Nara
Nara-Bana
Native to	Eritrea
Region	Gash-Barka
Ethnicity	Nara
Native speakers	73,000 (2022)[1]
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Eastern Sudanic Northern Eastern Nara
Dialects	Higir Koyta Santora Mogoreeb
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Eritrea
Language codes
ISO 639-3	nrb
Glottolog	nara1262
Linguistic map of Eritrea; Nara is spoken in the sea-blue region in the west

TheNara (Nera) orBarea (Barya) language is spoken by theNara people in an area just to the north ofBarentu in theGash-Barka Region of westernEritrea.^[2] The language is often confused withKunama, which is at best only distantly related.

The endangerment status of Nara is unclear. According toGlottolog it is not endangered, but according to Tsige Hailemichael, the "...Nara language is in danger of quickly disappearing."^[3]

Nara has been classified asNorthern Eastern Sudanic by Rilly (2009:2),^[4] butGlottolog considers the evidence unpersuasive and classifies Nara as an isolate.^[5]

There are four Nara dialects according to Rilly (2010:178):^[6]

• Higir, the standard literary dialect spoken just to the north ofBarentu, Eritrea
• Mogoreeb, spoken from the outskirts ofHaykota to Bisha village in western Eritrea
• Saantoorta, spoken to the west ofBarentu, Eritrea
• Koyta, spoken to the northeast ofBarentu, Eritrea

Higir and Mogoreeb are the larger tribes, while Saantoorta and Koyta are smaller tribes (Rilly 2010:178).

• Other sounds such as [z, c, kʼ, x, ʔ] occur from Tigre and Arabic.^[7]

• Nara basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database

• Languages of Eritrea
• Northern Eastern Sudanic languages
• Language isolates of Africa
• Nilo-Saharan language stubs

• Language articles citing Ethnologue 27
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• ISO language articles citing sources other than Ethnologue
• All stub articles