Dahlik language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Dahlik Dahaalik, Dahalik, Dahlak |
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|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Eritrea | |
| Region: | Dahlak Archipelago | |
| Total speakers: | 2,500–3,000 | |
| Language family: | Afro-Asiatic Semitic South Semitic Ethiopic North Ethiopic Dahlik |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | sem | |
| ISO 639-3: | und | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
Dahlik (Dahaalik, Dahalik, Dahlak) is a newly discovered language spoken exclusively in Eritrea off the coast of Massawa, on three islands in the Dahlak 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] External links
- Shaebia: Dahlak, a newly discovered Afro-Semitic language spoken exclusively in Eritrea
- Shaebia: Dahalik - Mysterious Tongue of the Dahlak Islands
- Aljazeera: Lost Eritrean language put on record
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