Dahalik language

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
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.

1. ^ 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