Dahalik language
| Dahalik (ዳሃሊክ) | |
|---|---|
| Dahaalik, Dahalik, Dahlak | |
| Native to | Eritrea |
| Region | Dahlak Archipelago |
Native speakers | 2,500 (2012)[1] |
Afro-Asiatic
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | dlk |
| Glottolog | daha1247 |
| ELP | Dahālík |
Dahalik (ዳሃሊክ [haka (na)] dahālík, "[language (of)] the people of Dahlak";[2] also Dahaalik, Dahlik, Dahlak) is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken exclusively in Eritrea. Its speech area is off the coast of Massawa, on three islands in the Dahlak Archipelago: Dahlak Kebir, Nora and Dehil. It has around 2,500 to 3,000 speakers.
Dahalik belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family's Semitic branch, and is closely related to Tigre and Tigrinya. It is said to be not mutually intelligible with Tigre (see Shaebia below), and, according to Simeone-Senelle,[3] is sufficiently different to be considered a separate language. However, there are those who disagree.[4]
References
- ^ Dahalik (ዳሃሊክ) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle: Dahālík, a newly discovered Afro-Semitic language spoken exclusively in Eritrea (PDF), in: shaebia.org, 2005
- ^ *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.
- ^ Idris, S. M. 2012. Dahalik: An Endangered Language or a Tigre Variety? Journal of Eritrean Studies 6 (1): 51–74.
External links
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