Berber languages: Encyclopedia - Berber languages

Berber languages

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 Tashelhiyt (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); in this 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.

Berber languages - Nomenclature

The term "Berber" is disliked by many modern Berbers, because it comes from the ancient Greek barbaros, "barbarian". 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"[1]. 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.

Berber languages - Origin

Tamazight is a member of the Afro-Asiatic language family (formerly called Hamito-Semitic). Traditional genealogists often considered the Berbers as Arabs that immigrated from Yemen; for this reason, some considered Tamazight to derive from Arabic. For political reasons, the converse view has occasionally been suggested: Dr M. A'ashi, for instance, wrote "Tamazight is older than the Semitic languages. It is possible that the Semitic languages are even branches of Tamazight". However, both views are rejected by most linguists, who regard Semitic and Berber as two separate branches of Afro-Asiatic; Prof. Karl Prasse, for instance, regards it as "a sister language of Semitic in general".

Berber languages - 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.

• 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)
  • Middle Atlas Tamazight: 3 million (1998)

• 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 Gouverneur 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 two languages:
  • Nafusi in 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 Tuaregs (1991) speaking:

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

• 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[4].
• 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.

Berber languages - 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":

Berber languages - Subclassification

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

See also

• Arsène Roux
• Karl Prasse
• Henri Basset
• Berber
• Tifinagh alphabet

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Berber languages", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki