User:Kvchikka/Mehri

Mehri or Mahri is a Modern South Arabian language of the larger Semitic language family spoken by the Mehri people (al-Mahra in Arabic) of eastern Yemen and southwestern Oman. It is the largest Modern South Arabian language, with an estimate population of speakers between 100,000 and 200,000. It is considered an "At Risk" language by the Endangered Languages Project.

Geographical Distribution
Mehri is spoken natively in the countries of Yemen and Oman. In Yemen it is primarily spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Al Mahrah Governorate, and in Oman it is spoken in the western portion of the Dhofar Governorate in the Negd plateau. It was once spoken as far southwest in Yemen as the port city of Mukalla, but today the Mehri people in Mukalla only speak Arabic. Nomadic Mehri Tribes sometimes venture into land that is part of Saudi Arabia. Mehri people today either live semi-nomadic lifestyles or live in towns and villages, many of which are coastal. Nomadic Mehri speakers breed and herd animals while coastal Mehri speakers work in professions in the fishing and trading industry. It has also been noted that immigrants living near the city of Qishn have learned how to speak Mehri to converse with locals.

Mehri speakers live in close proximity to regions where other Modern South Arabian languages are spoken. Hobyot is spoken in Al Mahrah and Dhofar, and Jibbali is spoken in Dhofar.

History
The Mehri people have been known to speak a different language from Arabic for centuries by Middle Eastern scholars and historians. In the 10th century, scholar Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdani wrote in his book the Sifat Jazirat ul-Arab that the Mehri people spoke "gibberish."

The Mehri language was one of the languages spoken by the Afrari Sultanate. It was responsible for encouraging the output of both Arabic and Mehri poetry, and is responsible for the town of Qishn's poetic traditions surviving to this day.

Modern South Arabian languages were first discovered by European nations by a Lieutenant in the British Empire, James Wellsted, after he recorded words in another Modern South Arabian language, Socotri, in 1834. The first time Mehri was ever published to the European world was with Wellsted's book, Travels to the City of the Caliphs, in 1840. Another large amount of information about the Mehri language came from an expedition by researchers Alfred Jahn, David Heinrich Müller, Wilhelm Hein, and Maximilian Bittner, who departed from Vienna to study Modern South Arabian languages. Their research on Mehri was predominantly in the Yemeni dialect of the language. An additional bulk of research on Mehri came with the research of Thomas Muir Johnstone, who studied Mehri along with other Modern South Arabian languages. His research in Mehri was in the Omani Mehri dialect, and was published in 1987, several years after his death in 1983. Mehri has seen extensive research after Johnstone's death and into the 21st century by researchers hailing from many different countries including France, Austria, and Japan.

Today the number of Mehri speakers is estimated to be at least 100,000, making it the most spoken Modern South Arabian language. Mehri is not recognized as an official language in Yemen or Oman, and currently there is no educational resources available to Mehri people in their native language (Arabic is taught in schools). Mehri historically has no native written form, however there are written forms of Mehri using the arabic alphabet that sometimes includes extra letters. These written forms of Mehri are not official and there has been no standardization of writing or speaking Mehri, such as there has been with Arabic in the form of Modern Standard Arabic. The Mehri language is considered at risk due to the dominance of Arabic and its relatively small population of speakers. Mehri also is threatened due to how it is viewed by local communities as not being a distinct language, as Antoine Lonnet describes: "Mehri now has a very low status in the opinion of the Arabs and the Mehri themselves; it is often considered to be a mere [dialect]" (Lonnet 52).

Dialects and Relation to Other Local Languages
There are two dialect groups of Mehri. Yemeni Mehri is the dialect spoken in eastern Yemen, and Omani Mehri the dialect of Mehri spoken in Oman. There are three major dialects of Yemeni Mehri: one in the eastern parts of Al Mahrah, one spoken around the town of Qishn, and one spoken in Al Ghaydah that mixes in Arabic words. Western Yemeni Mehri is known as Mehriyet and eastern Yemeni Mehri is known as Mehriyot. Omani Mehri (also known as Dhofar Mehri or Negd Mehri) is known in the local dialect as Mehriyyet (or Mahriyya in Omani Arabic). There are several differences between Yemeni and Omani Mehri, such as the lack the definite article "a-" in Yemeni Mehri compared to Omani Mehri, and the combining of the phoneme Ayin into the phoneme Alif in Omani Mehri, along with many other changes in pronunciation and verb conjugations. Omani Mehri is known to have retained sounds and aspects lost by Yemeni Mehri.

Relating to other Modern South Arabian languages, Mehri speakers live in close proximity to other Modern South Arabian speakers. Linguist Aaron D. Rubin theorzies the languages Mehri, Harsusi, and Bathari to be dialects of the same language. In fact, Mehri, Harsusi, Bathari, and Hobyot are theorized by Rubin to be part of a "West Modern South Arabian" branch of languages. Mehri and Jibbali also share many words including: In terms of Mehri's relationship to other Semitic languages, Mehri, unsurprisingly, includes many loanwords from Arabic, such as many Mehri numbers being loanwords from Arabic (such as the tens values after twenty).
 * ķədūr in Mehri and ķↄdↄr in Jibbali (to be able)
 * rəháym in Mehri and rəḥim in Jibbali (pretty/nice)
 * āšərīt in Mehri and əširét (ten, masculine)

Poetry
Mehri speakers have a rich history of poetry, and poetry holds a cultural importance amongst Mehri speakers similar to other peoples in southern Arabia. Under the Afrari Dynasty of the Mahra Sultanate, poetry was produced orally in both Mehri and Arabic, with Arabic poetry heavily influencing oral Mehri poetry. The city of Qishn was known during this time for its output of Mehri and Arabic poetry, and still has an active group of poets performing to this day. Mehri poetry traditionally follows a bipartite monorhymed structure, and the subject matter traditionally emphasizes communal values and may make political and social commentary. One type of this poem is the 'ōdī we-krēm krēm, in which the poet sets the scene to that of a tranquil dusk, only to then describe scenes of violence and destruction, resolving the poem with peace being achieved and a message reinforcing the importance of tribal and social values. Much Mehri traditional poetry follows this cycle of a peaceful setting being disturbed and then returning to a peaceful setting after emotional struggle or turmoil. In recent times Mehri poetry has been discouraged by Yemeni government officials as having the potential to cause civil unrest due to its often social and political subject matter, and because of government officials' inability to understand the Mehri language.

A prominent figure in recent Mehri poetry is Hajj Dakon, from the town of Mhayfif in Yemen. His notable works involve composing and writing Mehri poetry in a modified arabic script, which he started writing in 2003. His poetry is notable for not just including poems typical of the traditional Mehri style of poetry, but also for the inclusion of several poems that are inspired by strophic sung-poetry. These specific poems bear many similarities to Hadrami poetry and other varieties of Arabic strophic sung-poetry in the region, which gained popular with the rise of Yemeni nationalism and anti-nobility sentiments in the 20th century. In fact, Dakon was inspired by famous Hadrami poet Husayn Al Mihdar. Dakon's poetry has become popular amongst the Mehri people, due to the fact that his poems are written in a form of Mehri that is mixed in with Arabic (a form of Mehri similar to that which is spoken in the city of Al Ghaydah), allowing it to be understood by speakers of different dialects of Mehri. His translations of his poems into Arabic, and the adoption of Arabic poetic styles, may allow Mehri to garner respect as a distinct language in the future in a region where Mehri is ignored or considered a dialect of Arabic. Dakon's Mehri-Arabic writing style also has the potential to allow for the creation of a universal form of Mehri that can be understood by all Mehri people across Yemen and Oman, similar to the role of Modern Standard Arabic in the Arabic-speaking world.

Words
Here are a few words in Mehri from Johnstone's Lexicon of Omani Mehri:


 * ḥā-rīt: moon
 * yərēz: rice
 * xəwān-šámmə: heroes
 * yəmšē: yesterday
 * 'allāh: God
 * ḥáyb: father
 * ḥōtəl: tamarisk plant
 * 'ēwa/áy-wā: yes
 * əstōd: craftsman
 * mādēn: copper
 * 'əngəlīzīyət: english