| Dahalik | |
|---|---|
| Dahaalik, Dahalik, Dahlak | |
| Native to | Eritrea |
| Region | Dahlak Archipelago |
Native speakers | 3,100 (2023)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | dlk |
| Glottolog | daha1247 |
| ELP | Dahālík |
 Linguistic map of Eritrea; Dahalik is spoken in the dark purple island region (the coastal region, a lighter shade of purple, is the Arabic-speaking area) | |
Dahalik (ዳሃሊክ [haka (na)] dahālík, "[language (of)] the people of Dahlak";[2] also Dahaalik, Dahlik, Dahlak) is an endangered Afroasiatic language spoken exclusively in the Dahlak Archipelago in Eritrea. Its speech area is off the coast of Massawa, on three islands in the Dahlak Archipelago: Dahlak Kebir, Nora, and Dehil.
Dahalik belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family's Semitic branch, a member of the Northern branch of the Ethiopic group, and is closely related to Tigre and Tigrinya. It is said to be not mutually intelligible with Tigre and, according to Simeone-Senelle, is sufficiently different to be considered a separate language.[3] However, there are those who disagree.[4]
- ^ Dahalik at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024)
- ^ Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle: Dahālík, a newly discovered Afro-Semitic language spoken exclusively in Eritrea Archived 2013-10-02 at the Wayback Machine (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.
