Shehri
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Shehri language. (Discuss) |
| Shehri | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Oman | |
| Total speakers: | — | |
| Language family: | Afro-Asiatic Semitic South Semitic Modern South Arabian Shehri |
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | – | |
| ISO 639-3: | – | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Shehri - frequently called Jibbali (or "mountain" language) in Omani Arabic - is a Modern South Arabian (or Eastern South Semitic) language spoken by a minority non-Arab population in the mountains and wilderness areas upland from Salalah in Dhofar Province in the southwest of the Sultanate of Oman.
While sometimes confused as a dialect of Arabic even by Omani Arabs, Shehri belongs to another branch of the Semitic language family entirely, as close to, say, Amharic in Ethiopia as to Arabic.
It had an estimated 25,000 speakers in the 1993 census and is best known as the language of the Dhofari rebels during the Dhofar Rebellion along the country’s border with Marxist South Yemen in the 1970s.
Alternative names/spellings for the language are: Geblet, Sheret, Sehri, Shahari, Jibali, Jibbali, Ehkili, and Qarawi.
Shehri is spoken along a dialect continuum that includes Western Jibbali, Central Jibbali, and Eastern Jibbali, which includes Kuria Muria (or 'Baby' Jibbali).
Like most Modern South Arabian dialect speakers in Oman and Yemen, many Shehri speakers, especially men, are bilingual in higher-status local dialects of Arabic, especially the Dhofari dialect. In addition, it is primarily a spoken language, and native speakers are normally not literate in it. All this has implications for the long-term survival of the language, although currently Jibbali pride and sense of separateness has contributed to a strengthening of speakers’ attachment to their minority language.
The population of Oman is highly tribalized socially, whether Jibbali or Arab, and Shehri speakers, too, are divided into non-Arab tribes such as the Qara (also called Ehkeló, Ahkló), Shahra (Sheró, Shahara), Barahama, Bait Ash-Shaik, and Batahira.
(Ref. SIL Ethnologue online)
[edit] External links
|
|||||
 |
This Afro-Asiatic languages-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
