Berber

Berber

Any member of a community native to the Maghrib who speaks one of various Berber languages, including Tamazight, Tashahit, and Tarifit. Berber-speakers were the original inhabitants of North Africa, though many regions succumbed to colonization by the Roman Republic and Empire and later (from the 7th century AD) to conquest by the Arabs. Berbers gradually accepted Islam, and many switched to Arabic or became bilingual. Berber languages are still spoken in some rural and mountain areas of Morocco and Algeria and by some inhabitants of Tunisia and Libya. Since the 1990s Berber intellectuals have sought to revive interest in the language. The Berber-speaking Almoravid and Almohad dynasties built empires in North Africa and Spain in the 11th–13th centuries. See also Abd el-Krim; Kabyle; Rif.

---

Berber

1. a member of a Caucasoid Muslim people of N Africa

2. the language of this people, forming a subfamily of the Afro-Asiatic family of languages. There are extensive differences between dialects

---

Berber 

the language of the Berbers. It is spoken in the United Arab Republic, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, the western Sahara, Mauritania, Upper Volta, Niger, Nigeria, and the Republic of Chad. It is related to the Hamito-Semitic languages. The language is divided into a large number of dialects (about 300), which can be unified in five basic dialectical groups: Tuareg (about 500,000 people in Libya, Algeria, Mali, Upper Volta, Niger, Nigeria, and Chad); Zenete (over 2 million people in Algeria, the Algerian Sahara, and northern Morocco); Tamazight (about 2 million people in Morocco); Tashelhit (about 2 million people in Morocco); and Zenaga (about 10,000 people in Mauritania). There are about 7 million Berber-speaking people. While the Berber language is losing ground to Arabic in the United Arab Republic, Libya, Tunisia, and Mauritania, the Berber-speaking population is increasing yearly in Algeria and Morocco.

The Berber language has three groups of phonemes—consonants, vowels, and sonants. The accent is very weak; a root may consist of one, two, three, and even four consonants. The phonetic, morphological, syntactical, and lexicological unity of Berber dialects is unconditional, and thus one can speak of one language.

In Berber culture, oral popular art is predominant. From ancient times there have been attempts to give the Berber language and its dialects written form with the assistance of different systems of writing: the Berber Tifinaq and the Arabic and Latin alphabets.

REFERENCES

Zavadovskii, Iu. N. Berberskii iazyk. Moscow, 1967.
Basset, A. “Les parlers berbères.” In Initiation à la Tunisie. Paris, 1950.
Picard, A. “Les parlers berbères.” In Initiation à l’Algérie. Paris, 1957.
Laoust, E. “Les parlers berbères.” In Initiation au Maroc. Paris, 1959.