Tamazight language
| Berber | |
|---|---|
| Tamaziɣt / Tamazight / ⵝⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵗⵝ / ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵗⵜ | |
| Ethnicity | Berbers (Imaziɣen) |
| Geographic distribution |
North Africa, mainly Morocco, Algeria, Libya, northern Mali and northern Niger; smaller Berber-speaking populations in Tunisia, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Mauritania and the Spanish city of Melilla Berber-speaking Moroccan and Algerian immigrants of about 2 million in: France, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Italy, Canada and the USA |
| Linguistic classification |
Afro-Asiatic
|
| Proto-language | Proto-Berber |
| Subdivisions | |
| ISO 639-2 / 5 | |
| Glottolog | berb1260 |
Berber-speaking populations are dominant in the coloured areas of modern-day North Africa. The other areas of North Africa contain minority Berber-speaking populations.
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The Berber languages, also known as Berber or the Amazigh languages (Berber name: Tamaziɣt, Tamazight; Tifinagh: ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵗⵜ, ⵝⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵗⵝ, pronounced [tæmæˈzɪɣt], [θæmæˈzɪɣθ]), are a family of similar and closely related languages and dialects spoken by the Berber people indigenous to North Africa. The Berber languages constitute a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They have been attested since ancient times.
Berber is spoken by large populations of Algeria, Morocco and Libya and by smaller populations of Tunisia, northern Mali, western and northern Niger, northern Burkina Faso, Mauritania and in the Siwa Oasis of Egypt. Large Berber-speaking migrant communities, today numbering about 4 million, have been living in Western Europe, spanning over three generations, since the 1950s. The number of Berber people is much higher than the number of Berber speakers. The bulk of the populations of the Maghreb countries are considered to have Berber ancestors. In Algeria, for example, a majority of the population consists of Arabised Berbers.
Around 90 percent of the Berber-speaking population speak one of six major varieties of Berber, each with at least two million speakers. They are, in order of number of speakers: Shilha (Tacelḥit/Tasussit), Kabyle (Taqbaylit), Central Atlas Tamazight (Tamaziɣt), Riffian (Tmaziɣt), Shawiya (Tacawit) and Tuareg (Tamaceq/Tamajaq/Tamahaq). The extinct Guanche language spoken on the Canary Islands by the Guanches, as well as the languages of the ancient C-Group culture in present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan, are believed to have belonged to the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic family.
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Wikipedia