Matmata Berber is a Zenati

Berber Berber or Berbers may refer to: Ethnic group * Berbers, an ethnic group native to Northern Africa * Berber languages, a family of Afro-Asiatic languages Places * Berber, Sudan, a town on the Nile People with the surname * Ady Berber (1913–196 ...

dialect spoken around the town of Matmâta in southern Tunisia, and in the villages of Taoujjout,

Tamezret Tamezret or Tamazrat ( ber, ⵜⴰⵎⵣⵔⴻⵜ) is a Tunisian Berber village located in the south-east of the country, about ten kilometers from Matmata and forty kilometers southwest of the capital of the governorate of Gabès on which it dep ...

and

Zrawa Zraoua is a Tunisian village in the delegation of Matmata. The original name in Amazigh language is Azro. Beside the Berber tribes, there was installation of the Arab tribes of Ouled Abdallah and Ouled Hlel from Enfidha and Ouled Aïssa from t ...

. According to Ben Mamou's lexicon, its speakers call it ''Tmaziɣṯ'' or ''Eddwi nna'', meaning "our speech", while it is called ''Shelha'' or ''Jbali'' (جبالي) in local Tunisian Arabic dialects. The total population speaking this variety was estimated at 3,726 in 1975. Documentation of Matmata Berber is limited. A collection of fairy tales in this variety was published by Stumme in 1900. Basset (1950) provides a few dialect maps of Tunisian Berber including this region, showing lexical variation, while Penchoen (1968) offers a general discussion of Tunisian Berber and the effects of schooling. Collins (1981) discusses its verbal morphology along with that of other Tunisian Berber varieties. The only general grammatical sketch and vocabulary available is the website put together by Larbi Ben Mamou, a native speaker of the language. ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

'' treats it as part of the

Nafusi language Nafusi (also spelt Nefusi; ber, Ažbali / Maziɣ / Mazoɣ, script=Latn, label=in Nafusi) is a Berber language spoken in the Nafusa Mountains (), a large area in northwestern Libya. Its primary speakers are the Ibadite communities around Jadu, Na ...

spoken in northwestern Libya, although the two belong to different subgroups of Berber according to Kossmann (1999).A separate language code in ''Ethnologue'' 13, uh was retired and reassigned to a Bhil language in India.

References

Berber languages Berbers in Tunisia Languages of Tunisia {{Berber-lang-stub