The Nara (Nera) or Barea (Barya) language is spoken by the
Nara people
The Nara are an ethnic group inhabiting southwestern Eritrea. The society is divided into four subtribes, who are traditionally animist. They are mostly subsistence farmers.
Overview
According to the Eritrean government, the Nara are descendants ...
in an area just to the north of
Barentu in the
Gash-Barka Region
Gash-Barka ( ti, ጋሽ-ባርካ, it, Regione di Gasc-Barca) is an administrative region of Eritrea. It is situated in the south-west of the country, bordering the Anseba region to the north, and the Maekel (Central) and Debub (Southern) regio ...
of western
Eritrea
Eritrea ( ; ti, ኤርትራ, Ertra, ; ar, إرتريا, ʾIritriyā), officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of Eastern Africa, with its capital and largest city at Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia ...
. The language is often confused with
Kunama, which is at best only distantly related.
The endangerment status of Nara is unclear. According to
Glottolog
''Glottolog'' is a bibliographic database of the world's lesser-known languages, developed and maintained first at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute for ...
it is not endangered, but according to Tsige Hailemichael, the "...Nara language is in danger of quickly disappearing."
Nara has been classified as
Northern Eastern Sudanic by Rilly (2009:2), but ''Glottolog'' considers the evidence unpersuasive and classifies Nara as an isolate.
Dialects
There are four Nara dialects according to Rilly (2010:178):
[Rilly, Claude. 2010. ''Le méroïtique et sa famille linguistique''. Leuven: Peeters Publishers. ]
*''Higir'', the standard literary dialect spoken just to the north of
Barentu, Eritrea
*''Mogoreeb'', spoken from the outskirts of
Haykota
Haykota ( ar, هاكوتا) is a small town in the western Gash-Barka region of Eritrea.
Overview
The town is situated near the location of a monument erected to memorialize Hamid Idris Awate, the man who started the Eritrean War of Independence. ...
to Bisha village in western Eritrea
*''Saantoorta'', spoken to the west of
Barentu, Eritrea
*''Koyta'', spoken to the northeast of
Barentu, Eritrea
Higir and Mogoreeb are the larger tribes, while Saantoorta and Koyta are smaller tribes (Rilly 2010:178).
References
External links
Nara basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
Languages of Eritrea
Northern Eastern Sudanic languages
Language isolates of Africa
{{NiloSaharan-lang-stub