Kumzari
| Kumzari | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Spoken in |
Oman ( Musandam Peninsula ) | |
| speaker | under 10,000 (1700 according to Ethnologue ) | |
| Linguistic classification |
|
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639 -1 |
- |
|
| ISO 639 -2 |
ira |
|
| ISO 639-3 | ||
Kumzari , spoken on the Musandam peninsula belonging to Oman in the Kumzar region including the coastal island of Jazīrat Umm al-Ghanam , is the only Iranian language that is native to the Arabian peninsula . Kumzari speakers can be found in the cities of al-Chasab and Dibba as well as in several villages and on the island of Larak .
The speakers are usually descendants of fishermen in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman .
The language developed early from modern Persian and is closely related to the Minabi from southern Balochistan . Most of the vocabulary as well as the grammatical and syntactic structure of the Kumzari is Iranian, although many everyday words come from Arabic dialects and occasionally from European languages such as Portuguese or English. There is no written language or literature for Kumzari.
The number of Kumzari speakers is estimated to be less than ten thousand, although the Shihuh tribe , whose language is Kumzari, has twenty-one thousand members. More and more children are taught Arabic instead of Kumzari.