The Aroid or Ari-Banna (sometimes South Omotic or Somotic) languages possibly belong to the Afro-Asiatic family and are spoken in Ethiopia.
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👉 Aroid languages in the context of Damotic languages
The North Omotic languages, also known as Ta-Ne Omotic or Damotic, are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family spoken in Ethiopia. They have traditionally been classified together with the Aroid, Dizoid, and Mao languages within the disputed "Omotic" family.
A relatively comprehensive comparative word list is given in Václav Blažek (2008).
In this Dossier
Aroid languages in the context of Omotic languages
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), Mao, Dizoid, 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.
Aroid languages in the context of Banna people
The Banna people, also Banya, are an Omotic ethnic group in Ethiopia that inhabit the Lower Omo Valley, primarily between the Weyto and Omo rivers. They live in an area between the towns of Gazer and Dimeka, with the traditional area of the Banna being divided into two ritual regions: Ailama (around Gazer) and Anno (spanning from Benata to Dimeka). According to the 2007 census, they number at around 47,000 individuals. They engage primarily in agriculture and supplement this by pastoralism, hunting, and gathering. They are mainly traditionalists, however, a significant share are Christians, and they have their own king.
Most Banna are speakers of the Banna variety of the Hamar-Banna language (a member of the putative Southern branch of the Omotic languages), although some also speak the related Aari language in and around Mokocha and Chali. Some Banna claim only slight difficulty when communicating with speakers of the Hamar and Bashada varieties of the same language, and despite their linguistic proximity there is a clear virtual border to the Banna between themselves and the neighboring Hamar in specific.