- Dahlik language
language
name=Dahlik
nativename=Dahaalik, Dahalik, Dahlak
familycolor=Afro-Asiatic
states=Eritrea
region=Dahlak Archipelago
speakers=2,500–3,000
fam2=Semitic
fam3=South Semitic
fam4=Ethiopic
fam5=North Ethiopic
iso2=sem|iso3=undDahlik (Dahaalik, Dahalik, Dahlak) is a newly discovered language spoken exclusively in
Eritrea off the coast ofMassawa , on three islands in theDahlak Archipelago : Dahlak Kebir, Nora and Dehil. It has around 2,500–3,000 speakers.It belongs to the Ethio-Semitic language group and is quite closely related to Tigre and
Tigrinya . It is mutually intelligible with Tigre (see Shaebia below), but, 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.
External links
*PDFlink| [http://llacan.vjf.cnrs.fr/fichiers/Senelle/Dahalik_shaebia05.pdf Shaebia: Dahlak, a newly discovered Afro-Semitic language spoken exclusively in Eritrea] |122 KiB
* [http://www.shaebia.org/artman/publish/article_4496.shtml Shaebia: Dahalik - Mysterious Tongue of the Dahlak Islands]
* [http://english.aljazeera.net/English/archive/archive?ArchiveId=11993 Aljazeera: Lost Eritrean language put on record]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.