Somali belongs to the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. There are several distinct varieties, only some of which are mutually intelligible; standard Somali is based on the Mudug dialect spoken in the central region.
The name Somalia dates back only to the nineteenth century. It comes from 'soma', which means 'to milk the animal', a reminder of the pastoral lifestyle of the people. Before this time, people referred to themselves by the name of the six major clans. More than two thirds lead a nomadic life, travelling to Kenya and Ethiopia to graze their herds; settled herdsman and cultivators are concentrated in the south of the country. The official religion of Somalia is Islam and almost all the population is Sunni Muslim.Britain and Italy vied for power in the Horn of Africa from the 1880s until the declaration of the Somali Democratic Republic in 1960. Stability was further threatened in 1977-8: government forces occupied the Ogaden region which the British had handed over to Ethiopia some years previously, and close to two million refugees fled into Somalia. Civil war made matters even worse with clan membership tending to determine political affiliation. Opposition to the national government headed by Major General Muhammad Siad Barre gathered momentum in the early 1980s when members of his own Mareehan clan were chosen for positions of power over members of the Majeerteen and Issaq clans. Initially, the civil war focused on the major cities of the north, resulting in very large numbers of deaths. Later the war spread to the south and continued even after Barre was driven from the country in 1991. A further 50,000 people were killed in factional fighting, while 300,000 died of starvation caused by drought and the enormous difficulties of distributing food in the war-ravaged countryside. The efforts of a US peacekeeping force in 1994-5 were largely unsuccessful and Somalia remains without a central government.
