Somali languages

Their closest relatives are the Aweer and Garre languages, followed by Rendille; this group is sometimes known as Sam or Eastern Omo-Tana.

Somali linguistic varieties are broadly divided into three main groups: Northern, Benadir and Maay.

[8] Its primary speech area stretches from Djibouti, Somaliland and to parts of the eastern and southwestern sections of Somalia.

[9] This widespread modern distribution is a result of a long series of southward population movements over the past ten centuries from the Gulf of Aden littoral.

Such a language is Maay which is principally spoken by the Digil and Mirifle (Rahanweyn or Sab) clans in the southern regions of Somalia.

[14] Its speech area extends from the southwestern border with Ethiopia to a region close to the coastal strip between Mogadishu and Kismayo, including the city of Baidoa.

However, Maay speakers often use Standard Somali as a lingua franca,[15] which is learned via mass communications, internal migration and urbanization.

Although in the past frequently classified as dialects of Somali, more recent research by the linguist Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi has shown that these varieties, including Maay, constitute separate Cushitic languages.

According to linguistic, anthropological and other data, these groups later came under the influence and adopted the Afro-Asiatic languages of the Eastern and Southern Cushitic peoples who moved into the area.