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Kumzari language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Kumzari | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Oman | |
| Region: | Kumzar | |
| Total speakers: | Less than 10,000 (Ethnologue cites 1,700) | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Iranian Southwestern Iranian Luri Kumzari |
|
| Writing system: | Persian alphabet | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | — | |
| ISO 639-3: | zum
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|
Kumzari is an Iranian language spoken by the members of the Shihuh tribe in the Kumzar coast of Musandam Peninsula, northern Oman. This is the only Iranian language spoken in the Arabian Peninsula. Kumzaris can also be found in towns of Dibah and Khasab, as well as various villages and the Larak Island. Speakers are descendants of fishermen that inhabited the coast of Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.
The majority of vocabulary, as well as the grammatical and syntactic structure of the language, is Iranian, although a large number of Arabic words exist in the everyday speech.
The number of Kumzari speakers is estimated at less than 10,000 native speakers, although the members of the tribe number at ca. 21,000 (2000 estimate). Members of the younger generation tend to learn Arabic instead of their native tongue. The language is not written and possesses no literature corpus.