Dear Sufi,

I read with interest your discussion regarding the various types of Maay dialects spoken in the majority of regions in southern Somalia. In all the areas you mentioned, Maay is communicated as a medium by almost all the predominant native interlocutors, and even some foreign elements who have acquired domicile in the given regions for quite some time.

Although I am a linguist (sociolinguist), I wouldn't like to indulge so much in discussing this issue by the net as it is a bit time-consuming to make some people understand and then accept the facts about different Maay dialects as well as the wide linguistic differences eminent between Maay and Maxaa ( Mahaa )as separately distinct languages.This is so because it is a common trait of the Somali people not to accept easily what is different from what they know or they think they know; or what is different from what they want and how they want it. They get too emotional at the threshold of the topic in discussion and turn the whole situation into a war-like scenario where intellectual reasoning is denied as an unpragmatic irrelevance.

Also, it is a fact that all the Maay speakers, regardless of where they live, can understand each other without a burden of the variance in dialects despite their multiplicity. And socioculturally, though, it is the diversity of these multiple dialects that augments the richness and authenticity of the Maay as a language of its own entity while at the same time holding in a firm unity the intercultural relationship of all those communities who identify with the language. Therefore, one should be proud of the diversity in the unity rather than seeing that as a threat.

Best regards.

Mohamed A. Eno