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Proto-Cushitic language

African Language Families

Proto-Cushitic is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family. None of its vocabulary survives in writing; it has instead been recovered through the comparative method, by finding regular sound correspondences across living Cushitic languages and extrapolating the ancestral forms behind them. Linguist Christopher Ehret produced a preliminary phonological reconstruction of Proto-Cushitic in 1987 and has proposed the Red Sea Hills as a possible homeland for its speakers, dating the language to roughly 8000 to 7000 BC, though no consensus exists on the precise location.

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