El Molo language

El Molo
Native to Kenya
Region Lake Turkana
Ethnicity 2,800 (2009 census)[1]
Native speakers
 8 (1994)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 elo
Glottolog elmo1238[2]

El Molo is a possibly extinct language belonging to the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It was spoken by the El Molo people on the southeastern shore of Lake Turkana, in northern Kenya. It was thought to be extinct in the middle part of the 20th century, but a few speakers were found in the later 20th century.[1] However, it may now be truly extinct, as the eight speakers found in a survey published in 1994 were over 50. Most of the El Molo population have shifted to the neighboring Samburu language.[1]

Oral tradition sees the El Molo people as an offshoot of the Arbore people in South Ethiopia.[3] This seems to be confirmed by El Molo's linguistic proximity to the Arbore language. [4]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 El Molo at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "El Molo". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ Sobiana 1980, p. 297
  4. ↑ Hayward 1984, p. 38

Further reading


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