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 ...

Including:

• Berber languages - Nomenclature
• Berber languages - Origin
• Berber languages - Population
• Berber languages - Grammar
• Berber languages - Subclassification

Read more here: » Berber languages: Encyclopedia - Berber languages

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 langu ...

See also:

Berber languages, Berber languages - Nomenclature, Berber languages - Origin, Berber languages - Population, Berber languages - Grammar, Berber languages - Subclassification

Read more here: » Berber languages: Encyclopedia II - Berber languages - Nomenclature

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 Early colonial censuses may provide better documented figures for some countries; however, these are also very much out of date.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 ...

See also:

Berber languages, Berber languages - Nomenclature, Berber languages - Origin, Berber languages - Population, Berber languages - Grammar, Berber languages - Subclassification

Read more here: » Berber languages: Encyclopedia II - Berber languages - Population

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 Aw ...

See also:

Berber languages, Berber languages - Nomenclature, Berber languages - Origin, Berber languages - Population, Berber languages - Grammar, Berber languages - Subclassification

Read more here: » Berber languages: Encyclopedia II - Berber languages - Subclassification