Mehri
Pronunciation[mɛhri]
Native toYemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia
EthnicityMehri people
Native speakers
230,000 (2020)[1]
Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3gdq
Glottologmehr1241
ELPMehri

Mehri or Mahri (مهريّت) is the most spoken of the Modern South Arabian languages (MSALs), a subgroup of the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic family. It is spoken by the Mehri tribes, who inhabit isolated areas of the eastern part of Yemen, western Oman, particularly the Al Mahrah Governorate, with a small number in Saudi Arabia near the Yemeni and Omani borders. Up to the 19th century, speakers lived as far north as the central part of Oman.[2]

Mehri and its sister MSALs were spoken in the southern Arabian Peninsula before the spread of Arabic along with Islam in the 7th century CE. Today it is also spoken by Mehri residents in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as in Kuwait by guest workers originally from South Arabia, as well as nationals with a South Arabian heritage.

Given the dominance of Arabic in the region over the past 1400 years and the frequent bilingualism with Arabic among Mehri speakers, Mehri is at some risk of extinction. It is primarily a spoken language, with little existing vernacular literature and almost no literacy in written Mehri among native speakers.

Dialects

Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdani noted that "the Mahra speak a barbarous tongue like foreigners". Elsewhere, Hamdani showed extensive knowledge of Arabian dialects, each of which was rated in its distance from classical Arabic.[3]

Today, Mehri exists in two main dialects, Yemeni Mehri (also known as Southern Mehri) and Omani Mehri (also known as Dhofari Mehri and Nagd Mehri). Omani Mehri is spoken by a smaller population and shows no significant variation within itself, but Yemeni Mehri is further divided into western and eastern dialects.[4]

Phonology

Unlike other Modern South Arabian languages (MSALs), Mehri 'emphatic' consonants are not simply ejectives. They may also be pharyngealized, as in Arabic, so it is possible for Mehri to attest to a transition from proto-Semitic ejective consonants to the pharyngealized emphatics that are found in many Semitic languages.[5]

The consonant inventory is as follows:

Labial Coronal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal
laminal lateral sibilant palatal
Nasal mn
Occlusive voiced b~pʼd(dʒ~tʃʼ)ɡ
voiceless tk ʔ
emphatic tˁ~tʼkʼ
Continuant voiced ðzɣ~ʁʕ
voiceless fθɬ̠sʃx~χħh
emphatic θ̬ˁ~θʼɬ̬ˁ~ɬ̠ʼs̬ˁ~sʼʃ̬ˁ~ʃʼ
Rhotic r~ɾ
Semivowel wl j
  • /ɡ/ can be realized as an affricate [dʒ] or palatal plosive [ɟ] in the Yemeni dialect.
  • Mahriyōt dialect in Hawf and younger generation of al-Rubūʕah have <ḏ̣> as [ʫ̪ˁ], women speakers of the dialects tend to use an affricate which is sometimes pronounced as voiceless [t͡ʪ].[6]

The vowel inventory is as follows:

Front Central Back
Close iː uː
Mid eː ə oː
ɛ ɛː
Open a aː

Voiced obstruents, or at least voiced stops, devoice in pausa. In this position, both the voiced and emphatic stops are ejective, losing the three-way contrast (/kʼ/ is ejective in all positions). Elsewhere, the emphatic and (optionally) the voiced stops are pharyngealized. Emphatic (but not voiced) fricatives have a similar pattern, and in non-pre-pausal position they are partially voiced.

The difference in place of the laterals is not clear. It may be that the approximant is denti-alveolar, like the alveolar occlusives, and the lateral fricatives apical, or it may be that the latter are palato-alveolar or alveolo-palatal. The fricatives are typically transcribed ś, etc.

/dʒ/ is only in Arabic loans. It is not clear if the rhotic is a trill or a tap.

Morphology

The following are the personal pronouns of Mehri:

Masculine
Singular Dual Plural
1st hōh kīh nḥah
2nd hēt tīh tām
3rd hēh hīh hām
Feminine
Singular Dual Plural
1st hōh kīh nḥah
2nd hīt tīh tān
3rd sēh hīh sān

The following are the possessive suffix versions of those pronouns:

Masculine
Singular Dual Plural
1st -ī -kī -(a)n
2nd -(a)k -kī -kam
3rd -(a)h -hī -ham
Feminine
Singular Dual Plural
1st -ī -kī -(a)n
2nd -(a)š -kī -kan
3rd -(a)s -hī -san

The independent pronouns can also be placed after the genitive exponent (ð-) to convert them into possessive pronouns ("mine" etc).[7]

Writing system

Mehri, like other Modern South Arabian languages, possesses a rich oral tradition, but not a written one.[8][9] There exist two main approaches to writing the language: using the standard Arabic alphabet or using a modified Arabic alphabet that contains additional letters to represent sounds unique to Mehri.[10]

The most common approach is using the unmodified Arabic alphabet. However, standard Arabic’s deficiencies with respect to MSAL result in this approach representing multiple phonemes with the same letters. (Note that, in both Arabic and modified Arabic systems, the vowels are not explicitly differentiated, but are differentiated by the readers through context.)[10]

The modified Arabic alphabet has a few systems, none of which is standardized.[11][12][13] The most commonly used modified Arabic additional letters as documented in use (e.g., in text messages, email, etc.) by the MSAL centre at the University of Leeds;[14] a proposed set of additional letters for the Arabic alphabet to adapt it to be able to be a good systemic for writing MSAL languages (including Mehri) by that same centre; and a separate set of additional letters proposed by Almahrah.net for the same purpose are given (along with IPA phonetic transcription and Romanizations) in the columns of the table below.

Romanization IPA Workaround letters[14][15] Leeds proposed letters[14][15] Almahrah.net proposed letters[12]
ś ɬ ث‎ پ‎ ڛ‎
ṣ̌ ʃˤ ض‎ ڞ‎
ṯ̣ / ḏ̣ θ̬ˤ~θʼ ظ‎ ڟ‎
ź ɬ̬ˤ~ɬ̠ʼ~ʒ ذ‎ چ‎ / ڌ‎ چ‎
g ɡ ج‎
ḳ kʼ ق‎
ē / ɛ̄ ɛ(ː) ي‎ ێ‎

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Mehri at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. ↑ Walter Dostal (1967). Die Beduinen in Südarabien. Eine ethnologische Studie zur Entwicklung der Kamelhirtenkultur in Arabien (in German). Vienna: Ferdinand Berger and Söhne OHG. p. 133. fig. 19
  3. ↑ Abu Muhammad al-Hasan Hamdani, Sifat Jazirat al-'Arab (probably ed. 1884), 134 tr. Chaim Rabin (1951). Ancient West-Arabian. London: Taylor's Foreign Press. p. 43.
  4. ↑ Rubin, Aaron (2010). The Mehri Language of Oman. BRILL. pp. 1–2. ISBN 9789004182639. Retrieved 24 March 2015.
  5. ↑ Watson & Bellem, "Glottalisation and neutralisation", in Hassan & Heselwood, eds, Instrumental Studies in Arabic Phonetics, 2011.
  6. ↑ Janet Watson (January 2011). "Lateral fricatives and lateral emphatics in southern Saudi Arabia and Mehri". academia.edu.
  7. ↑ Rubin 2010, 33.
  8. ↑ SIMEONE-SENELLE, Marie-Claude (November 2013). "Mehri and Hobyot Spoken in Oman and Yemen". LLACAN - Langage, Langues et Cultures d'Afrique Noire: 1 – via HALSHS.
  9. ↑ Rubin, Aaron (2010-05-17). The Mehri Language of Oman. BRILL. p. 12. ISBN 978-9004182639.
  10. 1 2 OBEID ABDULLA ALFADLY, HASSAN. "The Morphology of Mehri Qishn dialect in Yemen" (PDF).
  11. ↑ Almakrami, Mohsen Hebah (2015-11-22). "Number, Gender and Tense in Aljudhi Dialect of Mehri Language in Saudi Arabia". Theory and Practice in Language Studies. 5 (11): 2230–2241. doi:10.17507/tpls.0511.06. ISSN 1799-2591.
  12. 1 2 "Mehri Arabic Alphabet".
  13. ↑ "The Shahri language and its relationship with Classical Arabic". Archived from the original on 2018-02-19.
  14. 1 2 3 Modern South Arabian Languages Centre, “Orthographic Characters” (University of Leeds, 2019‑05‑15).
  15. 1 2 James Dickins, “Bibliography of the Modern South Arabian Languages [MSAL]” (University of Leeds MSAL Centre, 2019‑05‑15).

Further reading

  • Rubin, Aaron. 2010. The Mehri Language of Oman. Leiden: Brill.
  • Rubin, Aaron, 2018. Omani Mehri: A New Grammar with Texts. Leiden: Brill.
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