Baiso and Rendille. Somali outliers

Abstract

Previous discussion of the origins of the Somali have tended to assume that the Somali expanded from a northern area near ex-British Somaliland or the Harar-Dire Dawa region of Ethiopia. From this northern locus the Somali are assumed to have overrun prior Galla and Bantu and/or Negro populations to the south in the main area of the African Horn. Recently, H. S. Lewis has challenged the assumption of a Galla priority over the Somali in the eastern Horn. Most of the argument has been carried out in the absence of any information about languages more closely related to Somali than Galla or Afar. Huntingford's valuable suggestion that Rendille, spoken in northeast Kenya, is closely allied with Somali has, for example, been largely ignored. Moreover, the significance of the presence of Somali loan words in Nilo-Hamitic languages has been completely ignored, despite the fact that the Somali were not in geographical propinquity with the Nilo-Hamites at the time of European contact. Finally, the significance of the Somali-speaking Boni in eastern Kenya, where they lived as an enclave in Galla territory, has not been appreciated. It is the aim of this paper to present data on two previously unreported languages, Baiso and Rendille, and to relate them to our knowledge of the parameters of the Somali nation. References to Somali

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