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Berber languages

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Languages

                               Berber
     Geographic
   distribution:   North Africa (mainly Morocco and Algeria; small
                   communities in populations in Libya and Egypt)
       Genetic
   classification: Afro-Asiatic
                    Berber
    Subdivisions:
                   —

   The Berber languages (or Tamazight) are a group of closely related
   languages mainly spoken in Morocco and Algeria. A very sparse
   population extends into the whole Sahara and the northern part of the
   Sahel. They belong to the Afro-Asiatic languages phylum. There is a
   strong movement among Berbers to unify the closely related northern
   Berber languages into a single standard, Tamazight.

   Among the Berber languages are Tarifit or Riffi (northern Morocco),
   Kabyle (Algeria) and Tachelhit (central Morocco). Tamazight has been a
   written language, on and off, for almost 3000 years; however, this
   tradition has been frequently disrupted by various invasions. It was
   first written in the Tifinagh alphabet, still used by the Tuareg; the
   oldest dated inscription is from about 200 BC. Later between about 1000
   AD and 1500 AD, it was written in the Arabic alphabet (particularly by
   the Shilha of Morocco); since the 20th century, it is often written in
   the Latin alphabet, especially among the Kabyle. A variant of the
   Tifinagh alphabet was recently made official in Morocco, while the
   Latin alphabet is official in Algeria, Mali, and Niger; however, both
   Tifinagh and Arabic are still widely used in Mali and Niger, while
   Latin and Arabic are still widely used in Morocco.

   After independence, all the Maghreb countries to varying degrees
   pursued a policy of "Arabization", aimed primarily at displacing French
   from its colonial position as the dominant language of education and
   literacy, but under which teaching, and use in certain highly public
   spheres, of both Berber languages and Maghrebi Arabic dialect have been
   suppressed as well. This state of affairs was protested by Berbers in
   Morocco and Algeria - especially Kabylie - and is now being addressed
   in both countries by introducing Berber language education and by
   recognizing Berber as a "national language", though not necessarily an
   official one. No such measures have been taken in the other Maghreb
   countries, whose Berber populations are much smaller. In Mali and
   Niger, there are a few schools that teach partially in Tamasheq.

Nomenclature

   The term "Berber" is thought to come from the ancient Greek barbaros,
   (see " barbarian" ). The word "Barbarian" comes into English from
   Medieval Latin barbarinus, from Latin barbaria, from Latin barbarus,
   from the ancient Greek word βάρβαρος (barbaros) which meant a
   non-Greek, someone whose (first) language was not Greek.

   Nonetheless, it is used in Western languages by many Berber writers,
   such as the Kabyle Professor Salem Chaker of INALCO in Paris, Werner
   Vycichl, and Maarten Kossmann and Harry Stroomer of Leiden University.

   The term Tamazight is often substituted, particularly to refer to
   Northern Berber languages; in Western languages, this term can also
   (somewhat misleadingly) be used specifically to refer to the language
   of the Middle Atlas mountains in Morocco, closely related to
   Tashelhiyt. Etymologically, it means "language of the free" or "of the
   noblemen." Traditionally, the term "tamazight" (in various forms:
   "thamazighth", "tamasheq", "tamajeq", "tamahaq") was used by many
   Berber groups to refer to the language they spoke, including the Middle
   Atlas, the Rif, Sened in Tunisia, and the Tuareg. However, other terms
   were used by other groups; for instance, many parts of western Algeria
   called their language "taznatit" or Zenati, while the Kabyles called
   theirs "thaqvaylith", the inhabitants of Siwa "tasiwit", and the Zenaga
   "Tuddhungiya" . Around the turn of the century, it was reported that
   the Zenata of the Rif called their language "Zenatia" specifically to
   distinguish it from the "Tamazight" spoken by the rest of the Rif.

   One group, the Linguasphere Observatory, has attempted to introduce the
   neologism "Tamazic languages" to refer to the Berber languages.

Origin

   Tamazight is a member of the Afro-Asiatic language family (formerly
   called Hamito-Semitic). Traditional genealogists of tribes claiming
   Arab origin often claimed that Berbers were Arabs that immigrated from
   Yemen. Some of them considered Tamazight to derive from Arabic. This
   view, however, is rejected by linguists, who regard Semitic and Berber
   as two separate branches of Afro-Asiatic.

Population

   The exact population of Berber speakers is hard to ascertain, since
   most Maghreb countries do not record language data in their censuses.
   The Ethnologue provides a useful academic starting point; however, its
   bibliographic references are inadequate, and it rates its own accuracy
   at only B-C for the area. Early colonial censuses may provide better
   documented figures for some countries; however, these are also very
   much out of date.

          "Few census figures are available; all countries (Algeria and
          Morocco included) do not count Berber languages. The 1972 Niger
          census reported Tuareg, with other languages, at 127,000
          speakers. Population shifts in location and number, effects of
          urbanization and education in other languages, etc., make
          estimates difficult. In 1952 A. Basset (LLB.4) estimated the
          number of Berberophones at 5,500,000. Between 1968 and 1978
          estimates ranged from eight to thirteen million (as reported by
          Galand, LELB 56, pp. 107, 123-25); Voegelin and Voegelin (1977,
          p. 297) call eight million a conservative estimate. In 1980, S.
          Chaker estimated that the Berberophone populations of Kabylie
          and the three Moroccan groups numbered more than one million
          each; and that in Algeria, 3,650,000, or one out of five
          Algerians, speak a Berber language (Chaker 1984, pp. 8-9)."

     * Morocco: In 1952, André Basset ("La langue berbère", Handbook of
       African Languages, Part I, Oxford) estimated that a "small
       majority" of Morocco's population spoke Berber. The 1960 census
       estimated that 34% of Moroccans spoke Berber, including bi-, tri-,
       and quadrilinguals. In 2000, Karl Prasse cited "more than half" in
       an interview conducted by Brahim Karada at Tawalt.com. According to
       the Ethnologue (by deduction from its Moroccan Arabic figures), the
       Berber-speaking population is estimated at 35% (1991 and 1995).
       However, the figures it gives for individual languages only add up
       to 7.5 million, or about 28%. Most of these are accounted for by
       three dialects:
          + Tarifit: 1.5 million (1991)
          + Tachelhit: 3 million (1998)
          + Atlas Tamazight: 3 million (1998)

          This nomenclature is common in linguistic publications, but is
          significantly complicated by local usage: thus Tachelhit is
          sub-divided into Tachelhit of the Dra valley, Tasusit (the
          language of the Souss) and several other (mountain)-dialects.
          Moreover, linguistic boundaries are blurred, such that certain
          dialects cannot accurately be described as either Atlas
          Tamazight (spoken in the Central and eastern Atlas area) or
          Tachelhit.

          Mohammad Chafik claims 80% of Moroccans are Berbers. It is not
          clear, however, whether he means "speakers of Berber languages"
          or "people of Berber descent".

     * Algeria: In 1906, the total population speaking Berber languages in
       Algeria (excluding the thinly populated Sahara) was estimated at
       1,305,730 out of 4,447,149, ie 29%. (Doutté & Gautier, Enquête sur
       la dispersion de la langue berbère en Algérie, faite par l'ordre de
       M. le Governor Général, Alger 1913.) The 1911 census, however,
       found 1,084,702 speakers out of 4,740,526, ie 23%; Doutté & Gautier
       suggest that this was the result of a serious undercounting of
       Chaouia in areas of widespread bilingualism. A trend was noted for
       Berber groups surrounded by Arabic (as in Blida) to adopt Arabic,
       while Arabic speakers surrounded by Berber (as in Sikh ou Meddour
       near Tizi-Ouzou) tended to adopt Berber. In 1952, André Basset
       estimated that about a third of Algeria's population spoke Berber.
       The Algerian census of 1966 found 2,297,997 out of 12,096,347
       Algerians, or 19%, to speak "Berber." In 1980, Salem Chaker
       estimated that "in Algeria, 3,650,000, or one out of five
       Algerians, speak a Berber language" (Chaker 1984, pp. 8-9).
       According to the Ethnologue, more recent estimates include (by
       deduction from its Algerian Arabic figures) 17% (1991) and 29%
       (Hunter 1996). The actual figures it gives for Berber languages,
       however, only add up to about 4 million, under 15%. Most of these
       are accounted for by two dialects:
          + Kabyle: 2.5 million (1995), or 8% of the population - or "up
            to" 6 million (1998), which would be more like 20%.
          + Chaouia: 1.4 million (1993), thus 5% of the population.
     * Tunisia: Basset (1952) estimated about 1%, as did Penchoen (1968).
       According to the Ethnologue, there are only 26,000 speakers (1998)
       of a Berber language it calls "Djerbi" in Tunisia, all in the south
       around Djerba and Matmata. The more northerly enclave of Sened
       apparently no longer speaks Berber. This would make 0.3% of the
       population.
     * Libya: According to the Ethnologue (by deduction from its combined
       Libyan Arabic and Egyptian Arabic figures) the non-Arabic-speaking
       population, most of which would be Berber, is estimated at 4%
       (1991, 1996). However, the individual language figures it gives add
       up to 162,000, ie about 3%. This is mostly accounted for by
       languages:
          + Nafusi in Zuwarah and Jabal Nafusa: 141,000 (1998).
          + Tahaggart Tamahaq of Ghat: 17,000 (Johnstone 1993).
     * Egypt: The oasis of Siwa near the Libyan border speaks a Berber
       language; according to the Ethnologue, there are 5,000 speakers
       there (1995). Its population in 1907 was 3884 (according to the
       1911 Encyclopædia Britannica); the claimed lack of increase seems
       surprising.
     * Mauritania: According to the Ethnologue, only 200-300 speakers of
       Zenaga remain (1998). It also mentions Tamasheq, but does not
       provide a population figure for it. Most non-Arabic speakers in
       Mauritania speak Niger-Congo languages.
     * Mali: The Ethnologue counts 440,000 Tuareg (1991) speaking:

                Tamasheq: 250,000
                Tamajaq: 190,000

     * Niger: The Ethnologue counts 720,000 Tuareg (1998) speaking:

                Tawallamat Tamajaq: 450,000
                Tayart Tamajeq: 250,000
                Tahaggart Tamahaq: 20,000

     * Burkina Faso: The Ethnologue counts 20,000 - 30,000 Tuareg ( SIL
       1991), speaking Kidal Tamasheq.
     * Nigeria: The Ethnologue notes the presence of "few" Tuareg,
       speaking Tawallamat Tamajaq.
     * France: The Ethnologue lists 537,000 speakers for Kabyle, 150,000
       for Middle Atlas Tamazight, and no figures for Tachelhit and
       Tarifit. For the rest of Europe, it has no figures.
     * Ceuta and Melilla: A majority of Melilla's 80,000 inhabitants, and
       a minority of Ceuta's inhabitants, speak Berber .
     * Israel: A few thousand elderly Moroccan-born Israelis use
       Judeo-Berber dialects.

   Thus, judging by the not necessarily reliable Ethnologue, the total
   number of speakers of Berber languages in the Maghreb proper appears to
   lie anywhere between 14 and 20 million, depending on which estimate is
   accepted; if we take Basset's estimate, it could be as high as 25
   million. The vast majority are concentrated in Morocco and Algeria. The
   Tuareg of the Sahel add another million or so.

Grammar

   The Berber languages have two cases of the noun, organized ergatively:
   one is unmarked, while the other serves for the subject of a transitive
   verb and the object of a preposition, among other contexts. The former
   is often called état libre, the latter état d'annexion or état
   construit. Berber nouns also have two genders, masculine (unmarked) and
   feminine (marked with reflexes of the prefix t-). These are illustrated
   (in Latin transcription) for the noun amghar "old man, sheikh":
            masculine         feminine
            default  agent    default   agent
   singular amghar   umghar   tamghart  temghart
   plural   imgharen imgharen timgharin temgharin

Subclassification

   Modern Berber Languages
   Enlarge
   Modern Berber Languages

   Subclassification of the Berber languages is made difficult by their
   mutual closeness; Maarten Kossmann (1999) describes it as two dialect
   continua, Northern Berber and Tuareg, and a few peripheral languages,
   spoken in isolated pockets largely surrounded by Arabic, that fall
   outside these continua, namely Zenaga and the Libyan and Egyptian
   varieties. Within Northern Berber, however, he recognizes a break in
   the continuum between Zenati languages and their non-Zenati neighbors;
   and in the east, he recognizes a division between Ghadames and Awjila
   on the one hand and El-Foqaha, Siwa, and Djebel Nefusa on the other.
   The implied tree is:
     * Nefusa-Siwa languages
     * Ghadames-Awjila languages
     * Northern Berber languages
          + Zenati languages (including Tarifit)
          + Kabyle language
          + Moroccan Atlas languages (including Tashelhiyt and Tamazight)
     * Tuareg languages
     * Zenaga language

   There is so little data available on Guanche that any classification is
   necessarily uncertain; however, it is almost universally acknowledged
   as Berber on the basis of the surviving glosses. Much the same can be
   said of the language, sometimes called " Numidian", used in the Libyan
   or Libyco-Berber inscriptions around the turn of the Common Era, whose
   alphabet is the ancestor of Tifinagh.

   The Ethnologue, mostly following Aikhenvald and Militarev (1991),
   subdivides it somewhat differently:
     * Guanche
     * Eastern Berber languages
          + Siwa
          + Awjila-Sokna languages
     * Northern Berber languages
          + Zenati languages
          + Kabyle language
          + Chenoua language
          + Moroccan Atlas languages
     * Tamasheq languages
          + Northern Tamasheq languages
          + Southern Tamasheq languages
     * Zenaga language

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