Western Berber
| Western Berber | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution |
Northwest Africa |
| Linguistic classification |
Afro-Asiatic
|
| Subdivisions | |
| Glottolog | west2724 |
The Western Berber languages are a branch of the Berber languages comprising Zenaga and Tin Sert. Zenaga is spoken in southwestern Mauritania while Tin Sert is spoken in central Niger. They appear to have influenced the Algerian Songhai language Korandje.
The label "Western Berber" was first used in a classificatory sense by Aikhenvald and Militarev (1984) in reference to Zenaga alone. (Tetserrét language data was not available to them.)
Sound changes characteristic of this subgroup include the reflex of proto-Berber *ww as *bb (elsewhere gg/ggʷ) and *w (elsewhere retained) as *b after consonants; of *x (elsewhere retained) as *k; of *ṭṭ as ḍḍ (elsewhere ṭṭ); and of *ẓ as a voiceless fricative ṣ (Tetserrét) or θ̣ (Zenaga).
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