Soqoṭri
[aka Soqoṭrī, Soqotri, Saqatri]Classification: Afro-Asiatic
·endangered
Classification: Afro-Asiatic
·endangered
Soqoṭrī, Soqotri, Saqatri, Sokotri, Suqutri, Socotri |
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Afro-Asiatic, Semitic, Modern South Arabian |
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none |
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ISO 639-3 |
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sqt |
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As csv |
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Information from: “Morphological and syntactic aspects of the Soqotri dialect of Galansiyah” (xxvii+485) . Makhashen, Khaled Awadh Omer (2009)
(based on the population of Socotra island)
"Nowadays, anyone who visits the island hardly meets a monolingual Soqotran who never speaks Arabic, especially in the main towns. Even in the villages, the young Soqotrans who attend school are fluent in Arabic. The number of monolingual Soqotrans, usually old men and women living in the mountains and remote areas, is decreasing."
Arabic
The Soqotri culture as well as the Soqotri language is under a huge influence of the dominant Arabic culture and language which infiltrates everything in the archipelago of Soqotra.
It is spoken only in the islands of Soqotra archipelago in Yemen and by the Soqotri immigrants in the Arabian Gulf States mainly in Ajman in the United Arab Emirates. Soqotra archipelago consists of Soqotra, the main and largest island, the island of Abd al-Kuri, Samha Island and Darsa Island. Soqotra archipelago is located in the Arabian Sea around 300 kilometres south of the Arabian Peninsula and 240 kilometres from the coasts of Africa. It is between the latitudes 12, 8 -12, 42 north of the equator and the longitudes 53, 19 -54, 33 east of Greenwich (Zorman, 2006)
Information from: “Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16th Edition (2009)” . M. Paul Lewis · SIL International
"57,000 in Yemen (1990 census)."
"Yemen: Mainly Soqotra Island; ’Abd al-Kuri island, Samha Island in the Gulf of Aden."
Information from: “The World Atlas of Language Structures” . Bernard Comrie and David Gil and Martin Haspelmath and Matthew S. Dryer · Oxford University Press
Information from: “Soqotri dialectology, and the evaluation of the language endangerment” . Marie-Claude SIMEONE-SENELLE (2003)
Domains of use are diminishing, as is intergenerational transmission. The author notes that children can no longer count to ten in Soqotri, they only know the Arabic. This shift is mainly due to schooling in Arabic, urbanization, television, and modernization.
Arabic
Author divides up the language into six dialects based on area:
1. Hadibo (the capital);
2. Villages of the northern plain, near the city and Qadhub;
3. Haghyer and Diksam, isolated in the mountains;
4. Momi;
5. Qalansiya area, western coast;
6. Noged, the southern coast.
Information from: “Glottolog” .
Information from: “The Modern South Arabian Languages” (378-423) . Marie-Claude Simeone-Simelle (1997) , Robert Hetzron · London & New York: Routledge
The inhabitants of Soqotra are put at 50,000, those of 'Abd-al-Kuri at about 250 (Naumkin 1988:342, 359) and at ten or a dozen in Samha.
Both in Oman and in the Yemen, Arabic is the language used for official intercourse (administration, school, army). Native speakers use their mother tongue for private purposes, in the family circle and with other speakers of the same language; many a speaker uses several MSAL, when these languages are closely related.