> I found this article and thought it might be of interest to the
> liguists
> in the group.
>
> Linguist battles to save 'lost' Eritrean language
> Tuesday May 10th, 2005 11:59.
>
> ASMARA, May 10 (AFP) -- Nearly a decade after accidentally discovering
> a
> previously unknown language on an Indian Ocean archipelago off the
> Eritrean coast, a French linguist is fighting to save the unwritten,
> untaught tongue.
>
> "Dahaalik is part of humanity's heritage and must be preserved," said
> Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle, who with colleague Martine Vanhove, found
> Dahlak island fishermen conversing in the unusual vernacular nine years
> ago.
>
> Puzzled by words and usage that did not correspond to the two main
> languages of the region -- Afar and Arabic -- the pair at first thought
> it
> was a dialect of Tigray, but later ascertained it was a distinct
> entity,
> she said.
>
> Although close to Arabic and Tigre, Dahaalik was determined to be a
> language in itself due to its markedly different phonetics, morphology
> and
> syntax, but had languished in obscurity on the isles off the port of
> Massawa.
>
> "Before 1996, no one had heard of Dahaalik," said Simeone-Senelle, a
> Afro-Asiatic language specialist at the French National Centre for
> Scientific Research (CNRS).
>
> "We have to find out how it appeared," she said. "For the moment, we
> don't
> know when it emerged."
>
> Now spoken by only about 3 000 people on the three islands and not
> currently taught in schools, Dahaalik, whose origins remain a mystery,
> is
> in danger of dying out, she said.
>
>
> The rest of the article (not printed due to copyright considerations)
> can
> be read on-line at
>
http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=9484
>
> Gregory Gadow
>