Folks, my understanding of Socotrans is, they speak a distinctive language, called Soqotri language, that is an ancient Semitic language. The current speakers of Arabic would have to learn this language, the same way we would. Whatever the case, we need more research of the Soqotri language, its relation to Somali language, and population make-up of this island. Keep in mind this island hosts its own indigenous population that warrants its own DNA study as well.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/featur ... 16499.html
Socotri is the most archaic and isolated of several archaic and isolated tongues spoken in Yemen and Oman known as "modern South Arabian languages". Its vocabulary is immensely rich - for example, there are distinct verbs for "to go" according to the time of the day, or for "to give birth" depending on the animal involved.
Socotri's roots are close to the oldest written Semitic tongues that died out thousands of years ago - and it has grammatical features that no longer exist in Arabic, Hebrew or Aramaic. The study of Socotri helps understand the deep, prehistoric past - and the subsequent evolution - of all Semitic tongues.
"This is a very archaic linguistic and literary system that in many ways, I think, has preserved what we, the scholars, are used to perceive as the Biblical world or the ancient Arabic world," Leonid Kogan, professor of Semitic languages at Moscow's Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies, told Al Jazeera.
South Yemen separatists
"All of it is very much alive on today's Socotra."
A neglected tongue
Driven by greed, curiosity, and monsoon winds, countless sailors and merchants have for centuries passed through Socotra, a major trading hub between the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa.
But the language of its inhabitants - fishermen, semi-nomadic herders, and date-palm growers - remained off scholars' radar.
Medieval Arab travellers who reached the distant corners of Europe, Indonesia, and sub-Saharan Africa - describing dozens of ethnic groups and the tongues they spoke - wrote next to nothing about Socotri and its linguistic siblings, although they realised the radical difference of the language from Arabic and its tantalising complexity.
"Despite historical contacts and a common culture, there is no mutual understanding between native speakers of Arabic and native speakers of any" modern South Arabic languages, wrote Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle, a French expert on Socotran folklore.
Western linguists "discovered" Socotri in the early 19th century, and thought the Biblical Queen of Sheba (the Quranic Bilqis) spoke it.
Austrian orientalist David Heinrich Muller used the Arabic script to write down several examples of their oral poetry in 1889, but modern Socotrans have trouble understanding them now.
Roots and ties
Although the Socotri language was isolated, the folklore was not. Some of its themes are similar to those found among Algerian Berbers, in India, Africa, and Europe.
"There is an absolutely obscene plot that has distinct parallels with the Dravidian [folklore] of Middle India and [the speakers of] Mofo-Gudur near Lake Chad," Yuri Berezkin, professor of anthropology at the European University in St Petersburg, told Al Jazeera.
"This could be traced to early Asian-African contacts of the 2nd-1st millennia BC, but could be later."
But more importantly, it still retains some themes that date back to the dawn of human civilisation and religions in the Middle East.
"Socotran folklore helps understand many themes, literary features of written ancient Semitic traditions - the Old Testament, Ugaritic epics, and even Assyro-Babylonian, Mesopotamian literature," Kogan said. "And vice versa, a trained philologist acquainted with those traditions is capable to see the world of Socotra from a completely different, unexpected angle."
Arabisation or synthesis?
Socotra, dubbed by some as "the Indian Ocean's Galapagos", is famed for its landscapes, blood trees, plants that produce frankincense, and hundreds of endemic life forms - some of which face extinction.
Socotri is just as endemic - but is it endangered?
After the fall of the pro-Soviet government and Yemen's reunification in 1990, the southerners were reintroduced to Islam, largely thanks to neighbouring Saudi Arabia. Socotrans were especially zealous to learn proper Islamic practi[c]es - and overcome the stigma of a "backwards" people, Kogan said.
But the Islamisation did not bring about Arabisation, something that has been happening in the Middle East for centuries with the gradual conversion of those who spoke Aramaic, Coptic, and Berber languages.
Socotrans do adopt political, technical, and religious terms from Arabic, but their language stands strong.
"What we are able to see now is a rather harmonious synthesis, and there are good chances that Socotra and Socotris find their appropriate place in a broad Arab and Islamic context without getting rid of most of their - to be sure, highly esteemed and cherished - traditional values," said Kogan.
unlike you fufu mixing Cismaan Maxamuuds with flat noses.
