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Berber Language
The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight, are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related but mostly mutually unintelligible languages spoken by Berber communities, who are indigenous to North Africa.Hayward, Richard J., chapter ''Afroasiatic'' in Heine, Bernd & Nurse, Derek, editors, ''African Languages: An Introduction'' Cambridge 2000. . The languages are primarily spoken and not typically written. Historically, they have been written with the ancient Libyco-Berber script, which now exists in the form of Tifinagh. Today, they may also be written in the Berber Latin alphabet or the Arabic script, with Latin being the most pervasive. The Berber languages have a similar level of variety to the Romance languages, although they are sometimes referred to as a single collective language, often as "Berber", "Tamazight", or "Amazigh". The languages, with a few exceptions, form a dialect continuum. There is a d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shilha Language
( ; from its name in Moroccan Arabic, ), now more commonly known as Tashelhiyt or Tachelhit ( ; from the endonym , ), is a Berber language spoken in southwestern Morocco. When referring to the language, anthropologists and historians prefer the name ''Shilha'', which is in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Linguists writing in English prefer ''Tashelhit'' (or a variant spelling). In French sources the language is called , or . Shilha is spoken in an area covering around 100,000 square kilometres. The area comprises the western part of the High Atlas mountains and the regions to the south up to the Draa River, including the Anti-Atlas and the alluvial basin of the Sous River. The largest urban centres in the area are the coastal city of Agadir (population over 400,000) and the towns of Guelmim, Taroudant, Oulad Teima, Tiznit and Ouarzazate.Adnor, Abdellah (2004). An Electronic Tashlhit-English Dictionary (Prototype) (PhD thesis). Mohammed V University, Rabat, Morocco. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berbers
Berbers, or the Berber peoples, also known as Amazigh or Imazighen, are a diverse grouping of distinct ethnic groups indigenous to North Africa who predate the arrival of Arab migrations to the Maghreb, Arabs in the Maghreb. Their main connections are identified by their usage of Berber languages, most of them mutually unintelligible, which are part of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. They are indigenous peoples, indigenous to the Maghreb region of North Africa, where they live in scattered communities across parts of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and to a lesser extent Tunisia, Mauritania, northern Mali and northern Niger. Smaller Berber communities are also found in Burkina Faso and Egypt's Siwa Oasis. Descended from Stone Age tribes of North Africa, accounts of the Imazighen were first mentioned in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Ancient Egyptian writings. From about 2000 BC, Berber languages spread westward from the Nile, Nile Valley across the northern Sahara int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastern Middle Atlas Berber
Eastern Middle Atlas Berber is a cluster of Berber dialects spoken in the eastern and north-eastern parts of the Middle Atlas, in Morocco. These dialects are those of the tribes of Ait Seghrouchen, Ait Warayn, Marmoucha, Ait Alaham, Ait Youb and Ait Mourghi. Despite the fact that they are mutually intelligible with neighbouring Central Atlas Tamazight dialects and are generally classified among them, these dialects actually belong to the Zenati languages and are intermediate dialects between the Riffian and Atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of world map, maps of Earth or of a continent or region of Earth. Advances in astronomy have also resulted in atlases of the celestial sphere or of other planets. Atlases have traditio ... languages. Among these Zenati dialects, those of '' Ait Seghrouchen'' and ''Ait Warayn'' were subject to most studies, while only a few studies were focused on the dialects of ''Ait Alaham'' and ''Marmoucha'', and prac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mutually Unintelligible
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intelligibility is sometimes used to distinguish languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used. Intelligibility between varieties can be asymmetric; that is, speakers of one variety may be able to better understand another than vice versa. An example of this is the case between Afrikaans and Dutch. It is generally easier for Dutch speakers to understand Afrikaans than for Afrikaans speakers to understand Dutch. In a dialect continuum, neighbouring varieties are mutually intelligible, but differences mount with distance, so that more widely separated varieties may not be mutually intelligible. Intelligibility can be partial, as is the case with Azerbaijani and Turkish, or significant, as is the case with Bulg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Afroasiatic Language Family
The Afroasiatic languages (also known as Afro-Asiatic, Afrasian, Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic) are a language family (or "phylum") of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara and Sahel. Over 500 million people are native speakers of an Afroasiatic language, constituting the fourth-largest language family after Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, and Niger–Congo. Most linguists divide the family into six branches: Berber (Amazigh), Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Omotic, and Semitic. The vast majority of Afroasiatic languages are considered indigenous to the African continent, including all those not belonging to the Semitic branch (which originated in West Asia). The five most spoken languages are; Arabic (of all varieties) which is by far the most widely spoken within the family, with around 411 million native speakers concentrated primarily in West Asia and North Africa, the Chadic Hausa language with o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zenati Languages
The Zenati languages are a branch of the Northern Berber language family of North Africa. They were named after the medieval Zenata Berber tribal confederation. They were first proposed in the works of French linguist Edmond Destaing (1915) (1920–23). Zenata dialects are distributed across the central Berber world (Maghreb), from northeastern Morocco to just west of Algiers, and the northern Sahara, from southwestern Algeria around Béchar to Zuwara in Libya. The most widely spoken Zenati languages are Tmazight of the Rif in northern Morocco and Tashawit Berber in northeastern Algeria, each of which have over 3 million speakers. Languages Kossmann (2013) According to Kossmann (2013: 21–24),Maarten Kossmann (2013The Arabic Influence on Northern Berber/ref> Zenati is a rather arbitrary grouping, in which he includes the following varieties: * Riffian (Riffian Berber, or Rif-Berber, local name: ''Tmaziɣt'', north of Morocco); Includes Arzew dialect, in Arzew in we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berber Arabic Alphabet
The Berber Arabic alphabet (Berber: اݣماي امزغ اعرب or اڨماي امزيغ اعراب or ءاݣماي ءامازيغ ءعراب; Arabic: الأبجدية العربية الأمازيغية) is an Arabic-based alphabet that was used to write various Berber languages in the Middle Ages. Nowadays users have largely reverted to either the Tifinagh alphabet in Morocco, or Berber Latin alphabet in Algeria Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger .... References Bibliography * Berber languages Arabic alphabets Writing systems of Africa {{alphabet-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tifinagh
Tifinagh ( Tuareg Berber language: ; Neo-Tifinagh: ; Berber Latin alphabet: ; ) is a script used to write the Berber languages. Tifinagh is descended from the ancient Libyco-Berber alphabet. The traditional Tifinagh, sometimes called Tuareg Tifinagh, is still favored by the Tuareg people of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria, northeastern Mali, northern Niger, and northern Burkina Faso for writing the Tuareg languages. Neo-Tifinagh is an alphabet developed by the Berber Academy by adopting Tuareg Tifinagh for use for Kabyle; it has been since modified for use across North Africa. Tifinagh is one of three major competing Berber orthographies alongside the Berber Latin alphabet and the Arabic alphabet. Tifinagh is the official script for Tamazight, an official language of Morocco and Algeria. Outside of symbolic cultural uses, Latin remains the dominant script for writing Berber languages throughout North Africa. The ancient Libyco-Berber script was used by the ancient north ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tuareg
The Tuareg people (; also spelled Twareg or Touareg; endonym, depending on variety: ''Imuhaɣ'', ''Imušaɣ'', ''Imašeɣăn'' or ''Imajeɣăn'') are a large Berber ethnic group, traditionally nomadic pastoralists, who principally inhabit the Sahara in a vast area stretching from far southwestern Libya to southern Algeria, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and as far as northern Nigeria, with small communities in Chad and Sudan known as the ''Kinnin''. The Tuareg speak languages of the same name, also known as ''Tamasheq'', which belong to the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic family. They are a semi-nomadic people who mostly practice Islam, and are descended from the indigenous Berber communities of Northern Africa, whose ancestry has been described as a mosaic of local Northern African ( Taforalt), Middle Eastern, European ( Early European Farmers), and Sub-Saharan African, prior to the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb. Some researchers have tied the origin of the Tuareg ethnici ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neo-Tifinagh
Tifinagh ( Tuareg Berber language: ; Neo-Tifinagh: ; Berber Latin alphabet: ; ) is a script used to write the Berber languages. Tifinagh is descended from the ancient Libyco-Berber alphabet. The traditional Tifinagh, sometimes called Tuareg Tifinagh, is still favored by the Tuareg people of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria, northeastern Mali, northern Niger, and northern Burkina Faso for writing the Tuareg languages. Neo-Tifinagh is an alphabet developed by the Berber Academy by adopting Tuareg Tifinagh for use for Kabyle; it has been since modified for use across North Africa. Tifinagh is one of three major competing Berber orthographies alongside the Berber Latin alphabet and the Arabic alphabet. Tifinagh is the official script for Tamazight, an official language of Morocco and Algeria. Outside of symbolic cultural uses, Latin remains the dominant script for writing Berber languages throughout North Africa. The ancient Libyco-Berber script was used by the ancient north ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tetserret Language
Tetserret (''Tin-Sert'') is a Western Berber language spoken by the Ait-Awari and Kel Eghlal Tuareg tribes of the Akoubounou (''Akabinu'') commune in Niger. This main speech area is located between Abalak, Akoubounou and Shadwanka. The variant spoken by the Kel Eghlal is called ''taməsəɣlalt''. The Tamasheq equivalent ''šin-sart'' / ''šin-sar'' / ''tin-sar'' is used in some older literature. Popular understanding among some Ait-Awari derives the name ''tet-serret'', and its Tamasheq equivalent ''šin-sart'', from expressions meaning 'the (language) of Sirte'. Language Tetserret is one of the last Berber languages to be recognised as distinct. As late as 1981, Bernus treated Tetserret as a dialect of Tuareg, and some early sources even confused it with the Northern Songhay languages. The first published linguistic material on Tetserret was Drouin (1984), and only with Khamed Attayoub's (2001) thesis did it become clear how different Tetserret was from Tuareg. Tetserret is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zenaga Language
Zenaga (autonym: ' or ') is a Berber language spoken in Mauritania and northern Senegal by thousands of people. Zenaga Berber is spoken as a mother tongue from the town of Mederdra in southwestern Mauritania to the Atlantic coast and in northern Senegal. The language is recognized by the Mauritanian government. It shares its basic linguistic structure with other Berber idioms in Morocco and Algeria, but specific features are quite different. In fact, Zenaga is probably the most divergent surviving Berber language, with a significantly different sound system made even more distant by sound changes such as > and > , as well as a profusion of glottal stops with no correspondents in other Berber varieties that are interpreted as the only segmental survivor of a Proto-Berber . The name ''Zenaga'' comes from that of a much larger ancient Berber tribe, the Iznagen (Iẓnagen), who are known in Arabic as the Sanhaja. Adrian Room's ''African Placenames'' gives Zenaga derivations f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
