- Dahalik language
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Dahalik Dahaalik, Dahalik, Dahlak Spoken in Eritrea Region Dahlak Archipelago Native speakers 2,500–3,000 (no date) Language family Afro-Asiatic- Semitic
- South Semitic
- Ethiopic
- North Ethiopic
- Dahalik
- North Ethiopic
- Ethiopic
- South Semitic
Language codes ISO 639-3 – Dahalik ([haka (na)] dahālík, "[language (of)] the people of Dahlak";[1] also Dahaalik, Dahlik, Dahlak) is a language spoken exclusively in Eritrea off the coast of Massawa, on three islands in the Dahlak Archipelago: Dahlak Kebir, Nora and Dehil. Only recently discovered by linguists, it has around 2,500–3,000 speakers.
It belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language group and is closely related to Tigre and Tigrinya. It is not mutually intelligible with Tigre (see Shaebia below), and, according to Simeone-Senelle, is sufficiently different to be considered a separate language.
References
- Simeone-Senelle, Marie-Claude. 2000. 'Situation linguistique dans le sud de l'Erythrée', in Wolff/Gensler (eds) Proceedings of the 2nd World Congress of African Linguistics, 1997, Köln: Köppe, p. 261–276.
- ^ Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle: Dahālík, a newly discovered Afro-Semitic language spoken exclusively in Eritrea (PDF), in: shaebia.org, 2005
External links
- Shaebia: Dahalik, a newly discovered Afro-Semitic language spoken exclusively in EritreaPDF (122 KiB)
- Shaebia: Dahalik – Mysterious Tongue of the Dahlak Islands
- Aljazeera: Lost Eritrean language put on record
Categories:- Dahlak Archipelago
- Languages of Eritrea
- North Ethiopian Semitic languages
- Eritrea stubs
- Afro-Asiatic language stubs
- Semitic
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