I was reading the innovative opinion/article in the web - about the recent article on “Why is Gaariye Silent about the role of Abdullahi Derirye Gulaid (Carraale) in co-exploring the Somali Prosody?” and I found it worthwhile to say my opinion about it.

I believe that professor Abdillahi Deriye Gulaid - Carraale is the first Somali who scholarly laid the foundations for the Somali prosody (Miisaanka Maansada Soomaaliyeed).

 I knew Abdillahi Deriye Gulaid – Carraale since 1961 when he was grade four in the Intermediate School. He was born to a family who were poets and highly valued poetry. Carraale was brought up in between very talented poets who used to recite rich poems about the environment and their cultural traditions with beautiful similes, metaphors and images. It was against their practice to earn a living by going around and compose poems before rich or even groups of authority. They were true poets to their oral tradition.

During his intermediate years, young Abdillahi Deriye Gulaid – Carraale used to recite, besides others, many of the poems by his immediate family members like Xirsi Caamir, Weerer, and Huube. His view to literature was artistic.

Prof. Abdillahi Deriye Gulaid – Carraale simply loved to have poetry happen. And in an attempt to improve the quality and viability of Somali Poetry, Carraale became critical of some poems that led him to develop the scansion system.

This took the form of talking about poems what others don't care for and say what's weak in it. It took him to analyze the rhythm of poems until he was able to distinguish between loud and soft syllables in words before he even begin to talk about lines of a poem. He started to talk about the basic building blocks of lines: individual words. His works ultimately resulted to set, for the first time in the history of Somali poetry, The Scansion, which is the analysis of a line of poetry for foot and meter. To "scan" a line of poetry means to analyze it rhythmically. Scansion helps us recover a sense of how poets play with meter and rhythm to create meaning.   Prof. Abdillahi Deriye Gulaid – Carraale, is someone who does not like to showoff himself because of humbleness. He has an attitude of not claiming the works he did painstakingly. It was Caraale who has developed for the first time The Scansion of Somali poem.

I believe that is the reason why he does not bother claiming the noble discovery he made, and sure, if he doesn’t anyone else can make a claim.

I met with Professor Carraale in United Arab Emirates after he graduated from University of UCLA, in October 1982. Since then, about 23 years I haven’t seen him. He graduated in Linguistic and Literature. Carraale is a pleasant person to be with.