Soqotri, or Socotri, (autonym: méthel d-saqátri; Arabic - اللغة السقطرية) is the language of the native population of the island of Socotra, and Abd al Kuri and Samhah islands of the Socotra archipelago off the southern coast of the Republic of Yemen. It is one of the Modern South Arabian languages.
Soqotri speakers live on their island, in UAE, Oman, and other Arabian states, but rarely on the Yemeni mainland. The language was, through its history, isolated from the Arabian mainland. Arabic is also spoken in a dialectal form on Socotra.
Soqotri once had ejective stops and fricatives. However, the fricatives have become largely pharyngealized, like the Arabic emphatic consonants, and this occasionally happens to the stops as well. Given that proviso, the phonemic inventory is basically that of Mehri (see).
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word liberty entire nations.”
—Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (1772–1801)