Nara language

This article is about the language of Eritrea. For the language of Southern Africa, see Naro language. For the language of Papua New Guinea, see Lala language (Papua New Guinea).

The Nara (Nera) or Barea (Barya) language is spoken by the Nara people in an area just to the north of Barentu in the Gash-Barka Region of western Eritrea.^[2] The language is often confused with Kunama, which is at best only distantly related.

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

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

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

Dialects

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

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

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

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar		Glottal
					plain	lab.
Stop	voiceless		t		k	kʷ
	voiced	b	d	dʒ	g	ɡʷ
	prenasal	ᵐb	ⁿd		ᵑɡ	ᵑɡʷ
Fricative		f	s	ʃ			h
Nasal		m	n		ŋ
Lateral			l
Rhotic			r
Approximant				j		w

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

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i iː		u uː
Mid	e eː		o oː
Open		a aː