Dahalik
Dahaalik, Dahalik, Dahlak
Native to	Eritrea
Region	Dahlak Archipelago
Native speakers	3,100 (2023)[1]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic South Semitic Ethiopic North Dahalik
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 is classified as "critically endangered" by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger[2]

Dahalik (ዳሃሊክ[haka (na)] dahālík, "[language (of)] the people of Dahlak";^[3] also Dahaalik, Dahlik, Dahlak) is an endangeredAfroasiatic language spoken exclusively in theDahlak Archipelago inEritrea. Its speech area is off the coast ofMassawa, on three islands in the Dahlak Archipelago:Dahlak Kebir,Nora, and Dehil.

Dahalik belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family'sSemitic branch, a member of the Northern branch of theEthiopic group, and is closely related toTigre andTigrinya. It is said to be not mutually intelligible with Tigre and, according to Simeone-Senelle, is sufficiently different to be considered a separate language.^[4] However, there are those who disagree.^[5]

Dahalik is spoken on theDahlak Archipelago, an island group belonging to Eritrea in theRed Sea. On the archipelago, most people are speakers of Dahalik with smaller populations ofArabic andAfar native speakers. The situation is different for every village: Durrubishet and Dasquo have almost universal use of Dahalik, while other villages have a greater mix of languages. Most islanders are multilingual in Dahalik, Arabic, and Afar, while the language of education is Arabic. Most Dahalik men have regular contact with Arabic, Tigre, and Afar, and any mixed marriages usually result in the children learning two mother tongues. Dahalik speakers also consider their language to be a mix of Arabic, Tigre, and a small amount of Tigrinya. Overall, there are only a few elderly monolingual speakers of Dahalik. However, Dahalik speakers do have positive attitudes towards the language and see it as an essential part of their cultural identity.^[6]

/ɛ/ might be another vowel. The vowel/ə/ only occurs in unstressed syllables.^[6]

Dahalik has 21 consonants.^[6]

• The voiced uvular fricative/ʁ/ is the most common articulation of/q/ in the intervocalic position, while the voiceless uvular fricative/χ/ is used after a fricative.
• The velar fricative/x/ and the voiced alveolar sibilant/z/ are only used in loanwords from Arabic.
• Except for/c/ in a few cases, there are no ejective consonants in Dahalik, and the degree of pharyngealization in/tʼ/ is weak.^[6]

Dahalik has two different forms for second and third person pronouns, one masculine and one feminine.^[6]

Dahalik also has dependent (object) pronouns, suffixed to the end of the word.^[6]

The word order of a simple sentence in Dahalik issubject–object–verb. For conditional subordinate clauses, the subordinating marker ('if' or something similar) is at the end of the clause or just before the verb in the subordinating clause.^[6]

• "Shaebia: Dahalik, a newly discovered Afro-Semitic language spoken exclusively in Eritrea"(PDF). Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 2013-10-02. Retrieved2007-10-11. (122 KiB)
• Shaebia: Dahalik – Mysterious Tongue of the Dahlak Islands

ThisEritrea-related article is astub. You can help Wikipedia byexpanding it.

• v
• t
• e

ThisSemitic languages-related article is astub. You can help Wikipedia byexpanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• Dahlak Archipelago
• Endangered Afroasiatic languages
• Languages of Eritrea
• North Ethiopian Semitic languages
• Eritrea stubs
• Semitic language stubs

• Language articles citing Ethnologue 27
• Webarchive template wayback links
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• ISO language articles citing sources other than Ethnologue
• Pages with plain IPA
• All stub articles