Razihi language
| Jabal Razih | |
|---|---|
| Razihi | |
| Native to | Yemen |
Native speakers | (no estimate available) |
|
Afro-Asiatic
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
None (mis) |
| Glottolog |
jaba1234[1] |
Razihi, the language of Jabal Razih in the far northwestern corner of Yemen,[2] is the only surviving descendent of the Old South Arabian languages.[1]
Classical Arabic *š corresponds to Razihi /ɬ/, and its emphatic correlate, *ḍ, to general Yemeni /ð/ in recent words, but to /tɬ/ in older words. There is nasal assimilation, as in ssān 'man', ssānah 'woman', cognate with Arabic ʾinsān 'person'; this was a feature of both Ancient North Arabian and Old South Arabian, but is not found in any Arabic dialect. Razihi also has a large number of non-Arabic basic vocabulary items, prepositions and other grammatical forms.[2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Jabal Razih". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Watson, Glover-Stalls, Al-razihi, & Weir (2006), "The language of Jabal Rāziḥ: Arabic or something else?", Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 36:35–41