Berber language page

Classification and where spoken

This section on Berber is based largely on information prepared by Jeanette Harries (personal communication, 1986). "The Berber branch of the Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) language family, usually considered as a single language with many dialects, is for purposes of language learning (and by sociolinguistic criteria) more conveniently treated as a number of distinct languages, each with mutually intelligible dialects. They are spoken by minority groups in at least eleven countries of northern and western Africa, from the Mediterranean to beyond the River Niger: in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania (and perhaps still in Senegal), Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Chad. "The three Berber languages researched for this project are: Kabyle (Taqbaylit), spoken in northern Algeria; Tamazight (Berber), of central Morocco; and Tuareg, the indigenous name of which varies according to the dialect (Prasse 1972): Tamahaq in southern Algeria, Tamashaq in Mali, Tamajeq in Niger and in Libya (Ghat, where it may also be called Tamaziq). Tuareg is also spoken by small groups in western Chad and in the north of Nigeria and Burkina Faso. Other major languages include Tashelhit (Shilha) and Tarifit (Rif) of Morocco." The languages of smaller groups are discussed in the Dialect Survey (4) of this section. "The name Tamazight or some variant of it is occasionally used to designate Berber languages in to (Chaker 1984, p. 283)."

Number of speakers

"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)." The following table, drawn from Grimes (1996), summarizes figures for some of the Berber dialects:

Usage

As yet no definitive classification of all Berber dialects exists. However, the main languages and domains are identifiable from the many dialect studies and from the arrangement by region of entries in the bibliographical resources used here: A. Basset, LLB, 1952, and the chronicles entitled "Langue et litérature berbère" (LELB) by Basset and Chaker, in AAN. The following list shows two kinds of dialect clusters, those which have been rather clearly identified as languages and those whose affiliation is not so clear. They are arranged more or less by country, from east to west across the northern tier, then back from west to east for the southern groups.

Orthographic status

There is no standard orthography for Berber, and differences in phonological systems, especially the vowels, as between Tuareg and northern Berber would probably preclude a uniform writing system. Berber is written with several scripts: the Roman, adapted to French orthography or to phonetic conventions; the Arabic, perhaps also modified; or the Berber alphabet, known as tifinag, traditionally used by the Tuareg. Since the 1966 Bamako conference (see 3 above), Niger and Mali have proceeded with literacy programs using the Roman-based script developed for Tuareg: holding training sessions, evening classes, and publishing readers and periodicals. In Niger some materials are published in both tifinag and in the official script. At the same time, some northern Berbers have begun to use tifinag to some extent, often along side Roman script, in their mainly French language revues. (See, for example, Amazigh, Paris, vol. 1, 1968). The Groupe d'études berbères de Paris-VIII/Vincennes published in 1976-1977, a 58-page "manual of initiation," Lecture et écriture du berbère (actually on Kabyle). The increasing use of Kabyle as a modern, written language (Garland, LELB, 1979, p. 182), has increased the use of the adapted Roman script. In Morocco, however, Arabic notation predominates in recent Berber literary production (Chaker, AAN 21, p. 748). This divergence in orthography could seriously hinder development of a standard orthography for at least Kabyle and the Moroccan Berber languages.

Sets of learning materials

Because of the very complex dialect/language situation, it is unclear how many sets of materials are required. The materials chosen for review were placed in the categories of Kabyle, Tamazight, and Tuareg.

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