2011-08-15

Berber Languages

Berber languages

This article is about the Berber language and its dialects as a whole. For other uses of the word "Tamazight", see Central Morocco Tamazight.
Berber
Tamazight / ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ
Ethnicity Imazighen
Geographic
distribution:		 North Africa (mainly Morocco and Algeria; smaller Berber communities in Burkina Faso, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Niger,and Tunisia) and also in Belgium, Canada, France, Netherlands, Spain and United States
Linguistic classification: Afro-Asiatic
Berber
Proto-language: Proto-Berber
Subdivisions:
ISO 639-2 and 639-5: ber
Berbers.png

The pockets of Berber languages in modern-day North Africa

Shilha
Central Atlas
Riff
oasis groups
Shenwa
Kabyle
Shawiya
Tuareg

The Berber languages (native name: ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ, Tamazight ) are the indigenous related languages and dialects of North Africa west of the Nile river. The Berber group is assigned by linguists to the Afroasiatic language family. A population speaking a group of closely related and similar languages and dialects extended since ancient times across North Africa through the Atlas Mountains, the Sahara, and the northern part of the Sahel, and still largely does in modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Niger, Mali, Tunisia, Libya, and the Siwa Oasis area of Egypt. There is a movement among speakers of the closely related "Northern Berber" varieties to unite them into a single standard language.

The name "Tamazight", which was traditionally used by the native speakers of the Berber language varieties of the Atlas and the Rif regions, is being increasingly used for this Standard Berber, or even for Berber as a whole. Its usage is less consistent in some areas like the Kabylia where locals call their language Taqbaylit rather than Tamazight. Due to the rising Berber cultural and political activism and its recent prominence in the North African media, the popularity of the term "Tamazight" made it known and recognizable by virtually every citizen in North Africa, including non-Berber speakers.

The Berber language has six major varieties spoken by nine-tenths of the total Berber-speaking population. They are in the order of demographic weight: Tashelhit Berber, Kabylian Berber, Central Tamazight Berber, Tarifit Berber, Shawia Berber, and Tuareg Berber. These six varieties might be immediately mutually intelligible in part or not at all. Some Berbers argue that the main cause of this lack of mutual intelligibility is the lack of Berber education and the lack of TV programming and media productions. And all of this would be, in turn, caused by Arabization, French dominance, and other anti-Berber policies imposed by the governments of North Africa.

The Berber languages have had a written tradition, on and off, for over 2,000 years, although the 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; since the 20th century, it has often been written in the Berber Latin alphabet, especially among the Kabylians and within the cultural and linguistic communities of Morocco and Algeria.

A modernized form of the Tifinagh alphabet was made official in Morocco in 2003, and a similar one is sparsely used in Algeria. The Berber Latin alphabet is preferred by Moroccan Berber writers and is still predominant in Algeria (although unofficially). Mali and Niger recognized the "Tuareg Berber Latin alphabet" and customized it to the Tuareg phonological system. However, traditional Tifinagh is still used in those countries. Both Tifinagh and Latin scripts are being increasingly used in Morocco and parts of Algeria, while the Arabic script has been abandoned by Berber writers.

Terminology

Wikimedia Incubator
Wikimedia Incubator

Etymologically, the Berber word "Amazigh" means "free man", "noble man" or "defender".

The term Berber has been used in Europe since at least the 17th century, and is still used today. It was borrowed from either the Arabic designation for these populations, البربر, al-Barbar, see Berber (name); or from the Roman and Greek denominations of the Berber people.

The term Tamazight traditionally referred specifically to the Rif and the Central Morocco Tamazight dialects. Many Berber linguists prefer to consider the term "Tamazight" as a pure Berber word to be used only in Berber text; while using the European word "Berber/ Berbero/ Berbère" in European texts to honour the traditions of European writings about the Berbers. Unlike Arabic, European languages distinguish between the words "Berber" and "barbaric".

Some other Berber writers, especially in Morocco, prefer to refer to Berber with "Amazigh" when writing about it in French or English.

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 "Taqbaylit", the inhabitants of Siwa "Siwi", and the Zenaga. In Tunisia, the local Berber languages are usually referred to as "Shelha".

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

Origin

Berber is a member of the Afroasiatic language family. Its grouping within that family is uncertain.

Since modern Berber languages are relatively homogeneous, the date of the Proto-Berber language from which the modern group is derived was probably comparatively recent, comparable to the age of the Germanic or Romance families. By contrast, the split of the group from the other Afro-Asiatic sub-phyla is much earlier, and is sometimes associated with the Mesolithic Capsian culture.

Orthography

There are a number of different scripts with which Berber languages may be written. The choice of writing system is often based on politics rather than practical considerations.

Status

After independence, all the Maghreb countries to varying degrees pursued a policy of Arabization, aimed partly at displacing French from its colonial position as the dominant language of education and literacy. Under this policy the use of the Amazigh / Berber languages was suppressed or even banned. This state of affairs has been contested by Berbers in Morocco and Algeria—especially Kabylie—and is now being addressed in both countries by introducing the Berber language in some schools and by recognizing Berber as a "national language" in Algeria, though not as an official one. No such measures have been taken in the other Maghreb countries. In Mali and Niger, there are a few schools that teach partially in Tamasheq.

Although Algeria considers Tamazight to be a national language, and regional councils in Libya's Nafusa Mountains affiliated with the National Transitional Council reportedly use the Berber dialect of Nafusi and have called for it to be granted co-official status with Arabic in a prospective new constitution, Morocco is the only country where Tamazight is an official language.

As areas of Libya south and west of Tripoli such as the Nafusa Mountains were liberated from control by forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi in early summer 2011, Berber workshops and exhibitions sprang up to share and spread the Tamazight culture and language, after four decades during which there were severe punishments for speaking and writing Tamazight openly.

On June 17th, 2011, King Mohammed VI announced in a speech of new constitutional reform that "Tamazight" became an official language of Morocco alongside Arabic and will be used in all the administrations in the future.

Population

The exact population of Berber speakers is hard to ascertain, since most North African 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 André 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 2006, Salem Chaker estimated that the Berberophone populations of Kabylie and the three Moroccan groups numbered more than one million each; and that in Algeria, 12,650,000, or one out of three Algerians, speak a Berber language (Chaker 1984, pp. 8–9)."

A survey included in the official Moroccan census of 2004 and published by several Moroccan newspapers gave the following figures: 34% of people in rural regions spoke a Berber language and 21% in urban zones did, the national average would be 28.4% or 8.52 million. It is possible, however, that the survey asked for the language "used in daily life" which would result of course in figures clearly lower than those of native speakers, as the language is not recognized for official purposes and many Berbers who live in an Arabic-speaking environment cannot use it in daily life; also the use of Berber in public was frowned upon until the 1990s and might affect the result of the survey.

Adding up the population (according to the official census of 2004) of the Berber-speaking regions as shown on a 1973 map of the CIA results in at least 10 million speakers, not counting the numerous Berber population which lives outside these regions in the bigger cities.

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

The division of Moroccan Berber dialects in three groups, as used by The Ethnologue is common in linguistic publications, but is significantly complicated by local usage: thus Shilha is subdivided into Shilha 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 Central Morocco Tamazight (spoken in the Central and eastern Atlas area) or Shilha.

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 16 and 25 million, depending on which estimate is accepted; if we take Basset's estimate, it could be as high as 30 million. The vast majority are concentrated in Morocco and Algeria. The Tuareg of the Sahel add another million or so.

Grammar

Nouns in the Berber languages vary in gender (masculine versus feminine), in number (singular versus plural) and in state (free state versus construct state). In the case of the masculine, nouns generally begin with one of the three vowels of Berber, a, u or i (in standardised orthography, e represents a schwa [ə] inserted for reasons of pronunciation):

afus "hand"
argaz "man"
udem "face"
ul "heart"
ixef "head"
iles "tongue"

While the masculine is unmarked, the feminine (also used to form diminutives and singulatives, like an ear of wheat) is marked with the circumfix t...t. Feminine plural takes a prefix t... :

afus → tafust
udem → tudemt
ixef → tixeft
ifassen → tifassin

Berber languages have two types of number: singular and plural, of which only the latter is marked. Plural has three forms according to the type of nouns. The first, "regular" type is known as the "external plural" it consists in changing the initial vowel of the noun, and adding a suffix -n:

afus → ifassen "hands"
argaz → irgazen "men"
ixef → ixfawen "heads"
ul → ulawen "hearts"

The second form of the plural is known as the "broken plural". It involves only a change in the vowels of the word:

adrar → idurar "mountain"
agadir → igudar "wall / castle"
abaghus → ibughas "monkey"

The third type of plural is a mixed form: it combines a change of vowels with the suffix -n:

izi → izan "(the) fly"
azur → izuran "root"
iziker → izakaren "rope"

Berber languages also have two types of states or 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 free state, the latter construct state. The construct state of the noun derives from the free state through one of the following rules: The first involves a vowel alternation, whereby the vowel a becomes u :

argaz → urgaz
amghar → umghar
adrar → udrar

The second involves the loss of the initial vowel, in the case of some feminine nouns:

tamghart → temghart "woman / mature woman"
tamdint → temdint "town"
tarbat → terbat "girl"

The third involves the addition of a semi-vowel (w or y) word-initially:

asif → wasif "river"
aḍu → waḍu "wind"
iles → yiles "tongue"
uccen → wuccen "wolf"

Finally, some nouns do not change for free state:

taddart → taddart "house / village"
tuccent → tuccent "female wolf"

The following table gives the forms for the noun amghar "old man / leader":

Subclassification

Subclassification of the Berber languages is made difficult by their mutual closeness; (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 Sokna (Al Fuqahā'), Siwa, and Djebel Nefusa on the other. The implied tree is:

There is so little data available on Guanche that any classification is necessarily uncertain; however, it is almost universally acknowledged as Afro-Asiatic on the basis of the surviving glosses, and widely suspected to be Berber. 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), treats the eastern varieties differently:

Influence on other languages

The Berber languages have influenced Maghrebi Arabic dialects, such as Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian Arabic. Their influence is also seen in some languages in Sub-Saharan Africa. F.W.H.Migeod pointed to strong resemblances between Berber and Hausa in such words and phrases as these: Berber: ya mut; Hausa ya mutu (he died); Berber: obanis; Hausa obansa (his father); Berber: a bat; Hausa ya bata (he was lost); Berber: eghare; Hausa ya kirra (he called). In addition he notes that the genitive in both languages is formed with n = "of".

Notes

References

  • Ethnologue entry for Berber languages
  • Brett, Michael; & Fentress, Elizabeth (1997). The Berbers (The Peoples of Africa). ISBN 0-631-16852-4. ISBN 0-631-20767-8 (Pbk).
  • Abdel-Masish, Ernest T. 1971. A Reference Grammar of Tamazight (Middle Atlas Berber). Ann Arbor: Center for Near Eastern and North African Studies, The University of Michigan
  • Basset, André. 1952. La langue berbère. Handbook of African Languages 1, ser. ed. Daryll Forde. London: Oxford University Press
  • Chaker, Salem. 1995. Linguistique berbère: Études de syntaxe et de diachronie. M. S.—Ussun amaziɣ 8, ser. ed. Salem Chaker. Paris and Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters
  • Dallet, Jean-Marie. 1982. Dictionnaire kabyle–français, parler des At Mangellet, Algérie. Études etholinguistiques Maghreb–Sahara 1, ser. eds. Salem Chaker, and Marceau Gast. Paris: Société d’études linguistiques et anthropologiques de France
  • de Foucauld, Charles Eugène. 1951. Dictionnaire touareg–français, dialecte de l’Ahaggar. 4 vols. [Paris]: Imprimerie nationale de France
  • Delheure, Jean. 1984. Aǧraw n yiwalen: tumẓabt t-tfransist, Dictionnaire mozabite–français, langue berbère parlée du Mzab, Sahara septentrional, Algérie. Études etholinguistiques Maghreb–Sahara 2, ser. eds. Salem Chaker, and Marceau Gast. Paris: Société d’études linguistiques et anthropologiques de France
  • ———. 1987. Agerraw n iwalen: teggargrent–taṛumit, Dictionnaire ouargli–français, langue parlée à Oaurgla et Ngoussa, oasis du Sahara septentrinal, Algérie. Études etholinguistiques Maghreb–Sahara 5, ser. eds. Salem Chaker, and Marceau Gast. Paris: Société d’études linguistiques et anthropologiques de France
  • Kossmann, Maarten G. 1999. Essai sur la phonologie du proto-berbère. Grammatische Analysen afrikanischer Sprachen 12, ser. eds. Wilhelm J. G. Möhlig, and Bernd Heine. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag
  • Kossmann, Maarten G., and Hendrikus Joseph Stroomer. 1997. "Berber Phonology". In Phonologies of Asia and Africa (Including the Caucasus), edited by Alan S. Kaye. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. 461–475
  • Naït-Zerrad, Kamal. 1998. Dictionarrie des racines berbères (formes attestées). Paris and Leuven: Centre de Recherche Berbère and Uitgeverij Peeters
  • Prasse, Karl-Gottfried, Ghubăyd ăgg-Ălăwžəli, and Ghăbdəwan əg-Muxămmăd. 1998. Asăggălalaf: Tămaẓəq–Tăfrăsist – Lexique touareg–français. 2nd ed. Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications 24, ser. eds. Paul John Frandsen, Daniel T. Potts, and Aage Westenholz. København: Museum Tusculanum Press
  • Quitout, Michel. 1997. Grammaire berbère (rifain, tamazight, chleuh, kabyle). Paris and Montréal: Éditions l’Harmattan
  • Rössler, Otto. 1958. "Die Sprache Numidiens". In Sybaris: Festschrift Hans Krahe zum 60. Geburtstag am 7. February 1958, dargebracht von Freunden, Schülern und Kollegen. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz
  • Sadiqi, Fatima. 1997. Grammaire du berbère. Paris and Montréal: Éditions l’Harmattan. ISBN 2-7384-5919-6

External links

French






Retrieved from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_languages
Posted by at