Central Atlas Tamazight
Central Atlas Tamazight or Atlasic (also known as Tazayit, variant of tashelhit, Middle Atlas Tamazight, Tmazight or Tmazikht, and, rarely, Beraber or Braber; native name: ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ Tamazight Berber: [tæmæˈzɪxt, θæmæˈzɪxθ], Arabic: أمازيغية أطلس الأوسط) is a Berber language[nb 1] of the Afroasiatic language family spoken by 3.1 million speakers.[1]
This article is about the Berber dialect of Central Morocco called Tamazight exclusively. For other uses of the word "Tamazight", see Berber languages.Central Atlas Tamazight
Berber: [tæmæˈzɪxt, θæmæˈzɪxθ]
3.1 million (2020)[1]
-
Berber
- Northern Berber
- Atlas
- Central Atlas Tamazight
- Atlas
- Northern Berber
Central Atlas Tamazight is one of the most-spoken Berber languages, along with Tachelhit, Kabyle, Riffian, Shawiya and Tuareg. In Morocco, it comes second as the most-spoken after Tachelhit. 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 Afroasiatic 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,[2][3] 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.[4] 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.[5][6]
Classification[edit]
Central Atlas Tamazight is one of the four most-spoken Berber languages, in addition to Kabyle, Tachelhit, and Riffian,[7] and it comes second as the most-spoken Berber language after Tachelhit in Morocco.[8][9][10] Differentiating these dialects is complicated by the fact that speakers of other languages may also refer to their language as 'Tamazight'.[11] The differences between all three groups are largely phonological and lexical, rather than syntactic.[12] Tamazight itself has a relatively large degree of internal diversity, including whether spirantization occurs.[11][13]
Central Atlas Tamazight speakers refer to themselves as Amazigh (pl. Imazighen), an endonymic ethnonym whose etymology is uncertain, but may translate as "free people".[14][15] The term Tamazight, the feminine form of Amazigh, refers to the language. Both words are also used self-referentially by other Berber groups, although Central Atlas Tamazight speakers use them regularly and exclusively.[11][nb 2]
In older studies, Central Atlas Tamazight is sometimes referred to as "Braber" / "Beraber", a dialectical Arabic term, or its Tamazight equivalent "Taberbrit".[11][16] This is related to the Standard Arabic and English term "Berber", used to refer to all Berber dialects/languages, though eschewed by many Berbers because its etymology is pejorative.[17]
Tamazight belongs to the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic language family; Afroasiatic subsumes a number of languages in North Africa and Southwest Asia including the Semitic languages, the Egyptian language, and the Chadic and Cushitic languages. Along with most other Berber languages, Tamazight has retained a number of widespread Afroasiatic features, including a two-gender system, verb–subject–object (VSO) typology, emphatic consonants (realized in Tamazight as pharyngealized), a templatic morphology, and a causative morpheme /s/ (the latter also found in other macrofamilies, such as the Niger–Congo languages). Within Berber, Central Atlas Tamazight belongs, along with neighbouring Tashelhiyt, to the Atlas branch of the Northern Berber subgroup.
Tamazight is in the middle of a dialect continuum between Riff to its north-east and Shilha to its south-west.[11] The basic lexicon of Tamazight differs markedly from Shilha, and its verbal system is more similar to Riff or Kabyle.[11] Moreover, Tamazight has a greater amount of internal diversity than Shilha.[13]
Tamazight's dialects are divided into three distinct subgroups and geographic regions: those spoken in the Middle Atlas mountains; those spoken in the High Atlas mountains; and those spoken in Jbel Saghro and its foothills.[11] Although the characteristic spirantization of /b/ > [β]; /t/ > [θ] or [h]; /d/ > [ð]; /k/ > [ç] or [ʃ]; and /É¡/ > [Ê], [ʃ] or [j] is apparent in Berber languages in central and northern Morocco and Algeria,[18] as in many Middle Atlas dialects, it is more rare in High Atlas Tamazight speakers, and is absent in Tamazight speakers from the foothills of Jbel Saghro.[11][19] Southern dialects (e.g. Ayt Atta) may also be differentiated syntactically: while other dialects predicate with the auxiliary /d/ (e.g. /d argaz/ "it's a man"), Southern dialects use the typically (High Atlas, Souss-Basin rural country, Jbel Atlas Saghro) auxiliary verb /g/ (e.g. /iga argaz/ "it's a man").[11] The differences between each of the three groups are primarily phonological.[12]
Groups speaking Tamazight include: Ait Ayache, Ait Morghi, Ait Alaham, Ait Youb, Marmoucha, Ait Youssi, Beni Mguild, Zayane, Zemmour, Ait Rbaa, Ait Seri, Guerouane, Ait Segougou, Ait Yafelman, Ait Sikhmane, Ayt Ndhir (Beni Mtir).[20][21][nb 3]
There is some ambiguity as to the eastern boundary of Central Atlas Tamazight. The dialect of the Ait Seghrouchen and Ait Ouarain tribes are commonly classed as Central Atlas Tamazight, and Ait Seghrouchen is reported to be mutually intelligible with the neighbouring Tamazight dialect of Ait Ayache.[22] Genetically, however, they belong to the Zenati subgroup of Northern Berber, rather than to the Atlas subgroup to which the rest of Central Atlas Tamazight belongs,[23] and are therefore excluded by some sources from Central Atlas Tamazight.[24] The Ethnologue lists another group of Zenati dialects, South Oran Berber (ksours sud-oranais), as a dialect of Central Atlas Tamazight,[25] but these are even less similar, and are treated by Berber specialists as a separate dialect group.[26]
Vocabulary[edit]
As a result of relatively intense language contact, Central Atlas Tamazight has a large stratum of Arabic loans. Many borrowed words in Berber also have native synonyms, e.g. /lbab/ or /tiflut/ 'door', the latter used more in rural areas.[88] The contact was unequal, as Moroccan Arabic has not borrowed as much from Berber languages,[89] though Berber has contributed to Moroccan and Algerian Arabics' very reduced vowel systems.[90]
Arabic loans span a wide range of lexical classes. Many nouns begin with /l-/, from the Arabic definite prefix, and some Arabic feminines may acquire the native Berber feminine ending /-t/, e.g. /lʕafit/ for /lʕafia/ 'fire'.[91] Many Arabic loans have been integrated into the Tamazight verb lexicon. They adhere fully to inflectional patterns of native stems, and may even undergo ablaut.[5][6] Even function words are borrowed, e.g. /blli/ or /billa/ 'that', /waxxa/ 'although', /ɣir/ 'just', etc.[88]
The first few (1–3 in Ayt Ayache and Ayt Ndhir) cardinal numerals have native Berber and borrowed Arabic forms.[nb 11][92] All higher cardinals are borrowed from Arabic, consistent with the linguistic universals that the numbers 1–3 are much more likely to be retained, and that a borrowed number generally implies that numbers greater than it are also borrowed. The retention of one is also motivated by the fact that Berber languages near-universally use unity as a determiner.[93]
Central Atlas Tamazight uses a bipartite negative construction (e.g. /uriffiɣ ʃa/ 'he did not go out') which apparently was modeled after proximate Arabic varieties, in a common development known as Jespersen's Cycle.[94] It is present in multiple Berber varieties, and is argued to have originated in neighboring Arabic and been adopted by contact.[95]