Mehri language

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Mehri
Spoken in:	Yemen, Oman
Total speakers:	135,764
Language family:	Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic South Semitic Modern South Arabian Mehri
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`–`
ISO 639-3:	`gdq`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Mehri or Mahri is a Modern South Arabian language, a branch of the greater Semitic language family, and is spoken by minority populations in isolated areas of the eastern part of Yemen and western Oman. It is a remnant of the ancient indigenous language group spoken in the southern Arabian Peninsula before the spread of Arabic along with the Islamic religion in the 7th century CE. It is also spoken today in Kuwait by guest workers originally from these areas.

Given the dominance of the Arabic language in the region over the past 1,400 years and the high bilingualism with Arabic among Mehri speakers, Mehri is at some risk of extinction. It is primarily a spoken language with little existing in print and almost no literacy in the written form among native speakers.

Mehri has 70,643 speakers in Yemen, 50,763 in Oman and 14,358 in Kuwait. Population total for all countries is 135,764 (SIL estimate, 2000). Mehri speakers are known in the region as the Mahra tribe.