The Berber languages, also known as Amazigh, are a branch of the Afroasian language family. They form a group of closely related dialects spoken by the Berbers, the indigenous inhabitants of North Africa. The languages of this group use a special ancient script, which now exists in the form of a special symbol system - tifinagh. It is worth noting separately that there is no separate Berber language. This is a vast language group, distributed throughout almost all of North Africa.
Distribution
These languages are spoken by large populations in Morocco, Algeria and Libya, smaller populations in Tunisia, northern Mali, western and northern Niger, northern Burkina Faso and Mauritania, and in the Siwa Oasis in Egypt. Since the 1950s, large Berber-speaking migrant communities have lived in Western Europe, currently numbering about 4 million people. The number of people from peoples who speakBerber languages is significantly higher than the number of people who speak the same languages. It is believed that the bulk of the population of the Maghreb countries has Berber ancestors.
Variety
About 90% of Berber-speaking residents speak one of the seven main types of this language group, each of which has at least 2 million speakers. These include the following languages:
- Shilha.
- Kabil.
- Tamazite.
- Shavia.
- Tuareg.
The extinct Guanche language spoken by the Guanches of the Canary Islands, as well as the languages of the ancient cultures of modern Egypt and northern Sudan, is believed to have belonged to the Berber-Libyan languages of the Afroasiatic family. There is also a significant proportion of extinct languages thought to belong to this group.
Written tradition
The Berber languages and dialects have a written tradition spanning some 2,500 years of history, although this has often been interrupted by various cultural shifts and incursions by foreign invaders. In ancient times, they all used a special type of writing - the Libiko-Berber abjad, which is still used by the Tuareg in the form of tifinagh. The oldest dated inscription of this kind dates back to the 3rd century BC. Later, between 1000 and 1500 AD, most of these languages used the Arabic script, and from the 20th century they were translated into the Latin alphabet, which took root very well among Kabyle and Rifcommunities of Morocco and Algeria. It has also been used by most European and Berber linguists.
Development of writing
A modernized form of the Tifinagh alphabet called Neo-Tifinagh was adopted in Morocco in 2003 to write texts in Berber languages, but many Moroccan publications still use the Latin alphabet. Algerians mostly use the Latin alphabet in public schools, while tifinagh is mainly used to create various artistic symbols. Mali and Niger recognize the Tuareg Berber Latin alphabet tuned to the Tuareg phonological system. However, the traditional Tifinagh is still used in these countries.
Rebirth and unification
Among the speakers of the closely related Northern Berber varieties, there is a cultural and political movement that promotes and unifies them through a new written language called Tamazygot (or Tamazight). Tamaziɣt is the current local name for the Berber language in Morocco and the Rif regions, and in the Libyan region of Zuwara. In other Berber-speaking areas, the name has been lost. There is historical evidence from medieval Berber manuscripts that all the indigenous people of North Africa from Libya to Morocco once called their language Tamazite. This name is now increasingly used by educated Berbers to refer to their language.
Recognition
In 2001, the local Berber language becamethe constitutional national language of Algeria, and in 2011 it also became the official language of Morocco. In 2016, it became the official language of Algeria along with Arabic.
Name history
The name of these languages known to us today has been known in Europe since at least the 17th century, it is still used today. It was borrowed from the famous Latin word "barbarian". The notorious Latin word also appears in the Arabic designation for these populations - البربر (al-Barbar).
Etymologically, the Berber root M-Z-Ɣ (Mazigh) (singular noun: amazigh, feminization - tamazight) means "free man", "noble man" or "protector". Many Berber linguists prefer to consider the term "Tamazight" as a purely local word that is used only in the Berber text, while in European texts the European word "Berber/Berbero" is used. European languages distinguish between the words "Berber" and "Barbarian", while in Arabic the same word "al-Barbari" is used for both meanings.
Some nationalist Berber writers, especially in Morocco, prefer to refer to their people and language as their native word, Amazigh, even when writing in French or English.
Traditionally, the term "tamazight" (in various forms: tamazight, tamashek, tamajak, tamahak) was used by many Berber groups to refer to the language in whichthey spoke including Rifts, Sened in Tunisia, and Tuareg. However, other terms are also often used by other ethnic groups. For example, some Berber inhabitants of Algeria called their language taznatit (zenati) or shelha, while the Kabuls called it takbaylit, and the inhabitants of the Siwa oasis call their dialect the word Sivi. In Tunisia, the local Amazigh language is commonly referred to as Shelha, a term that also occurs in Morocco. A translator of Berber languages is a rare profession, because the knowledge of Europeans in them is usually limited.
The Linguasphere Observatory scientific group tried to introduce the neologism "Tamaz languages" to refer to the Berber dialects.
Berber languages: roots
This language branch belongs to the Afroasian family. Many, however, consider Berber to be part of the Hamitic family of languages. Since the modern languages of this group are relatively homogeneous, the date of the emergence of the Proto-Berber dialect, from which the modern languages are derived, was probably relatively recent, comparable to the age of the Germanic or Romance subfamilies.
On the contrary, the separation of the group from another Afroasian subphylum occurs much earlier, and therefore its origin is sometimes associated with the local Mesolithic Cape culture. Many extinct peoples are believed to have spoken Afro-Asiatic languages of the Berber branch. According to Peter Behrens (1981) and Marianne Behaus-Gerst (2000), linguistic evidence suggests that peoples of a number of cultural groups in present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan spoke Berber languages. Nilo-Saharan Nubian today contains a number of key pastoral loanwords that are of Berber origin, including names for sheep and water (Nile). This, in turn, suggests that the ancient population of the Nile Valley gave rise to the modern peoples of North Africa.
Distribution
Roger Blench suggests that Proto-Berber speakers spread from the Nile Valley to North Africa 4,000-5,000 years ago due to the spread of pastoralism and formed the modern semblance of a language about 2,000 years ago, when the Roman Empire rapidly expanded in North Africa. Therefore, although the Berbers split off from the common Afro-Asiatic source about a few thousand years ago, the Proto-Berber itself can only be reconstructed in the form in which it existed in 200 AD. and later.
Blench also notes that the ancient language of the Berbers differed significantly from other Afroasian dialects, but the modern languages of this group show very little internal diversity. The presence of Punic (Carthaginian) loanwords among the Proto-Berbers indicates the diversification of the modern varieties of these languages after the fall of Carthage in 146 BC. Only the Zenagi language has no Punic loanwords. This language group is very different from European languages, even if it has, presumably, a distant connection with Basque. Russian and Berber are completely different.
