Key facts
- Geographic distribution
- Ethiopia , Sudan
- Native speakers
- 7.9 million
- Linguistic classification
- Afro-Asiatic Omotic
- Proto language
- Proto-Omotic
- Subdivisions
- Damotic Dizoid Mao Aroid
- Iso 639 5
- omv
- Glottolog
- None
via Wikipedia infobox
~12 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Omotic languages are a traditionally recognized but disputed grouping of languages spoken mainly in southwestern Ethiopia, around the Omo River region, and in parts of southeastern Sudan (Blue Nile State). This classification conventionally includes the Damotic (North Omotic), Dizoid (Majoid), Mao and Aroid (South Omotic) languages.
Some of these languages are written in the Geʽez script, while others use the Latin alphabet. They are generally agglutinative and exhibit complex tonal systems, as in the Bench language. The group comprises about 7.9 million speakers.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Omotic” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.