Soqotri language
South Arabian language spoken by the native population of the Socotra archipelago in the Guardafui Channel, and in Aden and Saana, Yemen
Soqotri is a South Semitic language spoken by the Soqotrans on the islands of the Socotra Archipelago in Yemen. Soqotri is one of six languages that form a group called Modern South Arabian languages (MSAL). It is also spoken by Soqotri immigrants in the Gulf Arab states.
Classification
Soqotri is often mistaken as a variety of Arabic but is typically classified as an Afro-Asiatic, Semitic, South Semitic and South Arabian language.
Scholars believe that there are no longer any grounds for associating the Modern South Arabian languages so directly with Arabic. They consider these dialects to be not Arabic, but Semitic languages in their own right.
Dialects
The Soqotri dialectology is very rich, especially considering the island's surface area and the number of inhabitants. Soqotri speakers live on their islands, but rarely on the Yemeni mainland. The language was, throughout its history, isolated from the Arabian mainland. Arabic is also spoken in a dialectal form on Socotra.
“Soqotri language” enters the record as south Arabian language spoken by the native population of the Socotra archipelago in the Guardafui Channel, and in Aden and Saana, Yemen. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Soqotri, language and South can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q13283. The Library of Congress control number is sh85124475. Authority coordinates are 12.480, 53.796. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Soqotri language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.