Ghadamès (

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 ...

: / ,

Standard Arabic Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA) is the variety of standardized, literary Arabic that developed in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and in some usages also the variety of spoken Arabic that ...

, Libyan Arabic ) also called Ghadamsi or Ghadamsian is a

Berber language The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight, are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related but mostly mutually unintelligible languages spoken by Berber communities, who ar ...

that is spoken in, and named after, the oasis town of

Ghadames Ghadames or Ghadamis ( Ghadamsi: ⵄⴰⴷⴻⵎⴻⵙ / ''Ɛadēməs'' �adeːməs , ) is an oasis town in the Nalut District of the Tripolitania region in northwestern Libya. Ghadamès, known as 'the pearl of the desert', stands in an oa ...

in Nalut District, western

Libya Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya border, the east, Sudan to Libya–Sudan border, the southeast, Chad to Chad–L ...

Research

Ghadamès language materials have been gathered by two linguists. The first materials were published in 1903 and 1904 by Adolphe de Calassanti Motylinski (1854–1907). A more copious and reliable source is provided by the works of White Father Jacques Lanfry (1910-2000), who stayed in Ghadames from 1944 to 1945 and who published his main works in 1968 and 1973. No new research has been undertaken on location since then. Recently, Kossmann (2013) has published a modern grammar of Ghadamès based on Lanfry’s materials.

Number of speakers

Lanfry mentions the number of c. 4,000 speakers as an optimistic estimate. The actual number of speakers is not known with certainty. ''Ethnologue'' cites a number of 13,100 speakers in 2016, including 2,000 living outside the area. However, this number reflects the total number of inhabitants of Ghadames, who are not all native speakers of Ghadamès, while the number of 2,000 emigrant speakers is based on a very old source.''Encyclopaedia of Islam'', 2nd edition, article ''Ghadāmis'' (1952): 2,000 persons with a background in Ghadames living in Tunis; quoted by Lanfry (1973:iv). ''Ethnologue'' classifies the language as 6b (Threatened).

The language

Ghadamès is a

on its own, preserving several unique phonological and morphological features, and the Ghadamès lexicon, as recorded by Lanfry, shows relatively little influence from Arabic. There is as yet no consensus on the classification of Ghadamès within the Berber language group. Aikhenvald and Militarev (1984) group it as Eastern Berber, and Kossmann (1999) specifically groups it together with

Awjila Awjila (Arabic: 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 dates are farmed. The oasis was ment ...

. ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' 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 comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...

'' classifies it as East Zenati.

Phonology

Consonants

Like other Berber languages and Arabic, Ghadamès has both

pharyngealized Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound. IPA symbols In the International Phonetic Alphabet, pharyngealization can be indicate ...

("emphatic") and plain dental consonants.

Gemination In phonetics and phonology, gemination (; from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

is contrastive. Consonants listed between brackets occur only very sporadically.

Vowels

Most Berber languages have just three phonemic vowels. Ghadamès, like

Tamasheq Tamashek or Tamasheq is a variety of Tuareg, a Berber macro-language widely spoken by nomadic tribes across North and West Africa in Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Tamasheq is one of the three main varieties of Tuareg, the others bei ...

, has seven vowels.

Basic vocabulary

Below is the Leipzig-Jakarta list for Ghadames, extracted from Lanfry (1973). Lanfry's unconventional transcription has been adapted to modern usage. Symbols are equivalent to IPA . Lanfry's length notation on vowels probably represents lexical stress (Kossmann 2013: 5, 15).

References

Cited works

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ghadames Language Berber languages Berbers in Libya Languages of Libya

Language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...