Eastern Middle Atlas Berber is a cluster of
Berber dialects spoken in the eastern and north-eastern parts of the
Middle Atlas
The Middle Atlas (Amazigh: ⴰⵟⵍⴰⵙ ⴰⵏⴰⵎⵎⴰⵙ, ''Atlas Anammas'', Arabic: الأطلس المتوسط, ''al-Aṭlas al-Mutawassiṭ'') is a mountain range in Morocco. It is part of the Atlas mountain range, a mountainous region ...
, in
Morocco
Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to ...
. These dialects are those of the tribes of Aït Seghrushen, Aït Waraïn, Marmusha, Aït Alaham, Aït Yub and Aït Morghi.
[J. Bourrilly, Éléments d'éthnographie marocaine, p.42 (Larose, 1932)]
Despite the fact that they are
mutually intelligible with neighbouring
Central Atlas Tamazight
Central Atlas Tamazight or Atlasic (also known as Central Morocco Tamazight, variant of tashelhit, Middle Atlas Tamazight, Tamazight, Central Shilha and, rarely, Beraber or Braber; native name: ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ ''Tamazight'' , ) is a Be ...
dialects and are generally classified among them, these dialects actually belong to the
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 ...
and are intermediate dialects between the
Riffian and
Atlas
An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth.
Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geograp ...
languages.
[ Kossmann, The Arabic Influence on Northern Berber, pp.20-22 (Brill, 2013)][M. Kossmann]
Berber subclassification (preliminary version, unpublished)
pp.2-3
Among these Zenati dialects, those of ''
Aït Seghrouchen'' and ''Aït Waraïn'' were subject to most studies, while only a few studies were focused on the dialects of ''Aït Alaham'' and ''Marmusha'', and practically none focused on the dialects of ''Aït Yub'' and ''Aït Morghi''.
References
Berber languages
Languages of Morocco
{{Berber-lang-stub