Thirty Years After the First National Conference on Eritrean Languages
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Language,
Education, and the Blin Experience, 1996–2026
Kiflemariam Hamde
30th-anniversary retrospective • 18 August 2026
Introduction: Returning to Asmara, August 1996
From 16 to 18 August 1996, participants gathered in Asmara for the First National Conference on Eritrean Languages. The conference brought together people concerned with Eritrea’s languages, education, culture, language planning, and social development. Papers were presented in general and parallel sessions, and the conference took place during the early years of independence, when language and education were being discussed as part of the larger project of national reconstruction.1
I participated not simply as an observer but as a presenter and session participant. I presented a paper entitled “ተራ ቋንቋ ኣብ ሕብረተሰብኣዊ ምዕብልና” The Role of Language in Social Development.” I also chaired one parallel session and served as secretary in another. Ibrahim Totil chaired the session in which I presented my paper. These details, together with the recollections that follow concerning the organization and atmosphere of the conference, are participant recollections and should be distinguished from claims established directly by surviving documentary records.
As I remember it, the general conference was convened under Abdalla Jaber of the PFDJ and Osman Salih, the newly appointed Minister of Education. Parallel sessions had their own chairs and secretaries, while participants were at times brought together again so that discussions taking place in different sessions could be shared more widely. About thirty participants came from Zoba Anseba, led by Habteab Kifleyesus, then working with the PFDJ/Higdef. Approximately forty papers were associated with the conference, although some submitted papers were not actually presented. The final evening included a conference dinner and musical celebration.
These human details matter. The conference was not simply a set of policy papers. Speakers of different Eritrean languages met, argued, listened to one another, and considered the place of language in the new state. A general discussion also selected or elected a three-person board to prepare a draft for a future Language and Culture Forum or similar body that could plan and invite future conferences. Thirty years later, I remember two of the members: the late Dr Idris Abaq, who came from Paris, and Ghirmai Negash of Leiden University. I do not at present know what became of that initiative.
Thirty years later, I return to the conference not merely to commemorate it, but to compare aspirations with outcomes, principles with implementation, and language policy with the lived experience of speakers.
What did thirty years of experience teach us that we could not yet know in August 1996?
The Blin experience provides the principal case through which I approach that question. It should not be treated as automatically representative of Tigre, Saho, Afar, Kunama, Nara, Tigrinya, Arabic, or other Eritrean linguistic communities. Their histories, demographic circumstances, written traditions, educational experiences, and relationships with other languages differ. The Blin case is used here as a longitudinal case through which broader questions concerning language, education, participation, literacy, cultural continuity, and social development can be examined.
Purpose, Sources, and Method
This article has three related purposes. First, it reconstructs aspects of the First National Conference on Eritrean Languages from contemporary documentation and participant recollection, with particular attention to my paper, “The Role of Language in Social Development.” Second, it examines the Blin experience during the thirty years that followed, placing formal mother-tongue education within the longer history of Blin writing, grammar, poetry, language planning, literature, religious and liturgical translation, broadcasting, community organization, and diaspora activism. Third, it asks what lessons can reasonably be drawn in 2026: what should be preserved, what should be reconsidered, and what should now be strengthened or rebuilt.
Thirty years after the First National Conference on Eritrean Languages, to what extent did the policies, institutions, and community initiatives that followed create the conditions for sustainable Blin language development, and what does the experience suggest should happen next?
The article combines three forms of evidence. The first is contemporary documentary evidence: the 1996 conference paper, bibliographic records, earlier Blin publications and working papers, and subsequent writings on language development. The second is participant recollection. I identify recollected interventions, discussions, and organizational details as such rather than presenting them as though they came from formal minutes. The third is retrospective assessment. Developments between 1996 and 2026 allow questions to be asked that could not have been answered at the conference itself.
This distinction is especially important when discussing intended or unintended consequences. Knowing an outcome in 2026 does not by itself establish what policymakers knew, intended, or anticipated in 1996. Claims about intention require contemporary evidence. At the same time, once consequences become visible, the institutional capacity to evaluate and correct them becomes part of the policy record.
The Intellectual Background: Education, Development, and Language
My 1996 paper did not originate entirely in preparation for the Asmara conference. Between 1993 and 1996, I was enrolled in a master’s-level programme at the Institute of International Education, Stockholm University. I completed 60 points of coursework but did not write the final master’s thesis. The theoretical parts later used in the conference paper had already been developed through working papers for courses and research work, particularly Education and National Development, Education and Economics of Education, and Education in Multicultural Contexts.
The paper therefore approached language through the wider relationship among education, culture, institutions, participation, modernization, and development. Its underlying proposition remains important to me: people should not have to abandon their language in order to develop. A language can itself be a means through which people learn, preserve knowledge, transmit culture, participate in society, and respond creatively to social change.
Thirty years of experience, however, make it necessary to distinguish principle from implementation. One can support the principle of mother-tongue education while questioning features of its implementation. One can value standardization while asking whether a particular orthographic arrangement produced the expected long-term results. The purpose of evaluation is not to deny the principle, but to examine what the principle became in practice.
Blin Writing and Language Planning Before 1996
The First National Conference did not encounter Blin as an unwritten language awaiting its first programme of development. Blin possessed a much older documentary history. Nineteenth-century works included Leo Reinisch’s grammar, texts, dictionary, and the 1882 Gospel of Mark in Blin. Later religious, linguistic, and cultural works continued the written tradition.2
Religious writing was already an important domain before independence. Abba Woldeyohannes Habtemariam translated into Blin a brief catechism, Who Created Us? (ኣዊ መሃድኹንና?), first published in 1944 and reprinted in 1950 and 1983 by the Francescana Printing Press. Around 1974/75, Abba Kiflemariam Fadega began the visionary work of translating the Geʿez Mass into Blin, together with prayer and catechetical materials. Surviving bibliographic records identify The Holy Mass in Blin (1976) and a catechism and prayer work (1977). His 1984 paper, “The Blin Language: A Long Struggle for Survival,” presented at the Eighth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa, placed Blin language and oral literature before an international scholarly audience.
My own work in the 1980s included research on the origin and development of Blin and on the role of poems in Blin society. These studies approached language not only as a grammatical system but as a carrier of history, poetry, cultural knowledge, and social meaning.3
The early 1990s brought an important expansion. Tekie Albekit published an introductory phonetics and grammar in 1992; Tekle Ghiorghis Yohannes Aftay published a Blin grammar in the same year; and the Blin Language Research Group produced a Blin dictionary with English translations, edited by Kiflemariam Hamde and Paulos Zeremariam. Tekie Alibekit followed in 1993 with a summary of Blin phonetics and grammatical terms.4
The Blin Language Research Group: Collective Work and Intergenerational Continuity
An important institutional foundation of modern Blin development was the Blin Language Research Group, formed in 1977. The Group originally comprised twenty-one members; their names are preserved in the introductory pages of the 1992 Blin Dictionary (pp. v–vi). The Group should therefore be understood not merely as the body behind one dictionary, but as a substantial network of Blin language workers engaged in vocabulary collection, discussion of grammar and terminology, writing, translation, cultural documentation, and the practical problems of developing written Blin.
The 1992 Blina Qolata Endiba: Blin Dictionary, with English Translations was a major collective outcome of this longer work. Edited by Kiflemariam Hamde and Paulos Zeremariam, it should be read both as a lexicographical resource and as a historical record of organized Blin language activism. Its introductory pages preserve evidence of the twenty-one-member network that stood behind an important phase of modern Blin development.
The long-term importance of the Group becomes clearer when the later careers of some members are considered. Several remained active as writers, translators, clergy, researchers, and cultural workers. Bishop Kidane Yebio, now Eparch of Keren, and Abba Hailemariam Ghebre of the Cistercians are examples of members whose later religious, literary, and translation work continued the linguistic commitment of the earlier period. Zerezghi Haile focused on literature in Geez and has tutorials online. Abba Kibreab Sead also remained active as an author; his biography of Bishop Abraha Francios was written in Tigrinya and should therefore not be counted as Blin-language literature, but it is relevant evidence of the wider intellectual and authorial activity of members of the Research Group.
This continuity also reaches a younger generation. Abba Hailemariam Ghebre has collaborated with newer Blin activists, linguists, translators, and clergy, including Abba Frezghi Bekit, Abba Mengstu Ghebreamlak, and Abba Berhane Habte, OFM Cap. The significance of this collaboration lies not only in individual publications but in the transmission of accumulated linguistic experience. Members of the pioneering generation became, in this sense, carriers and transmitters of linguistic memory.
The Catholic Eparchy of Keren consequently deserves attention as one of the later institutional settings in which earlier Blin language expertise continued to be used and transmitted. This does not make modern Blin development primarily ecclesiastical. Rather, it shows that the same language workers could move across research, literary, educational, religious, and community settings. Formal institutional continuity was sometimes weak, but human and network continuity was considerably stronger.
The legacy of the Research Group can therefore be assessed at three levels: collective linguistic production; the subsequent individual authorship and translation of its members; and intergenerational transmission to newer Blin language workers. This helps explain why the history of Blin development cannot be divided neatly into pre-independence and post-independence, secular and religious, or community and institutional periods.
The 1994 Standardization Initiative
By 1994, the work had moved explicitly into language planning and standardization. Tekie Alibekit, Kiflemariam Hamde, Fessehazion Zemicael, and Abba Asfaha Kidanemariam prepared Blina Gaba Tefh’at: Some Standardisation of Blin Writing, a collaborative working paper associated with the Blin Language and Culture Association in Stockholm.5
This document is crucial for interpreting the later script debate. The question was not whether Blin should become a written language; it already had a written history. Nor was it simply whether Blin writing should be standardized; Blin writers were already attempting standardization. The historically more precise question is which existing and emerging practices should form the basis of standardization, who should participate in the decision, and how a standardized system should relate to the accumulated written heritage.
The 1994 initiative also demonstrates that Blin language planning was already a collective and transnational undertaking before the 1996 conference. Post-independence state language planning should therefore be understood as one major chapter within a longer history, not as the beginning of that history.
My 1996 article, “Recent Developments in Blin Writing: 1975–1994,” was itself a contemporary attempt to take stock of this expanding body of work.6
The First National Conference as a Moment of Participation
The conference provided a national setting in which language questions could be discussed publicly. In my recollection, Blin-speaking participants did not simply endorse established arrangements. They raised concerns about the delay in implementing mother-tongue education and about the limited public recognition and use of Blin.
Participants associated with Blin language and cultural work included Gergishu Zemikael, Gideon Ghebrehiwet, and Ustaz Mohamed Nur Faid. Some questioned why radio and television journalists discussing Blin language and culture continued to interview Blin speakers in Tigrinya or Arabic, even when some interviewees were not fully comfortable in those languages. One woman stated, in substance, that she would no longer cooperate if questions about Blin language and culture continued to be put to her in another language. I present this as participant recollection, not as a verbatim quotation from conference minutes.
The episode illustrates a distinction that remains important: a language may be recognized without being used. Recognition, education, literary production, public use, and intergenerational transmission are related but distinct dimensions of language vitality.
Participation, similarly, should mean more than being informed of a decision. There is a difference between being informed, being consulted, and sharing in problem definition, policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. Language policy concerning a community should not reach that community only at the implementation stage; community knowledge should also help shape policy and subsequent evaluation.
Mother-Tongue Education after 1996: Achievement, Transition, and Unresolved Questions
The introduction of formal mother-tongue education was one of the most consequential developments in the modern history of Blin. It gave the language an educational domain on a scale that earlier writers, grammarians, clergy, and cultural activists had not possessed. A Latin-based curriculum was developed, and textbooks for different subjects were produced for Grades 1–5. The Ministry of Education’s Blin materials included graded schoolbooks, while Sulus Beyed’s MORA provided a reader containing stories and related material.7
That achievement should be acknowledged. A child’s own language was treated as a language of literacy and education, not merely as a language of the home. Yet thirty years later, the existence of textbooks alone is insufficient evidence for evaluating the programme. The relevant question is what educational and linguistic capacities the programme produced and whether those capacities continued after pupils left the Blin-medium stage.
From Learning to Read to Continuing to Read
Sustainable literacy requires continuity. A pupil who learns to read Blin needs increasingly demanding material as he or she grows. A reading culture cannot stop at Grade 5. Children’s stories should lead toward adolescent literature, poetry, biography, history, science, fiction, cultural studies, religious texts, and other forms of independent reading.
The central policy question is not merely whether children were educated through Blin, but whether education helped them become lifelong users, readers, writers, and transmitters of Blin.
This creates an important research question: to what extent did pupils who acquired Blin literacy through school become readers of the wider Blin literature? If the connection remained weak, the problem was not necessarily mother-tongue education itself. It may have been the absence of a sufficiently developed post-literacy environment linking school literacy to a living reading culture.
The Transition to Tigrinya and Wider Multilingualism
A second issue concerns transition into later schooling and public environments in which Tigrinya (and Arabic formally) acquired considerable practical importance. The developmental objective should not be Blin instead of Tigrinya, nor Tigrinya instead of Blin. It should be additive multilingualism: strong Blin competence together with effective acquisition of Tigrinya and Arabic and other languages required for education, work, regional interaction, and international communication.
One concern repeatedly raised in assessing the Blin experience is whether the language sequence provided pupils with sufficient competence in Tigrinya for later educational and public participation. This should be investigated empirically through former pupils, teachers, schools, cohorts, and educational transitions rather than assumed either to have succeeded or failed.
Language competence can also acquire symbolic meanings beyond communication. In my observation, inadequate Tigrinya has sometimes exposed speakers of other Eritrean languages to social assumptions that they are insufficiently integrated or somehow “less Eritrean.” Where such attitudes occur, they contradict the principle that Eritrean national belonging should not depend upon competence in one ethnolinguistic language.
Script and Educational Continuity
The script question intersects with educational transition. Earlier generations of Blin readers often possessed literacy in Geʿez-script traditions and related literacy in Tigrinya, Tigre, Amharic, or Geʿez. The Latin-based school curriculum created a different pathway. The relevant educational question is therefore not merely which script represents Blin sounds most efficiently, but what other literacies a script makes easier or more difficult to acquire.
Two forms of disconnection may result. One is horizontal: the relationship between Blin literacy and literacy in other languages needed during the same person’s life. The other is vertical: the relationship between generations of Blin readers. Can younger readers access earlier Geʿez-script Blin? Can older readers access Latin-script school and literary materials? Sustainable language development requires bridges across both dimensions.
I once described the danger polemically as producing “Latinized Romans nowhere”: pupils taught to read their mother tongue in Latin script while potentially remaining disconnected both from older Geʿez-script Blin heritage and from adequate Tigrinya literacy. The phrase was deliberately provocative. The underlying question, however, remains legitimate: did the literacy pathway connect languages and generations, or did it create barriers that should now be addressed?
Intended or Unintended Consequences?
Thirty years after implementation, it is tempting to classify every observed outcome as either an intended result or an unforeseen mistake. Historical analysis requires greater caution. At least four possibilities should be distinguished: consequences explicitly intended; consequences anticipated but accepted as costs; consequences not anticipated; and consequences that became visible after implementation but remained insufficiently addressed.
A policy should be judged not only by whether its original intentions were good, but also by its capacity to learn from its consequences.
The EPLF did not enter the 1990s without experience of Eritrea’s linguistic diversity. Language, education, mobilization, administration, and relations among linguistic communities had formed part of its practical experience during the liberation struggle. It is therefore reasonable to ask what consequences policy-makers anticipated when choosing educational and orthographic arrangements. But foreseeability is not identical to intention. Establishing intention requires policy documents, minutes, directives, correspondence, or testimony from those directly involved.
The documentary research agenda is therefore clear. Who proposed the Latin-based Blin orthography? What alternatives were considered? Which Blin representatives participated? Were the 1993 Council for Developing Blin Language, History and Culture and the 1994 standardization initiative consulted? Were transfer to Tigrinya literacy, access to earlier Geʿez-script Blin, teacher experience, parental views, and pilot outcomes discussed? These are historical questions, not accusations.
The most useful thirty-year question is ultimately whether mechanisms existed for recognizing consequences, listening to affected communities, evaluating evidence, and modifying policy when necessary.
Beyond the School: Literature, Religion, Broadcasting, and the Diaspora
If the history of Blin after 1996 were reconstructed only through educational policy, much of the actual language-development story would disappear. Some of the most sustained work occurred beyond the classroom: in books and poems, grammar and dictionaries, religious translation, broadcasting, cultural associations, workshops, festivals, and transnational networks.
The post-1996 bibliography records continuing activity through the Committee for Developing Blin Language and Culture in Keren, whose 1997 GERBESHA addressed Blin language and culture; a 1997 Blin dialect survey by Daniel Teclemariam and Sulus Beyed for the Ministry of Education; later educational materials; workshops; and continuing linguistic work.8
Literature and Oral Tradition
The contributions of Mussie Awate, Paulos Tesfaldet, Abba Hailemariam Ghebre, Medhanie Habtezghi (2007, 2009), Fitsum Asfaha (2012), Mowes Ghebre Adem (2003), and others broadened the range of modern Blin production. The extensive output associated with Abba Hailemariam Ghebre, described as approximately thirty volumes, deserves a dedicated bibliographic inventory establishing exact titles, dates, genres, scripts, publishers, and surviving copies.
Poetry remains especially important because it connects modern writing with older oral traditions (Mussie Awate 2012, Bogos Goitom,1994). Poems, songs, proverbs, tales, blessings, riddles, and historical narratives contain vocabulary, imagery, cultural concepts, and social memory. Writing should not replace oral tradition; it should give oral traditions additional means of preservation, circulation, study, performance, and transmission.
Religious and Liturgical Translation
Religious translation constitutes an important and continuing strand in the development of written Blin. Its history extends from nineteenth-century biblical material through twentieth-century catechetical, prayer, and liturgical texts to increasingly substantial modern translations. These works required decisions about vocabulary, grammar, terminology, metaphor, style, intelligibility, and consistency, and should therefore be treated as part of Blin language development rather than as a separate ecclesiastical history.
A major pre-1996 contribution was Abba Jacob Zerû, OFM Cap., ይናደራ ኢየሱስር ወንጌል [The Gospel in Blin], published by the Francescana Printing Press in Asmara in 1993. Its appearance before the First National Conference is important evidence that substantial Blin religious prose and translation already formed part of the written corpus when participants met in August 1996.
Biblical translation reached another major milestone in 2017, when the Bible Society of Eritrea in Asmara published መእኰት ሓዲስ [New Testament in Blin]. The 1993 Gospel and the 2017 New Testament should be understood as points within a longer continuum of biblical and liturgical writing rather than as isolated undertakings. By the early 2020s, work on Old Testament translation was also continuing through collaboration between experienced and younger Blin language workers.
The translation of an extended text such as the New Testament also constitutes corpus development. It creates a substantial body of continuous prose and requires sustained solutions to lexical, grammatical, stylistic, and conceptual problems. Liturgical and devotional texts have an additional social importance because they are not only read privately but also heard, recited, sung, memorized, and repeated in communal settings.
The history of Blin language development should therefore recognize translators alongside grammarians, dictionary makers, poets, teachers, broadcasters, and language planners. Universities contributed scholarship; schools contributed educational use; writers contributed literature; religious institutions contributed translation and liturgical use; community associations contributed organization; radio contributed broadcasting; and families continued the most fundamental activity of all: transmitting speech to another generation.
Radio Blina and Public Language
Broadcasting is another important domain. Radio can normalize public discussion in a smaller language, circulate poetry and oral traditions, interview elders, introduce books, discuss education, and connect dispersed speakers. Radio Blina in the diaspora therefore represented more than a broadcasting project: it created a space in which Blin itself could be the medium through which Blin language, culture, history, and community concerns were discussed.
It is one thing to speak about a language; it is another to create spaces in which people can speak through that language.
Diaspora Workshops and Festivals
The Stockholm-based Blin Culture Association held workshops dealing with language and mother-tongue questions in 2006, 2010, and 2015. Related issues were discussed through Radio Blina and in later diaspora gatherings. Blin diaspora festivals in Lausanne in 2016, Stuttgart in 2017, Uppsala in 2019, and Oslo in 2022 created further transnational spaces for language and cultural interaction.
The diaspora is simultaneously a site of language vulnerability and language innovation. Children may grow up with Swedish, German, English, or other languages as their strongest languages, while Blin becomes a heritage language. Yet diaspora communities also have access to universities, publishing technologies, digital communication, and transnational networks that can support documentation and revitalization.
The 2005 First Conference on Blin Language and Culture in London, organised by the Debanma Foundation under the direction of Mowes Ghebre Adem, marked an important transition toward a more explicitly transnational phase of Blin language activity. My paper, “Blin Language Maintenance, Shift and Revitalization: A Study on Language, Culture and Identity,” examined multilingualism and the engagement of individuals and groups in Blin development, including the immigrant context. It concluded that positive developments existed but that greater institutional support was needed.
By 2015, the question had increasingly become one of sustainability: how decades of activism at home and in the diaspora could be converted into durable intergenerational transmission.9
Thirty Years and More: Five Broad Phases of Modern Blin Language Development, c. 1974/75–2026
The thirtieth anniversary of the First National Conference on Eritrean Languages also provides an opportunity to look beyond the conference itself. Modern organized Blin language development extends across approximately half a century. The five phases below are analytical and partly overlapping; they identify shifts in initiative, institutions, education, script, community participation, and the geography of language work. They also make one point immediately clear: 1996 was a turning point within a longer trajectory, not the beginning of Blin language development.
Phase I, c. 1974/75–1977: Visionary Translation and a Modern Foundation
Around 1974/75, Abba Kiflemariam Fadega undertook the visionary work of translating the Geʿez Mass into Blin and preparing other prayer and catechetical materials. This practical work demonstrated that Blin could carry demanding liturgical, theological, and written expression. The surviving bibliographic record includes The Holy Mass in Blin (1976) and Werena Jar Musixw, a catechism and prayers in Blin (1977). This phase therefore precedes both post-independence language policy and the later script debate.
Phase II, c. 1977–1991: Organised Research, Writing, and Documentation
The formation of the Blin Language Research Group in 1977 marked a movement from pioneering individual work toward organised collective research. Vocabulary, grammar, terminology, oral tradition, writing, translation, and cultural documentation became sustained concerns. Abba Kiflemariam Fadega’s 1984 presentation at the Eighth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies and the research and writing of the succeeding generation, including my own work from 1985, belong to this expanding intellectual environment. The 1992 Blin Dictionary later became one major outcome of this longer collective trajectory.
Phase III, c. 1991–1996: Independence, Institutional Development, and the National Language Question
Independence transformed language development into an immediate educational and policy question. Mother-tongue education, orthography, curriculum, textbooks, broadcasting, public recognition, and participation acquired new institutional significance. The Council for Developing Blin Language, History and Culture, established in 1993, became one arena for these concerns. The phase culminated in the First National Conference on Eritrean Languages in Asmara, 16–18 August 1996. I participated as a presenter, chair, secretary, and discussant; my recollections in this article are identified as participant evidence rather than formal minutes.
Phase IV, c. 1996–2005: Implementation, Curriculum, and Reassessment
After 1996, Latin-based Blin mother-tongue education moved policy into classroom practice. Textbooks were produced for different subjects in Grades 1–5, and Sulus Beyed’s MORA provided a notable reading text. This was a significant institutional achievement, but implementation also made longer-term questions visible: continuity after Grade 5, access to earlier Geʿez-script Blin, transition to Tigrinya and wider multilingualism, readership beyond school, and the capacity to evaluate consequences. The 2005 First Conference on Blin Language and Culture in London, organised by the Debanma Foundation under the direction of Mowes Ghebre Adem, provides an important marker at the end of this phase and a bridge to the increasingly transnational work that followed.
Phase V, c. 2005/06–2026: Diaspora Engagement, Digital Communication, and Transnational Blin
During the last twenty years, Blin language activity became increasingly transnational. The Stockholm-based Blin Culture Association held workshops on language and mother-tongue questions in 2006, 2010, and 2015. Radio Blina and other digital forums created spaces in which Blin itself could be used to discuss language, culture, history, and community concerns. Diaspora festivals in Lausanne (2016), Stuttgart (2017), Uppsala (2019), and Oslo (2022) added further arenas for cultural and linguistic interaction. Digital communication now permits dispersed speakers to write, teach, record, debate, preserve oral materials, and circulate texts across borders, even as diaspora life creates new pressures on intergenerational transmission.
What the Five Phases Reveal
The trajectory can be summarized as translation → organised research → national language policy → educational implementation → transnational and digital revitalisation. Yet one phase did not simply replace another. Religious translation continued after research groups formed; research continued after independence; Geʿez-script writing continued after Latin-based schooling began; educational questions continued after 2005; and developments inside Eritrea continued while diaspora activity expanded. The history is therefore an accumulation of trajectories rather than a sequence of erasures.
The anniversary also contains three different historical levels: roughly fifty years of the modern organised Blin language-development movement; thirty years since the conference of 16–18 August 1996; and thirty years of consequences, adaptations, debates, achievements, disappointments, and new initiatives since that conference. Keeping these levels distinct prevents the conference anniversary from being mistaken for the anniversary of Blin language development itself.
Two Scripts, One Accumulated Blin Heritage
Whatever position one takes concerning the original orthographic decision, both Geʿez-script and Latin-script Blin materials now exist. The question in 2026 therefore differs from that of the early 1990s. It is no longer simply which script should be selected, but how the accumulated knowledge represented in both can remain accessible.
A poem does not cease to be Blin because it was written in Geʿez script. A grammar does not cease to be Blin because it was written in Latin script. A prayer does not become less Blin because it originated through translation. The future should be concerned less with deciding which part of the inheritance to reject and more with making the whole inheritance accessible.
One language, more than one accumulated written tradition, and no generation excluded from its inheritance.
A practical response could be a Blin Script-Bridge Project. Representative texts could be published in parallel Geʿez and Latin forms, supported by transliteration tools and vocabulary assistance. Rather than beginning with another abstract script dispute, such a project could test comprehension and usability with real readers.
This leads to the concept of intergenerational literacy: not merely whether each generation can read something in Blin, but whether succeeding generations can gain access to what earlier generations produced while continuing to create new writing themselves.
From Production to Readership: The Missing Language Ecosystem
The question “How much has been written in Blin?” is no longer sufficient. By 2026, more urgent questions are who can find that writing, who can read it, who actually reads it, and whether reading leads to further writing and transmission.
A bibliography tells us what exists. A social history of literacy must follow works through production, publication, distribution, accessibility, readership, use, and transmission. A book may be printed yet remain inaccessible; a religious text may have a small print run but wide influence through repeated communal use; a schoolbook may be widely distributed but cease to be read after the school year.
The Missing Adolescent and Adult Reader
Reader development deserves a central place in language planning. A seven-year-old beginning literacy, an adolescent, an adult literate in Tigrinya, an older Geʿez-script reader, a Latin-script school graduate, and a diaspora child with limited spoken Blin require different materials. A sustainable reading culture cannot be created through one category of textbook.
The critical transition may be adolescence. Is there anything that the fifteen-year-old, twenty-year-old, or thirty-year-old former pupil wants and is able to read in Blin? If not, school literacy may not mature into lifelong literacy.
A Blin Digital Library and Corpus
A comprehensive Blin bibliography and digital archive could connect preservation with access. It should catalogue early linguistic studies, grammars and dictionaries, poetry and tales, language-planning documents, schoolbooks, MORA, later literature, religious and liturgical materials, conference papers, Radio Blina recordings, diaspora materials, and oral recordings. Where copyright prevents full access, bibliographic information should at least establish what exists and where it may be found.
The archive should not become merely a collection of PDFs. Oral Blin should be preserved in sound: poems, songs, tales, riddles, blessings, proverbs, historical narratives, customary terminology, and varieties of spoken Blin. A carefully constructed corpus could then support dictionary development, terminology work, linguistic research, teaching materials, transliteration, and future digital language technologies.
A terminology bank could likewise collect terms developed through school curricula, grammars, dictionaries, Bible translation, liturgy, broadcasting, cultural writing, and contemporary technical discussion. Variation should initially be documented rather than prematurely erased.
Thirty Years Later: What Should Be Preserved, Reconsidered, and Rebuilt?
What Should Be Preserved
The first principle to preserve is respect for Eritrea’s linguistic diversity. Children should not have to abandon their mother tongue in order to enter education. The development of Blin textbooks and formal mother-tongue education created an important institutional domain and should not be dismissed because aspects of implementation deserve reassessment.
The accumulated Blin intellectual heritage should also be preserved without orthographic exclusion. Earlier Geʿez-script work, Latin-script educational materials, literature, scholarship, religious texts, oral tradition, broadcasting, and diaspora production all belong to the history.
What Should Be Reconsidered
The relationship between initial mother-tongue literacy and continuing literacy requires systematic reassessment. What happened after Grade 5? Did pupils continue reading and writing Blin? Did they acquire sufficient Tigrinya and other languages for later education? How did different cohorts fare? How did script affect access to earlier literature and transfer to other literacies?
These questions require evidence from former pupils, teachers, parents, curriculum developers, language-panel members, writers, educational authorities, and community organizations. They also require schoolbooks, curricula, transition data, publication histories, and evidence of actual reading practices.
What Should Be Rebuilt
What most clearly requires strengthening is institutional continuity. Language work has repeatedly depended on individual writers, researchers, clergy, translators, teachers, broadcasters, and activists. Their contributions have been indispensable, but a sustainable language cannot rely permanently on extraordinary individual effort.
Institutions are needed to preserve records, connect schools with literature, maintain archives, support publication, coordinate research, train younger contributors, and provide legitimate spaces for disagreement and policy evaluation. Institution building is itself part of language revitalization.
Toward a Second National Conference and a Continuing Forum
The thirtieth anniversary provides an appropriate occasion to propose a Second National Conference on Eritrean Languages. Its purpose should not be ceremonial reproduction of the 1996 gathering, nor defence of decisions made thirty years ago. Its starting point should be simple: we now have thirty years of experience that the participants of 1996 did not possess.
Each language community should be able to present its own evidence concerning mother-tongue education, educational transition, orthography, literature, religious translation, broadcasting, public use, community participation, language shift, diaspora transmission, digital development, and younger-generation experience.
Young people should participate directly rather than appear only as the subjects of adult concern. They should be asked what languages they speak, read, and write; what school gave them; what they actually read; how they communicate digitally; what language they use with parents and friends; and what they want their own children to inherit.
Most importantly, a second conference should establish what happens after participants leave. The unfinished aspiration remembered from 1996 could be reconsidered in contemporary form as a continuing Eritrean Languages and Cultures Forum with a mandate for research, documentation, dialogue, publication of proceedings, periodic evaluation, and follow-up on recommendations.
The principle should be: evidence → consultation → experimentation → evaluation → policy.
Alongside the national proposal, a Blin Language Development Review, 1975–2026, could extend the documentation begun in my 1996 study of developments from 1975 to 1994. It could be accompanied by a comprehensive bibliography, digital archive, author and translator register, terminology bank, oral archive, and script-bridge resources.
Conclusion: From Survival to Sustainability
The history considered here stretches beyond the thirty years named in the title. Before the First National Conference, Blin writers, researchers, clergy, and cultural activists had already worked for decades. They collected poetry and tales, produced religious texts, studied grammar, documented culture, compiled dictionaries, developed terminology, and debated how Blin should be written.
By 1994, collaborative efforts at standardization show that Blin language planning was already underway. The 1996 conference therefore did not begin the history of Blin development. It entered that history at a consequential moment.
Post-independence mother-tongue education created a major new domain. Children could encounter Blin systematically as a language of literacy and education. That was an achievement. But thirty years of experience require us to ask what happened next: Did school literacy become lifelong literacy? Did pupils acquire the additional languages required for later education and participation? Could the new generation read what earlier generations had written? Did writers find readers? Did literature enter schools? Did public institutions expand the domains in which Blin could be used? Did language-development institutions acquire continuity?
One of the clearest findings of this retrospective is that continuity in Blin language development has often resided in people and networks as much as in formal institutions. The twenty-one original members of the Blin Language Research Group formed part of a generation whose influence extended beyond its early collective work. Some continued as writers, researchers, translators, authors, and church leaders; some produced works in Blin and in other languages; and some collaborated with a younger generation. The challenge now is to convert this accumulated human and literary capital into durable institutional memory.
One conclusion is already clear: Blin speakers did not wait passively for institutions to determine the future of their language. They continued writing, translating, praying and celebrating liturgy through Blin, producing poetry and literature, studying grammar, broadcasting, organizing workshops, meeting across borders, debating script and education, and preserving cultural knowledge.
The history is therefore neither simply a story of linguistic decline nor simply a story of policy success. It is a history of persistent language-making under changing circumstances.
The vocabulary through which the issue was discussed also changed: survival, development, maintenance, revitalization, and sustainability. Abba Kiflemariam Fadega’s 1984 formulation, “a long struggle for survival,” captures an earlier stage. My later work moved through development, maintenance and revitalization, and eventually sustainability.10
survival → development → maintenance → revitalization → sustainability
Sustainability introduces a demanding standard. A language is not sustainable simply because people still speak it, because textbooks exist, because an alphabet has been standardized, because books have been written, or because a conference has declared its importance. Sustainability means that conditions exist for another generation to inherit the language and continue developing it.
Thirty years later, I therefore return to the proposition underlying my 1996 paper. Language contributes to social development when it increases what people are able to do: when a child can learn through it; an adult can read through it; a poet can create through it; a community can remember through it; Scripture can be translated through it; people can worship through it; history can be recorded through it; public matters can be discussed through it; and generations can communicate through it while acquiring other languages without surrendering their own.
The participants who gathered in Asmara in August 1996 could not answer all these questions. We lacked the evidence. Thirty years later, we possess a generation of experience. Where policy worked, preserve it. Where it worked imperfectly, improve it. Where consequences proved harmful, investigate and correct them. Where earlier intellectual traditions became disconnected from younger readers, rebuild the bridge. Where community initiative produced valuable work, preserve and institutionalize it. Where evidence is missing, research rather than assume.
A language needs speakers. A written language needs readers. A sustainable language needs institutions that connect generations of speakers, writers, and readers.
The future of Blin will therefore not be determined by which generation wins an argument over the past. It will depend upon whether generations can remain connected through the language while creating new possibilities for those who come after them. That, thirty years after the First National Conference on Eritrean Languages, may be the most important meaning of moving from survival to sustainability.
References
Alibekit, Tekie. 1992. Blina ktabetdi gbra gabuxwdi: Blin Language, Introductory Phonetics and Grammar. 1st ed. Oslo: Blin Language and Culture Association, Norway.
Alibekit, Tekie. 1993. A Summary of Blin Phonetics and Grammatical Terms. Unpublished paper. Oslo: Blin Language and Culture Association, Norway.
Alibekit, Tekie, Kiflemariam Hamde, Fessehazion Zemicael, and Abba Asfaha Kidanemariam. 1994. Blina Gaba Tefh’at: Some Standardisation of Blin Writing. Working paper. Stockholm: Blin Language and Culture Association.
Beyed, Sulus. 2002. MORA. Blin reader/textbook for first-grade students. Asmara: Ministry of Education.
Committee for Developing Blin Language and Culture in Keren. 1997. GERBESHA: On Blin Language and Culture. Asmara: Sabur Printing Services/Adulis Printing Press.
Fadega, Kiflemariam, Abba. 1976. Qdase blinid (The Holy Mass in Blin). Stencil, unpublished. Asmara: Francescana Printing Press.
Fadega, Kiflemariam, Abba. 1977. Werena Jar Musixw (A Catechism and Prayers in Blin). Stencil, unpublished. Asmara: Francescana Printing Press.
Fadega, Kiflemariam, Abba. 1984. “The Blin Language: A Long Struggle for Survival.” Paper presented at the Eighth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, 26–30 November.
Hamde, Kiflemariam. 1985. The Origin and Development of Bilin (Blin). Blin Language Project, Institute of African Studies, Asmara University. Unpublished research paper.
Hamde, Kiflemariam. 1985. “The Role of Poems in Blin Society.” Paper presented at the First Workshop on Blin Language and Culture, Institute of African Studies, Asmara University, 7 July.
Hamde, Kiflemariam. 1989. “Analysis of Some Blin Proverbs.” Ethiopian Journal of African Studies 5 (2): 62–68.
Hamde, Kiflemariam. 1996a. “Recent Developments in Blin Writing: 1975–1994.” Adveniat Regnum Tuum (Timsa’e Mengst’ke) 64 (2): 80–84.
Hamde, Kiflemariam. 1996b. “The Role of Language in Societal Development: Culture, Language and Society.” Paper presented at the First National Conference on Eritrean Languages, Ministry of Education and PFDJ, Asmara, 16–18 August.
Hamde, Kiflemariam. 2005. “Blin Language Maintenance, Shift and Revitalization: A Study on Language, Culture and Identity.” Paper presented at the First Conference on Blin Language and Culture, organised by the Debanma Foundation under the direction of Mowes Ghebre Adem, London, 14–16 July.
Hamde, Kiflemariam. 2015. “Sustaining Blin Language (and Culture): 40 Years of Activism among Blin Speakers at Home and in the Diaspora.” Paper presented at the Diaspora Blin Conference, Stockholm, 8–9 August.
Hamde, Kiflemariam, and Paulos Zeremariam, eds. 1992. Blina Qolata Endiba: Blin Dictionary, with English Translations. Uppsala: Nyna Tryckeri.
Reinisch, Leo. 1882. Wengel Qdus Marqos Ketebesena: Gospel of Mark in Blin or Bogos Language. Vienna: British and Foreign Bible Society.
Reinisch, Leo. 1882. Die Bilin-Sprache in Nordost-Afrika. Vienna.
Reinisch, Leo. 1883. Texte der Bilin-Sprache. Leipzig.
Reinisch, Leo. 1887. Wörterbuch der Bilin-Sprache. Vienna.
Teclemariam, Daniel, and Sulus Beyed. 1997. “Blin Dialect Survey: Report by the Blin Language Panel.” Department of General Education, Curriculum Division, Ministry of Education, Eritrea.
Yohannes Aftay, Tekle Ghiorghis. 1992. Blinna Gabba Gug: Blin Grammar in Blin Language. Uppsala: Nyna Tryckeri.
Bible Society of Eritrea. 2017. መእኰት ሓዲስ [New Testament in Blin]. Asmara: Bible Society of Eritrea.
Zerû, Jacob, Abba, OFM Cap. 1993. ይናደራ ኢየሱስር ወንጌል [The Gospel in Blin]. Asmara: Francescana Printing Press.
Blin Language Research Group. 1992. Blina Qolata Endiba: Blin Dictionary, with English Translations. Edited by Kiflemariam Hamde and Paulos Zeremariam. Uppsala: Nyna Tryckeri. See especially pp. v–vi for the twenty-one original members.
Notes
1. Kiflemariam Hamde, “The Role of Language in Societal Development: Culture, Language and Society,” paper presented at the First National Conference on Eritrean Languages, Ministry of Education and PFDJ, Asmara, 16–18 August 1996. The Daberi Blin Bibliography records the paper as an 18-page Tigrinya contribution.
2. For the early written tradition, see Leo Reinisch, Die Bilin-Sprache in Nordost-Afrika (1882); Wengel Qdus Marqos Ketebesena: Gospel of Mark in Blin or Bogos Language (1882); Texte der Bilin-Sprache (1883); and Wörterbuch der Bilin-Sprache (1887).
3. Kiflemariam Hamde, The Origin and Development of Bilin (Blin), Blin Language Project, Institute of African Studies, Asmara University, unpublished research paper, 1985; see also Hamde, “The Role of Poems in Blin Society,” paper presented at the First Workshop on Blin Language and Culture, Institute of African Studies, Asmara University, 7 July 1985.
4. Tekie Alibekit, Blina ktabetdi gbra gabuxwdi: Blin Language, Introductory Phonetics and Grammar (Oslo, 1992); Tekle Ghiorghis Yohannes Aftay, Blinna Gabba Gug: Blin Grammar in Blin Language (Uppsala, 1992); Blin Language Research Group, Blina Qolata Endiba: Blin Dictionary, with English Translations, ed. Kiflemariam Hamde and Paulos Zeremariam (Uppsala, 1992); Tekie Alibekit, A Summary of Blin Phonetics and Grammatical Terms (Oslo, 1993).
5. Tekie Alibekit, Kiflemariam Hamde, Fessehazion Zemicael, and Abba Asfaha Kidanemariam, Blina Gaba Tefh’at: Some Standardisation of Blin Writing, working paper (Stockholm: Blin Language and Culture Association, 1994).
6. Kiflemariam Hamde, “Recent Developments in Blin Writing: 1975–1994,” Adveniat Regnum Tuum (Timsa’e Mengst’ke) 64, no. 2 (1996): 80–84.
7. The Blin Bibliography records a Ministry of Education second-grade Blin book in 1998 and Sulus Beyed’s MORA in 2002 as a 74-page first-grade reader/textbook containing stories and fairy tales. The broader Grades 1–5 curriculum and subject-book production described here should be further documented from Ministry of Education holdings and surviving school collections.
8. Committee for Developing Blin Language and Culture in Keren, GERBESHA: On Blin Language and Culture (Asmara, 1997); Daniel Teclemariam and Sulus Beyed, “Blin Dialect Survey: Report by the Blin Language Panel,” Ministry of Education, 1997.
9. Kiflemariam Hamde, “Sustaining Blin Language (and Culture): 40 Years of Activism among Blin Speakers at Home and in the Diaspora,” paper presented at the Diaspora Blin Conference, Stockholm, 8–9 August 2015.
10. The conceptual sequence used here draws on Abba Kiflemariam Fadega’s 1984 “long struggle for survival,” Kiflemariam Hamde’s 1996 work on language and social development, the 2005 paper on maintenance, shift and revitalization, and the 2015 paper on sustaining Blin language and culture.