Weyto language

Weyto, also spelled Wayto, is an extinct and unclassified language once spoken by the Weyto, a small hippopotamus-hunting caste of the Lake Tana region of Ethiopia who today speak Amharic. The Scottish traveler James Bruce mentioned the language around 1770, describing it as radically different from other tongues of Abyssinia, but by the time later European observers reached the area, Eugen Mittwoch in 1907 and Marcel Griaule in 1928 both found the Weyto speaking Amharic dialects instead, with only fragmentary original vocabulary remaining. Scholars have debated whether Weyto belonged to the Agaw, wider Cushitic, or Eastern Sudanic languages, but the surviving evidence is too sparse to settle the question, and it is generally treated as extinct since around 1907.