Red Sea Languages: Historical Links and Linguistic Features (1) Dr. Hassan Adrob

01:38 AM November, 13 2026

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د.حسن علي أدروب-عمان
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Red Sea Languages: Historical Links and Linguistic Features (1)
Dr. Hassan Adrob
Recent studies show that Sudan is considered one of the founders of human civilization. Reading the article, “The Sudanese vocabulary and expressions and their meanings”, by columnist Hatim Eujay, outlining the historical and linguistic background of languages, is published articles providing the historical background of the Sudanese languages and how they overlapped overtime. However, the linguistic aspects influence the relationships between the impact of environmental and historical in connecting these languages.

Linguistic studies conducted by Marie-Claude and others to compare languages in African and specifically on Red Sea zone. These studies aim at finding linguistic similarities or differences between the languages of the Red Sea seaboard. In this series on Red Sea languages, the concentration will be about words Arabised and undergo changes when their root lent or borrowed to other languages. Thus, this articles will discuss the phonetic, morphological and syntactic features of these languages.

To ensure the impact of historical and geographical factors on the culture and languages of both sides of the Red Sea, the linguists took a few years in the mainland. They found that there was an extreme influence of Arabic on African languages although they noted that there was constant intercourse between the languages of both sides of the Red Sea. Another significant result of their studies was the classification of the Red Sea languages into Cushitic and Afro-Asian languages.

Firstly, they searched for phonetic features which may link languages in the zone. They found that Cushitic languages have the lowest number of dental fricatives; most of the present sounds are probably borrowed as [[th]] which is sounded (ث) /Ө/ and (ذ) /ð/ in most Sudanese dialects and Beja languages. As a result, many words borrowed from Arabic with sounds such as these are subject to change to their nearest counterpart in Sudanese language. For example, for the word [thani], which means the second, Sudanese say it [tani] and [dahab] for the Arabic word for gold [thahab]. However, when they read Quran at schools, teachers and scholars reinforce these sound to be pronounced correctly.

They also found that the unique Arabic uvular sound [q] (ق) is velariszed in all Red Sea zone languages and North Africa. Words such as [qamar] for [moon] is pronounced [gamar] by shifting the uvular sound to velar, which can be heard as (g) like [go].



The final differences in today’s article are found in pharyngealization sounds which are characterize Arabic are only found in a few Beja loanwords from Arabic. These pharyngeals are well-known for being particularly predominant in Afro-asiatic languages as (Crystal 1987:165) noted. As for the voiceless pharyngeal fricative [ħ] (حin words such as [hakam], which means a [referee] is pronounced [[hakam]] with voiced [h] ( ه‍ ), it is stable in almost all the languages, except in Beja where it seems to have fused with the voiceless fricative laryngeal /h/.

In addition, (خ) can be pronounced as [k] in several varieties such as [alkhair]is pronounced [alkair]. Finally, the velar stops [kw] and [gw] are only found in Beja and some South Cushitic languages such as [Iraqw] language in Tanzania , whicht will be discussed in the next article.

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