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Jerba Language
Tamazight of Djerba, Chelha of Djerba, or Djerbi (in Berber: ''eddwi jjerbi'' or ''Tadjerbit'') is a Berber language of the Eastern Maghreb, spoken on the island of Djerba, in Tunisia. It is a component of what is regularly denominated Tunisian “Chelha”, in the south of the country. The Tamazight of Djerba belongs to the group of Zenet languages of the East, to which also belong the other Berber dialects of Tunisia as well as that of the city of Zouara, in Libya. Geographical distribution At the end of the 19th century, Tamazight (or Berber) was apparently well established and spoken through the island. It was then possible to connect the dialect of Djerba to other Berber-speaking areas of Maghreb, and many orientalists like Adolphe de Calassanti Motilynski or René Basset (father of André Basset) were able to collect data, in particular tales and legends in vernacular. However, in the same time began the first significant statutory decline of Berber, in Djerba and more ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tunisia
) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , coordinates = , official_languages = Arabic Translation by the University of Bern: "Tunisia is a free State, independent and sovereign; its religion is the Islam, its language is Arabic, and its form is the Republic." , religion = , languages_type = Spoken languages , languages = Minority Dialects : Jerba Berber (Chelha) Matmata Berber Judeo-Tunisian Arabic (UNESCO CR) , languages2_type = Foreign languages , languages2 = , ethnic_groups = * 98% Arab * 2% Other , demonym = Tunisian , government_type = Unitary presidential republic , leader_title1 = President , leader_name1 = Kais Saied , leader_ti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berber Languages
The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight,, ber, label=Tuareg Tifinagh, ⵜⵎⵣⵗⵜ, ) are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related 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 were traditionally 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. Berber languages are spoken by large populations of Morocco, Algeria and Libya, by smaller populations of Tunisia, northern Mali, western and northern Niger, northern Burkina Faso and Mauritania and in the Siwa Oasis of Egypt. Large Berber-speaking migrant communities, today numbering about 4 million, have been livin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northern Berber Languages
The Northern Berber languages are a dialect continuum spoken across the Maghreb, constituting a subgroup of the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic family. Their continuity has been broken by the spread of Arabic, and to a lesser extent by the Zenati group of Northern Berber. The Zenati idioms share certain innovations not found in the surrounding languages; notably a softening of ''k'' to ''sh'' and an absence of ''a-'' in certain words, such as "hand" (''afus'' vs. ''fus''.) Northern Berber languages spoken by over a million people include Shilha, Central Morocco Tamazight, Riff, Shawiya and Kabyle. They fall into three groups: *Moroccan Atlas languages (incl. Shilha, Central Morocco Tamazight) *Zenati languages (incl. Riff, Shawiya) * Kabyle The eastern boundaries of the North Berber varieties are uncertain. Some linguists include the Nafusi and Ghadames languages, while others do not. Most regard Ghadamès as lying outside of Northern Berber, but the ''Ethnologue'' does ... [...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 Bechar 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 wester ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East Zenati Languages
The East Zenati languages (Blench, 2006) or Tunisian and Zuwara (Kossmann, 2013) are a group of the Zenati languages, Zenati Berber dialects spoken in Tunisia and Libya. Maarten Kossmann considers the easternmost varieties of Zenati dialects as transitional to Eastern Berber languages, Eastern Berber, but they are quite different from the neighboring Nafusi language, Nafusi. According to Kossmann, the dialect cluster of Tunisian Berber and Zuwara is consisting of the varieties spoken in mainland Tunisia (Sened language, Sened (extinct), Matmata Berber, Matmata and Tataouine Berber, Tataouine), Jerba language, Jerba and Zuwara language, Zuwara, but not Nafusi language, Nafusi which is considered a dialect of Eastern Berber languages, Eastern Berber.M. KossmannThe Arabic Influence on Northern Berber p.24 (Brill, 2013) Before Kossmann, Roger Blench (2006) considered East Zanati to be a dialect cluster consisting of Sened language, Sened (extinct, including Tmagurt language, Tmagurt) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Begadkefat
Begadkefat (also begedkefet) is the name given to a phenomenon of lenition affecting the non- emphatic stop consonants of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic when they are preceded by a vowel and not geminated. The name is also given to similar cases of spirantization of post-vocalic plosives in other languages; for instance, in the Berber language of Djerba. Celtic languages have a similar system. The name of the phenomenon is made up with these six consonants, mixed with haphazard vowels for the sake of pronunciation: BeGaDKePaT. The Hebrew term (Modern Hebrew ) denotes the letters themselves (rather than the phenomenon of spirantization). Begedkefet spirantization developed sometime during the lifetime of Biblical Hebrew under the influence of Aramaic. Its time of emergence can be found by noting that the Old Aramaic phonemes , disappeared in the 7th century BC. It persisted in Hebrew until the 2nd century CE.Dolgopolsky 1999, p. 73. During this period all six plosive / fricative pai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Romance Languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language family. The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are Spanish (489 million), Portuguese (283 million), French (77 million), Italian (67 million) and Romanian (24 million), which are all national languages of their respective countries of origin. By most measures, Sardinian and Italian are the least divergent from Latin, while French has changed the most. However, all Romance languages are closer to each other than to classical Latin. There are more than 900 million native speakers of Romance languages found worldwide, mainly in the Americas, Europe, and parts of Africa. The major Romance languages also have many non-native speakers and are in widespread use as linguae francae.M. Paul Lewis,Summary by l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semitic Languages
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history, who derived the name from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis. Semitic languages occur in written form from a very early historical date in West Asia, with East Semitic Akkadian and Eblaite texts (written in a script adapted from Sumerian cuneiform) appearing from the 30th century BCE and the 25th century BCE in Mesopotamia and the north eastern Levant respectively. The only earlier attested languages are Sumerian and Elamite (2800 BCE to 550 BCE), both language isolates, and Egyptian (a sister branch of the Afroasiatic family, related to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hamites
Hamites is the name formerly used for some Northern and Horn of Africa peoples in the context of a now-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races which was developed originally by Europeans in support of colonialism and slavery. The term was originally borrowed from the Book of Genesis, where it is used for the descendants of Ham, son of Noah. The term was originally used in contrast to the other two proposed divisions of mankind based on the story of Noah: Semites and Japhetites. The appellation ''Hamitic'' was applied to the Berber, Cushitic, and Egyptian branches of the Afroasiatic language family, which, together with the Semitic branch, was thus formerly labelled "Hamito-Semitic". However, since the three Hamitic branches have not been shown to form an exclusive ( monophyletic) phylogenetic unit of their own, separate from other Afroasiatic languages, linguists no longer use the term in this sense. Each of these branches is instead now regarded as an indep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tamazight
The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight,, ber, label=Tuareg Tifinagh, ⵜⵎⵣⵗⵜ, ) are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related 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 were traditionally 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. Berber languages are spoken by large populations of Morocco, Algeria and Libya, by smaller populations of Tunisia, northern Mali, western and northern Niger, northern Burkina Faso and Mauritania and in the Siwa Oasis of Egypt. Large Berber-speaking migrant communities, today numbering about 4 million, have been living ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Death
In linguistics, language death occurs when a language loses its last native speaker. By extension, language extinction is when the language is no longer known, including by second-language speakers. Other similar terms include linguicide, the death of a language from natural or political causes, and rarely glottophagy, the absorption or replacement of a minor language by a major language. Language death is a process in which the level of a speech community's linguistic competence in their language variety decreases, eventually resulting in no native or fluent speakers of the variety. Language death can affect any language form, including dialects. Language death should not be confused with language attrition (also called language loss), which describes the loss of proficiency in a first language of an individual.Crystal, David (2000) ''Language Death''. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 19 In the modern period (–present; following the rise of colonialism), language ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rainer Vossen
Rainer Vossen (German: Rainer Voßen; born December 6, 1951 in Düsseldorf, Germany) is a German linguist and Africanist. His research interests include the historical linguistics of Nilotic languages and Khoisan languages. Biography From 1972 to 1982, Vossen studied African studies, ethnology, history, and prehistory at the University of Cologne. After receiving his doctorate in 1982 from the University of Cologne, he served as an academic advisor for the Chair of African Studies II at the University of Bayreuth from 1984 to 1990. After completing his habilitation in 1990, he was a lecturer at the University of Bayreuth from 1990 to 1992. In 1993, he became Professor of African Languages and Linguistics at Goethe University Goethe University (german: link=no, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) is a university located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was founded in 1914 as a citizens' university, which means it was founded and funded by the wealt .... Selec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
