Basic info in the Nara language (from Banti and Savà (2021). Nara phonology. Rassegna di Studi Etiopici - 3^ Serie - Vol. 5: 235-268).

Nara (ISO code nrb), is a Nilo-Saharan language regarded as belonging to the Northern East Sudanic family together with the Nubian, Tama and Nyimang groups (Güldemann, 2018: 235-309; Dimmendaal et al., 2019: 326 ff.). Rilly (2010) has shown that also the ancient Meroitic language probably belonged to this family. The language and its speech community are also known with the older name Barya (ባርያ, Baria, Barea), which already occurs as an ethnic name in inscriptions of the Axumite king ^cEzana who reigned from 330 to 365-370 CE ca. In Eritrea this name has been replaced by Nara (also Nera), in order to avoid the derogatory meaning “slave”, “one who is in service of a demon”, which barya acquired in major Ethiosemitic languages such as Ge’ez, Amharic and Tigrinya, because the Nara-speaking communities were frequently raided for capturing slaves by their more powerful neighbours [1]. In Sudan, however, Bāryā or al-Bāryā ( الباريا ) is still the most common designation for this population group. Reinisch (1874), who edited earlier field notes by Munzinger Pasha (b. 1832, † 1875), states that Barea is only used by foreigners for this population, whereas they call themselves “Nèrè und Mogoréb” (p. viii)[2]. In his section Barea-deutsches Wörterbuch, Mogorèb is entered as “gauname”, i.e. ‘name of a district’ (p. 143), whereas for Nère one finds: “pl. Nèra bezeichnung der Baréa vom gaue Hagr” (p. 144), i.e., ‘denomination of the Barya from the Hagr district’. In other words, Nara would have been used at that time as an ethnic designation only by the Higir Naras for themselves, not for the other Nara-speaking groups, even though Nèrè bena (p. viii), i.e., Nara baná as it is spelt now, was already used as a general term for the Nara language. Speakers of Nara link their self designation with nara ‘sky, cloud’. As already noticed by Reinisch (1874), Nara is a plural form. Its singular in present-day Higir Nara is Nari.

According to Ethnologue (Eberhard et al., 2020), Nara is spoken by about 99.800 people in the Gash Barka region, north of Barentu in northwestern Eritrea. Nara speakers are also found in urban centres in Eritrea, as well as in Khartoum and Kassala. They are now divided into four sections, the major ones still being the Higir and the Mogoreeb or Mogoraayeeb, the smaller ones the Saantoorta (lit. ‘Three tents’) and the Koyta, who live in close contact with the Kunama. According to Thompson (1976b: 599):

 

“There is considerable dialect difference among these sections of the tribe and even striking differences within each section from village to village. They can all communicate in direct conversation, but have considerable difficulty in overhearing people of other sections talking among themselves. The differences involve both vocabulary and grammar.”

 

The dialect of Nara described in Reinisch (1874) has still to be identified in full detail, but it appears to differ both from Higir and from Mogoreeb as they are spoken today. Thompson (1976a: 484) is an outline of Higir Nara from Mogolo, one of their major towns. Since 1988, a written form of Nara has been developed in Eritrea for schoolbooks and other publications addressed to the Nara-speaking community. It has a Roman orthography, and is based on Higir Nara, with a few items from other dialects. Hayward’s and Dawd Abushush’s studies all focus on Higir Nara. On the other hand, Elsadig (2016) is a recent description of Mogoreeb Nara.

 

The language is commonly used in the Nara communities at home and for everyday communication, and it is transmitted to children. However, also Arabic and Tigre are widely used for intercommunication, and most literate Naras use Arabic as a written language. The diaspora in Arabic speaking countries like Sudan tends to use Arabic more and more, and also in the Nara-speaking areas in Eritrea Arabic is felt to be spreading.

 

The major older sources on the history and social organisation of the Nara are Munzinger (1864: 373-536), Pollera (1913), and Conti Rossini (1916: 741-802). For more recent sociolinguistic, historical, and anthropological information, s. Thompson (1975b: 598 f.), Treiber (2007), and especially Issa (2018).

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          * The authors thank all those who helped them in preparing this paper, in particular Dawd Abushush, Moreno and Roberta Vergari, the Sudan Mission of the University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Issa Adem, Elsadig Omda Ibrahim Elnur, and various members of the Nara diaspora met by one of the authors in Khartoum and in Kassala. For the purpose of Italian law, Giorgio Banti is the author of §§ 1, 9 and 10, while Graziano Savà is the author of the other seven sections. Obviously, any mistake and wrong data is due only to the authors.

 [1] Not dissimilarly Eng. slave, Fr. esclave, It. schiavo derive from Medieval Lat. sclavus ‘slave’, an adapted form of slavus ‘Slave, Slavonic’, which started to be used in Germany in the X-XI centuries CE when Slavonic captives were a major source for slaves in western and southern Europe.

[2]   In Reinisch’s transcription system, è and é are pronounced as [ɛ] and, respectively, [e] (s. § 5).