The most spoken Lowland East Cushitic language is Oromo, with about 35 million speakers in Ethiopia and Kenya.
The Konsoid dialect cluster is closely related to Oromo.
Other prominent languages include Somali (spoken by ethnic Somalis in Somalia, Somaliland, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya) with about 30 million speakers, and Afar (in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti) with about 1.5 million.
Robert Hetzron has suggested that the Rift languages ("South Cushitic") are a part of Lowland East Cushitic,[4] and Kießling & Mous (2003) have suggested more specifically that they be linked to a Southern Lowland branch, together with Oromo, Somali, and Yaaku–Dullay.
Savà and Tosco (2003) believe Ongota is an East Cushitic language with a Nilo-Saharan substratum—that is, that Ongota speakers shifted to East Cushitic from an earlier Nilo-Saharan language, traces of which still remain.