Nara (language)

Nara (Nera, "Barya" / "Barea")
Spoken in	Eritrea
speaker	around 80,000 (as of 2001)
Linguistic ; classification	Nilosaharan languages East Sudan languages Nara ;
Official status
Recognized minority / ; regional language in	Eritrea
Language codes
ISO 639-3	nrb

Nara (also: Nera , actually: nəra bana "heavenly language") is a language spoken by about 80,000 people in western Eritrea north of Barentu in the Gash-Barka region .

It is also known by the derogatory name Barya (also: Barea , Amharic for "slave"), which was previously used for its speakers. The speakers are called Nara and are Muslim .

Nara is assigned to the East Sudanese branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family . Within this group it belongs to the group of languages that the pronoun of the first person singular ( "I") with the element k form ( ag ).

The basic word order of language is subject-object-verb .

The language has practically no literary tradition until around 1976 when Nara began writing their language.

In Eritrea, Nara is recognized as one of nine “national languages” that are formally regarded as equal; In fact, Tigrinya and Arabic are by far the most important official languages.

literature

Leo Reinisch : The Barea Language. Grammar, text and dictionary . Braumüller, Vienna 1874. (based on the handwritten materials by Werner Munzinger Pascha)
Thilo C. Schadeberg: The Nilosaharan languages . In: Bernd Heine u. a. (Ed.): The languages of Africa . Buske, Hamburg 1981, p. 298.
M. Lionel Bender : Analysis of a Barya word list . In: Anthropological Linguistics . Vol. 10, Issue 9, 1968, pp. 1-24.
M. Lionel Bender: Nilo-Saharan . In: Bernd Heine, Derek Nurse (Ed.): African Languages. An introduction . Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 43-73.
ED Thompson: Nera . In: M. Lionel Bender (Ed.): The Non-Semitic languages of Ethiopia . Michigan State University, East Lansing 1976, pp. 484-494.

Web links

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b ^c Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle: Les langues en Erythrée , in: Chroniques Yeménites 8, 2000 (French)
^ M. Lionel Bender: Nilo-Saharan . In: Bernd Heine, Derek Nurse (Ed.): African Languages. An introduction . Cambridge University Press, 2000; P. 48.
↑ Ethnologue, Languages of the World: Eritrea (map)
↑ Chefena Hailemariam: Language and education in Eritrea: a case study of language diversity, policy and practice ; Studies in multilingualism; Aksant 2002; ISBN 9789052600819 ; P. 106.

[CY-1] A ^b ^c Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle: Les langues en Erythrée , in: Chroniques Yeménites 8, 2000 (French)

[2] M. Lionel Bender: Nilo-Saharan . In: Bernd Heine, Derek Nurse (Ed.): African Languages. An introduction . Cambridge University Press, 2000; P. 48.

[3] Ethnologue, Languages of the World: Eritrea (map)

[4] Chefena Hailemariam: Language and education in Eritrea: a case study of language diversity, policy and practice ; Studies in multilingualism; Aksant 2002; ISBN 9789052600819 ; P. 106.