The Western Berber languages are a branch of the

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 ...

. 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 الإسلامية ...

while Tetserret is spoken in central

Niger ) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagesAlgerian Algerian may refer to: * Something of, or related to Algeria * Algerian people This article is about the demographic features of the population of Algeria, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, econo ...

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 lan ...

*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

Notes

Western Berber languages Berber languages {{Berber-lang-stub