Kumzari is the only Iranian language spoken exclusively in the Arabian Peninsula.
Location
The Kumzari name derives from the historically rich mountainous village of Kumzar. The language has two main groups of speakers, one on each side of the Strait of Hormuz: the Shihuh tribe of the Musandam Peninsula and the Laraki community of Larak Island in Iran. On the Musandam Peninsula, the Kumzar population is concentrated in Oman, in the village of Kumzar and in a quarter of Khasab known as the Harat al-Kamazirah. In addition, Kumzari is found at Dibba and the coastal villages of Elphinstone and the Malcolm Inlets. It is the mother tongue of fishermen who are descendants of the Yemeni conqueror of Oman, Malek bin Faham (Arabic: مالك بن فهم). Based on linguistic evidence, Kumzari was present in the Arabia region before the Muslim conquest of the region in the 7th Century A.D.[8]
Phonology
Consonants
Kumzari has consonants, and all but three (ʔ,ʁ,ɦ) also exist as geminates[9]
Kumzari has a length distinction in its vowels, with five long vowels and three short vowels. Vowels never occur in direct hiatus; rather, they are separated by either a semivowel such as /j/ or /w/, or a glottal stop (/ʔ/).
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al-Salimi, Abdulrahman (2009). "The Wajīhids of Oman". Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies. 39: 373–381. JSTOR41223995.
Bailey, H. W. (1931). "Kumzari Dimestan". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 63 (1): 138–140. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00066284. JSTOR25194182.
B., H. W. (1931). "Review of The Kumzari Dialect of the Shihuh Tribe, Arabia, and a Vocabulary". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1): 229–230. JSTOR25194234.
Battenburg, John (13 February 2013). "The status of Kumzari and its speakers: A local language of the Musandam Peninsula of Oman". Language Problems and Language Planning. 37 (1): 18–30. doi:10.1075/lplp.37.1.02bat.
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