Arabic on the Dahlak islands (Eritrea)

Abstract This paper is devoted to the Arabic dialect spoken on the Dahlak archipelago of Eritrea, a variety of Arabic poorly documented so far. There are few studies on the Arabic varieties spoken on the African coast of the Red sea ( Simeone-Senelle 2000b , 2002 , 2005a – b , 2009 ; Kassim Mohamed 2012 ) but none of them has been dedicated particularly to Arabic as spoken on the islands. By revising previously published data about the Arabic variety spoken by islanders, I will attempt to assess the specific features of Dahlaki Arabic. After an overview of the archipelago and its sociolinguistic situation on the three inhabited islands, the main features of Arabic spoken on the islands will be compared with Arabic spoken as lingua franca (ALF) on the African coast of the Red Sea. The issue is to determine to what extend a distinction can be drawn between both Arabic varieties: Dahlaki Arabic and ALF of the coast.