Part of an erstwhile Kordofanian proposal, they are of uncertain position within the Niger–Congo family.

It was at first thought that they shared the characteristic morphology of Niger–Congo, such as the noun-class system.

However, only the Tagoi branch has noun classes, and Blench remarks that it appears to have been borrowed.

A similar situation holds for another Kordofanian family, Katla; these are not closely related to Rashad.

Unlike the neighbouring Talodi-Heiban languages which have SVO word order, Rashad languages (and also Lafofa) have SOV word order.