Linguistic map of Eritrea; Nara is spoken in the sea-blue region in the west
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.
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
^Rilly, Claude. 2009. From the Yellow Nile to the Blue Nile: The quest for water and the diffusion of Northern East Sudanic languages from the fourth to the first millennia BCE. Paper presented at ECAS 2009 (3rd European Conference on African Studies, Panel 142: African waters – water in Africa, barriers, paths, and resources: their impact on language, literature and history of people) in Leipzig, 4 to 7 June 2009.
