South Cushitic languages

South Cushitic
Rift, Greater Rift
Geographic
distribution
Tanzania
Linguistic classificationAfro-Asiatic
Subdivisions
Language codes
Glottologsout3054

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 Ethiopia, who began migrating southward into the Great Rift Valley in the third millennium BC.[1]

  1. ^ Derek Nurse, Thomas T. Spear (1985). The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 800-1500. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 34. ISBN 081221207X.