Central Atlas Tamazight
| Central Atlas Tamazight | |
|---|---|
| Tamaziġt | |
| ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ | |
| Pronunciation | [tæmæˈzɪɣt], [θæmæˈzɪɣθ] |
| Native to | Morocco |
| Region | Middle Atlas |
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Native speakers
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2.5 million (2004 census) |
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Afro-Asiatic
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Standard forms
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| Tifinagh, Latin, Arabic | |
| Official status | |
| Regulated by | IRCAM |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | cent2194 |
Location of Central Atlas Tamazight speakers
Central Atlas Tamazight speakers are mostly distributed in a large, contiguous area in central Morocco.
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Central Atlas Tamazight language (also known as Central Morocco Tamazight, Middle Atlas Tamazight, Tamazight, Central Shilha, and, rarely, Braber; native name: ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ Tamazight [tæmæˈzɪɣt], [θæmæˈzɪɣθ]) is a Berber language of the Afro-Asiatic language family, spoken by 3 to 5 million people in the Atlas mountains of Central Morocco, as well as by smaller emigrant communities in France and elsewhere.
Central Atlas Tamazight is one of the most-spoken Berber languages, along with Kabyle, Shilha, Riff, and Shawiya, and in Morocco it rivals Shilha as the most-spoken. All five languages may be referred to as 'Tamazight', but Central Atlas speakers are the only ones who use the term exclusively. As is typical of Afro-Asiatic languages, Tamazight has a series of "emphatic consonants" (realized as pharyngealized), uvulars, pharyngeals, and lacks the phoneme /p/. Tamazight has a phonemic three-vowel system, but also has numerous words without vowels.
Central Atlas Tamazight (unlike neighbouring Tashelhit) had no known significant writing tradition until the 20th century. It is now officially written in the Tifinagh script for instruction in Moroccan schools, while descriptive linguistic literature commonly uses the Latin alphabet, and the Arabic alphabet has also been used.
The standard word order is verb–subject–object but sometimes subject–verb–object. Words inflect for gender, number, and state, using prefixes, suffixes, and circumfixes. Verbs are heavily inflected, being marked for tense, aspect, mode, voice, person of the subject, and polarity, sometimes undergoing ablaut. Pervasive borrowing from Arabic extends to all major word classes, including verbs; borrowed verbs, however, are conjugated according to native patterns, including ablaut.
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