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.[2] The language is often confused with Kunama, which is at best only distantly related.
| Nara | |
|---|---|
| Nara-Bana | |
| Native to | Eritrea |
| Region | Gash-Barka |
| Ethnicity | Nara |
Native speakers | 73,000 (2022)[1] |
| Dialects |
|
| Latin | |
| Official status | |
Recognised minority language in | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | nrb |
| Glottolog | nara1262 |
 Linguistic map of Eritrea; Nara is spoken in the sea-blue region in the west | |
The endangerment status of Nara is unclear. According to Glottolog it is not endangered, but according to Tsige Hailemichael, the "...Nara language is in danger of quickly disappearing."[3]
Nara has been classified as Northern Eastern Sudanic by Rilly (2009:2),[4] but Glottolog considers the evidence unpersuasive and classifies Nara as an isolate.[5]
Dialects
editThere are four Nara dialects according to Rilly (2010:178):[6]
- 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
editConsonants
edit| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lab. | ||||||
| Stop | voiceless | t | k | kʷ | |||
| voiced | b | d | dʒ | g | ɡʷ | ||
| prenasal | ᵐb | ⁿd | ᵑɡ | ᵑɡʷ | |||
| Fricative | f | s | ʃ | h | |||
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||||
| Lateral | l | ||||||
| Rhotic | r | ||||||
| Approximant | j | w | |||||
- Other sounds such as [z, c, kʼ, x, ʔ] occur from Tigre and Arabic.[7]
Vowels
edit| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i iː | u uː | |
| Mid | e eː | o oː | |
| Open | a aː |
References
edit- ^ Nara at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024)
- ^ "Ethnologue report for language code:nrb". Retrieved 2006-08-31.
- ^ Hailemichael, Tsige (2005-11-05). "Once Upon a Time… in Nara Language". Retrieved 2006-08-31.
- ^ Rilly, Claude. 2009. From the Yellow Nile to the Blue Nile: The quest for water and the diffusion of Northern East Sudanic languages from the fourth to the first millennia BCE. Paper presented at ECAS 2009 (3rd European Conference on African Studies, Panel 142: African waters – water in Africa, barriers, paths, and resources: their impact on language, literature and history of people) in Leipzig, 4 to 7 June 2009.
- ^ "Glottolog 4.4 – Nara".
- ^ Rilly, Claude. 2010. Le méroïtique et sa famille linguistique. Leuven: Peeters Publishers. ISBN 978-9042922372
- ^ Thompson, David E. (1976). Nera. In Bender, M. Lionel (ed.), The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia: Michigan State University. pp. 484–494.
