Kambaata is a Highland East Cushitic language, part of the larger Afro-Asiatic family and spoken by the Kambaata people. Dialects are Kambaata, Tambaro, Alaba, and K'abeena. It is one of the official languages of Ethiopia. The language has a large number of verbal affixes. When these are affixed to verbal roots, there are a large amount of morphophonemic changes. The language has SOV order (subject–object–verb). The phonemes of Kambaata include five vowels (which are distinctively long or short), a set of ejectives, a retroflexed implosive, and glottal stop.

Kambaata is the name of the people who speak the Kambaata language. It was a province of Ethiopia beginning in the early 15th century and ending in the mid-17th century before Ethiopian rule was once again established under Emperor Menelik II. During this first period, Kambaata province was largely Christianized. The former province is contained within the contemporary Kembata Tembaro Zone of Ethiopia's SNNPR.