Status
Dahalik is spoken on the Dahlak Archipelago, an island group belonging to Eritrea in the Red Sea. On the archipelago, most people are speakers of Dahalik with smaller populations of Arabic and Afar language, Afar 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.Phonology
Vowels
might be another vowel. The vowel only occurs in unstressed syllables.Consonants
Dahalik has 21 consonants. * The voiced uvular fricative is the most common articulation of in the intervocalic position, while the voiceless uvular fricative is used after a fricative. * The velar fricative and the voiced alveolar sibilant are only used in loanwords from Arabic. * Except for in a few cases, there are no ejective consonants in Dahalik, and the degree of pharyngealization in is weak.Morphology
Pronouns
Dahalik has two different forms for second and third person pronouns, one masculine and one feminine. Dahalik also has dependent (object) pronouns, suffixed to the end of the word.Verbs
The word order of a simple sentence in Dahalik is subject–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.References
External links
*