Highland East Cushitic languages
Highland East Cushitic or Burji-Sidamo is a branch of the Afroasiatic language family spoken in south-central Ethiopia.The most popular language is Sidama, with close to two million speakers.Hadiyya and Libido are especially close, as are Kambaata and Alaba.Their relationship with Burji is more distant and was first proposed in 1940;[1] it has been accepted widely but not universally.The Highland East Cushitic languages show parallels in their phonology to the historical development of the southern Ethio-Semitic languages, in particular those of the Gurage group, and may have influenced their development.