejective fricatives (alveolar, lateral, and postalveolar [sʼ], [ʃʼ], [ɬʼ] ) but lacks any ejective stop or affricate (Beck 2006). Other languages with ejective fricatives are Yuchi , which some sources analyze as having [ɸʼ], [sʼ], [ʃʼ], and [ɬʼ] (but not the analysis of the Misplaced Pages article), Keres dialects , with [sʼ], [ʂʼ] and [ɕʼ] , and Lakota , with [sʼ], [ʃʼ], and [xʼ] . Amharic
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2142-791: The modern Beja language and the ancient Blemmyan language, and that the Blemmyes can be regarded as a particular tribe of the Medjay. Additionally, historiolinguistics indicate that the makers of the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic (Stone Bowl Culture) in the Great Lakes area likely spoke South Cushitic languages. Christopher Ehret (1998) proposed on the basis of loanwords that South Cushitic languages (called "Tale" and "Bisha" by Ehret) were spoken in an area closer to Lake Victoria than are found today. Also, historically,
2193-471: The most convincing proposal is by Savà and Tosco (2003), namely that Ongota is an East Cushitic language with a Nilo-Saharan substratum . In other words, it would appear that the Ongota people once spoke a Nilo-Saharan language but then shifted to speaking a Cushitic language while retaining some characteristics of their earlier Nilo-Saharan language. Hetzron (1980) and Ehret (1995) have suggested that
2244-595: The nearby Northeast Caucasian and/or Kartvelian language families. It had once been predicted that ejectives and implosives would not be found in the same language but both have been found phonemically at several points of articulation in Nilo-Saharan languages ( Gumuz , Me'en , and T'wampa ), Mayan language ( Yucatec ), Salishan ( Lushootseed ), and the Oto-Manguean Mazahua . Nguni languages , such as Zulu have an implosive b alongside
2295-707: The only member of the Northern Cushitic subgroup. As such, Beja contains a number of linguistic innovations that are unique to it, as is also the situation with the other subgroups of Cushitic (e.g. idiosyncratic features in Agaw or Central Cushitic). Hetzron (1980) argues that Beja therefore may comprise an independent branch of the Afroasiatic family. However, this suggestion has been rejected by most other scholars. The characteristics of Beja that differ from those of other Cushitic languages are instead generally acknowledged as normal branch variation. Didier Morin (2001) assigned Beja to Lowland East Cushitic on
2346-546: The resulting sound as salient as a [kʼ] . Ejectives occur in about 20% of the world's languages. Ejectives that phonemically contrast with pulmonic consonants occur in about 15% of languages around the world. The occurrence of ejectives often correlates to languages in mountainous regions such as the Caucasus which forms an island of ejective languages. They are also found frequently in the East African Rift and
2397-417: The standard affricate [tsʼ] is a fricative [sʼ] ; Ubykh (Northwest Caucasian, now extinct) had an ejective lateral fricative [ɬʼ] ; and the related Kabardian also has ejective labiodental and alveolopalatal fricatives, [fʼ], [ʃʼ], and [ɬʼ] . Tlingit is an extreme case, with ejective alveolar, lateral, velar, and uvular fricatives, [sʼ], [ɬʼ], [xʼ], [xʷʼ], [χʼ], [χʷʼ] ; it may be the only language with
2448-467: The suffix -a ). The case system of many Cushitic languages is characterized by marked nominative alignment, which is typologically quite rare and predominantly found in languages of Africa. In marked nominative languages, the noun appears in unmarked "absolutive" case when cited in isolation, or when used as predicative noun and as object of a transitive verb; on the other hand, it is explicitly marked for nominative case when it functions as subject in
2499-473: The suffix conjugation developed from the older prefix conjugation, by combining the verb stem with a suffixed auxiliary verb. The following table gives an example for the suffix and prefix conjugations in affirmative present tense in Somali. Basic word order is verb final, the most common order being subject–object–verb (SOV). The subject or object can also follow the verb to indicate focus . The phylum
2550-515: The terms for sheep/goatskin, hen/cock, livestock enclosure, butter and milk. However, more recent linguistic research indicates that the people of the Kerma culture (who were based in southern Nubia ) instead spoke Nilo-Saharan languages of the Eastern Sudanic branch, and that the peoples of the C-Group culture to their north (in northern Nubia ) and other groups in northern Nubia (such as
2601-417: Was first designated as Cushitic in 1858. The Omotic languages , once included in Cushitic, have almost universally been removed. The most influential recent classification, Tosco (2003), has informed later approaches. It and two more recent classifications are as follows: Tosco (2000, East Cushitic revised 2020) Geographic labels are given for comparison; Bender's labels are added in parentheses. Dahalo
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