Estimate of divergence between Borana and Somali/Maay/Rendille speakers: 2000 years ago, reason being change in lifestyle, adoption of Camel pastoralism over Cattle pastoralism.
Estimate divergence between Somali and Maay/Rendille speakers: 1500-1000 years ago, reason being influence of Arabic due to spead of Islam
Estimate of divergence between Maay and Rendille speakers: 700 years ago, reason being Ajuuraan conquest of southern Somalia
These are completely bullshit divergence dates... "Macro-Somali" itself seemingly began diverging around
1000 BCE (as in what is designated as "Somali" here but is really "Proto-Somali" in a sense:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-P8a4 ... sp=sharing and Rendille and co. cut up around then). "Borana" / "Oromoid" in general cut-off from whatever was ancestral to "Proto-Somali" and languages Rendille over
3,000 years ago (you're a complete lunatic if you think "Macro-Somali" (whatever one wishes to label this grouping) and "Oromoid" diverged
2,000 years ago):
~4000 BCE: Proto-East-South Cushitic possibly spoken
~2800 BCE: Lowland East Cushitic, Highland East Cushitic and Dullay diverge from Proto-East Cushitic
~1800 BCE: "Macro-Somali", Afar-Saho & Oromoid diverge from Lowland East Cushitic
~1000 BCE: "Macro-Somali" diverges
These divergence dates are much deeper than imbeciles on here have been making them out to be. Also, the Arabic influence in "Maxa Tiri" is not significant at all. Nomad-boy can be a little too ethno-nationalist but he's damn right here in that Maxa Tiri is
solidly Cushitic and not noticeably influenced in terms of what actually f-king matters to linguists when looking at genetic relationships between languages (i.e.
morphology & phonology). The influences from Arabic are pretty much just
lexical and aren't even close to being "comprehensive" (i.e. Maxa Tiri's lexicon is by no means close to being totally Arabic or
Indo-Aryan).
Here's why a language's lexicon means
jack compared to features like morphology so you'll understand:
http://www.forumbiodiversity.com/showth ... ht=maltese (post no. 5 by "Semitic Duwa"
aptly explains things)
"Maxa Tiri" could lexically be 100% Arabic and it, in terms of what matters for linguist classification, wouldn't even be remotely
extra-diverged from Af-Maay. Anyway, the reason Maxa Tiri sounds the way it does is because it's rather
conservative when compared to the Sidamic languages, the whole Maay-Tunni bunch and Oromoid and has avoided certain innovations and contacts between them in the more southerly regions of the Horn most likely because it, like Saho-Afar, which have also
preserved traits like pharyngeal & velar fricatives (
preserved not
inherited from Arabic, no proof for this), has remained rather
isolated from them for quite some time. I'd wager about 2,000-2,500 years or so but one can't be too sure at this point.
Just more classic examples of James Dahl spewing nonsense... Watch him change his tune on these matters 2 years from now (I suppose this is a good thing?). A few years back he'd concluded that all of the Somali coast was conquered by
the Caliphates and that Somalis were the descendants of Arabs and
local peoples (with no proof but bullshit oral traditions) until the genetic data contradicted him big-time and now he's taking a crack at actual science (archaeology, linguistics etc.) but butchering it...