The Nara (Nera) or Barea (Barya) language is spoken by the
Nara people in an area just to the north of
Barentu in the
Gash-Barka Region of western
Eritrea
Eritrea, officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa, with its capital and largest city being Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia in the Eritrea–Ethiopia border, south, Sudan in the west, and Dj ...
. 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 an open-access online bibliographic database of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials ( grammars, articles, dictionaries) describing individual languages, the database also contains the most up-to-d ...
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):
*''Higir'', the standard literary dialect spoken just to the north of
Barentu, Eritrea
*''Mogoreeb'', spoken from the outskirts of
Haykota 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).
Phonology
Consonants
* Other sounds such as
, c, kʼ, x, ʔoccur from Tigre and Arabic.
Vowels
References
External links
Nara basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
Languages of Eritrea
Northern Eastern Sudanic languages
Language isolates of Africa
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