Lingustics in the horn of africa

[Midas]

Don't waste your time , he just writes long paragraphs of nonsense to argue with you and bend facts to fit his fixed belief.

Herbert Lewis even pointed out that the Oromo language clusters with Konso, Gedeo, Gato, Gidole, Gawwata , all of which are found in southern Ethiopia, the same area where the Oromo themselves say they originated, including the Warday, who trace their origin to the Borana region.
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Their late expansion into the Horn during the early modern period is obvious for two reasons, even if we put aside the historical writings:


1) They don’t show the kind of dialectal differentiation that Somali has, which means they haven’t been separated long. The Somali language has split into many regional dialects ,that only happens when people have been spread out over a large area for a long time.

As Lewis said:
'Galla , it is clear , cannot have begun seperating very long ago , since their ''language is so essentially constant that the women and children of Gurri tribe who inhabit El Wak oaisis and the surrounding districts ... talk the same dialect as those of the Walega''
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Same point made by the linguist Sasse:

''Further research has shown that at least four linguistic stages that the Somalis have gone through are missing from the Oromo language''
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2) A large number of Oromos were pagan until the 19th century , even those near Harar and Bale were still pagan until Somalis converted them. The Orma were also pagan. How could they have been indigenous or previously present to those areas when they hadn't even adopted Islam or Christianity, unlike the populations around them? So this shows they were a recent imposition.

That’s why so many colonial authors wrongly thought they were somehow the “original” population , their paganism made them stand out, not their actual history in the region.

I didnt want to add this to the schizophrenia thread so I'm making a new one. But I think the point you raise is a very interesting one. None of the cushitic and semetic lanaguges spoken in the horn of africa currently have this level of dialect variation we find in somalia. Amahric is apparently almost uniform which leads me to believe that its also a pretty recent language.

This kind of also shows how unqiue Somali is in the cushitic language family. There are like 40 cushitic language most of the are extremely tiny and spoken by a few thosuand people afar,oromo,somali,sideman, and beja are the only exceptions. But outside somali all of those such variation like we do. It occurred to me that the only cushitic language we have a chance of finding inscriptions or anicent texts of is likley somali. Since these other cushitic lanaguges are more recent. Especially since most of them weren't pastoralists but settled farmers and the languages likely underwent rapid chance and were affected by other nearby language families.