The Eastern Berber languages are a group of
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 commun ...
spoken in
Libya
Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Suda ...
and
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...
. They include
Awjila
Awjila ( Berber: ''Awilan'', ''Awjila'', ''Awgila''; ar, أوجلة; Latin: ''Augila'') is an oasis town in the Al Wahat District in the Cyrenaica region of northeastern Libya. Since classical times it has been known as a place where high quality ...
,
Sokna and Fezzan (El-Fogaha),
Siwi and
Ghadamès, though it is not clear that they form a valid
genealogical
Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kin ...
group.
Eastern Berber is generally considered as part of the
Zenatic Berber supergroup of Northern Berber.
Classification
Kossmann (1999:29, 33) divides them into two groups:
* one consisting of
Ghadamès and
Awjila
Awjila ( Berber: ''Awilan'', ''Awjila'', ''Awgila''; ar, أوجلة; Latin: ''Augila'') is an oasis town in the Al Wahat District in the Cyrenaica region of northeastern Libya. Since classical times it has been known as a place where high quality ...
. These two languages are the only
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 commun ...
to preserve proto-Berber *β as β;
[Kossmann 1999:61.] elsewhere in Berber it becomes ''h'' or disappears.
* the other consisting of
Nafusi (excluding Zuwara and southern Tunisia),
Sokna (El-Foqaha) and
Siwi. This shares some innovations with
Zenati, and others (e.g. the change of *ă to ə and the loss of *β
) with
Northern Berber in general.
Blench (ms, 2006) lists the following as separate languages, with dialects in parentheses; like ''Ethnologue'', he classifies Nafusi as
Eastern Zenati
The East Zenati languages (Blench, 2006) or Tunisian and Zuwara (Kossmann, 2013) are a group of the Zenati Berber dialects spoken in Tunisia and Libya.
Maarten Kossmann considers the easternmost varieties of Zenati dialects as transitional to ...
.
*
Siwa
*
Awjila
Awjila ( Berber: ''Awilan'', ''Awjila'', ''Awgila''; ar, أوجلة; Latin: ''Augila'') is an oasis town in the Al Wahat District in the Cyrenaica region of northeastern Libya. Since classical times it has been known as a place where high quality ...
*
Sokna †
*
Ghadamès
*
Zurg †
The "Lingvarium Project" (2005) cites two additional languages: the
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
language of
Jaghbub
Jaghbub ( ar, الجغبوب) is a remote desert village in the Al Jaghbub Oasis in the eastern Libyan Desert. It is actually closer to the Egyptian town of Siwa than to any Libyan town of note. The oasis is located in Butnan District and was th ...
and the still-spoken Berber language of Tmessa, an oasis located in the north of the
Murzuq District. Blažek (1999) considers the language spoken in Tmessa as a dialect of
Fezzan.
[Václav Blažek, "Numerals: Comparative-etymological Analyses of Numeral Systems and Their Implications : Saharan, Nubian, Egyptian, Berber, Kartvelian, Uralic, Altaic and Indo-European Languages", in: Filozofická Fakulta: Opera Universitatis Masarykianae vol. 332, p. 57, Facultas Philosophica - Masarykova Univerzita Brno, 1999 ()]
Notes
External links
"Oriental Berber", a collaborative blog on the Berber languages of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt
Eastern Berber languages
Berber languages
Berbers in Egypt
Berbers in Libya
Languages of Egypt
Languages of Libya
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