The Western Berber languages are a branch of the Berber languages. They comprise two languages:
* Zenaga
* Tetserret
Zenaga is spoken in southwestern
Mauritania
Mauritania (; ar, موريتانيا, ', french: Mauritanie; Berber: ''Agawej'' or ''Cengit''; Pulaar: ''Moritani''; Wolof: ''Gànnaar''; Soninke:), officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania ( ar, الجمهورية الإسلامي� ...
while Tetserret is spoken in central
Niger
)
, official_languages =
, languages_type = National languagesAlgerian
Songhai language
The Songhay, Songhai or Ayneha languages (, or ) are a group of closely related languages/dialects centred on the middle stretches of the Niger River in the West African countries of Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso and Nigeria. In particular, ...
Korandje
Korandje (Korandje: ''kwạṛa n dzyəy''; ar, البلبالية, translit=al-Balbaliyyah) is a Northern Songhay language which is by far the most northerly of the Songhay languages. It is spoken around the Algerian oasis of Tabelbala by abou ...
.
The label "Western Berber" was first used in a classificatory sense by Aikhenvald and Militarev (1984) in reference to Zenaga alone. ( Tetserret data was not available to them.)
Sound changes characteristic of this subgroup include the reflex of
proto-Berber
Proto-Berber or Proto-Libyan is the reconstructed proto-language from which the modern Berber languages descend. Proto-Berber was an Afroasiatic language, and thus its descendant Berber languages are cousins to the Egyptian language, Cushitic l ...
*ww as *bb (elsewhere gg/ggʷ) and *w (elsewhere retained) as *b after consonants; of *x (elsewhere retained) as *k; of *ṭṭ as ḍḍ (elsewhere ṭṭ); and of *ẓ as a voiceless fricative ṣ (Tetserrét) or θ̣ (Zenaga).Souag, Lameen. "The Western Berber Stratum in Kwarandzyey (Tabelbala, Algeria)", in ed. D. Ibriszimow, M. Kossmann, H. Stroomer, R. Vossen, ''Études berbères V – Essais sur des variations dialectales et autres articles''. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe, 2010