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Topic: Northern Berber languages


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In the News (Mon 16 Nov 09)

  
  African Languages - MSN Encarta
Languages in the Mande subgroup are spoken in Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Bambara, spoken in Mali, is the principal language in this subgroup.
Languages of the Adamawa East subgroup are spoken in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), and the Central African Republic.
encarta.msn.com /encyclopedia_761565449/African_Languages.html   (1759 words)

  
 African Languages - ninemsn Encarta
Languages of the Berber branch of the Afro-Asiatic family are spoken by a substantial portion of the population in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia; by scattered groups elsewhere in North Africa; and along the southern fringes of the Sahara Desert in western Africa.
The Nubian alphabet was derived from that of the Coptic language.
Languages spoken farther to the south-east, including Maasai in Kenya, have long been called Nilo-Hamitic; recent investigations, however, appear to prove that these tongues have no direct relationship to languages of the Afro-Asiatic family, but are most closely related to the Nilotic languages.
au.encarta.msn.com /encyclopedia_761565449/African_Languages.html   (1277 words)

  
 Berber & Tinifagh - Crystalinks
The Berber languages are spoken in scattered areas throughout northern Africa from Egypt westward to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Niger River northward to the Mediterranean Sea.
Whether the extinct language of the Guanches in the Canary Islands and of the Iberians of Spain belonged to the Berber branch or even to Hamito-Semitic is doubtful.
Phonology In the phonologies of these languages the vowels *a, *i, *u were lost or reduced to, and *a, *i, *u became a, i, u; *w and *y may appear both as consonants and as vowels, and the emphatics are represented by d, gh (but in reduplication tt, qq), and z.
www.crystalinks.com /berber.html   (466 words)

  
 Hamitic Races And Languages - LoveToKnow 1911
Northern Branch (a) Berbers of the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Sahara.
The purest representative seems to be the language of the Algerian mountaineers (Kabyles), especially that of the Zuawa (Zouaves) tribe, described by A. Hanoteau, Essai de grammaire kabyle (1858); Ben Sedira, Cours de langue kab.
Neither medieval reports on the language spoken by the Guanches of the Canary Islands (fullest in A. Berthelot, Antiguites canariennes, 1879; akin to Shilha; by no means primitive Libyan untouched by Arabic), nor the modern dialect of Siwa (still little known; tentative grammar by Basset, 1890), have justified hopes of finding a pure Libyan dialect.
www.1911encyclopedia.org /Hamitic_Races_And_Languages   (2290 words)

  
 Hassaniya - Encyclopedia, History, Geography and Biography
Though clearly a western dialect, Ḥassānīya is relatively distant from other North African variants of Arabic; its geographical isolation exposed it to influence from Zenaga and Wolof, and insulated it from the influence of northern Berber languages and Romance languages.
Still one emphatic phoneme /zˤ/ is acquired from the neighbouring Zenaga Berber language along with a whole palatal series /c ɟ ɲ/ from Niger-Congo languages of the south.
In addition, short vowels /a i/ in open syllables are found in Berber loanwords, such as /a.raː.gaːʒ/ 'man', /i.vuː.kaːn/ 'calves of 1 to 2 years of age', and /u/ in passive formation: /ugaːbəl/ 'he was met' (cf.
www.arikah.net /encyclopedia/Hassaniya   (855 words)

  
 The Berbers
Berbers are identified primarily by language but also by traditional customs and culture - such as the distinctive music and dances.
Berber is not officially recognised in Morocco, though French (the old colonial language) is. There was some pressure in 1996, when the constitution was being revised, to have Berber recognised.
Berber is basically a spoken language, though there have been (and still are) attempts to gain acceptance for a written form.
www.al-bab.com /arab/background/berber.htm   (504 words)

  
 Berber Branch
The Berber, or Amazigh, people live in Northern Africa throughout the Mediterranean coast, the Sahara desert and Sahel which used to be a Berber world before the arrival of Arabs.
It is estimated that there are between 14 and 25 million speakers of Berber languages, but exact numbers are difficult to ascertain, since most Maghreb countries do not record language data in their censuses, and many people who speak these languages are hard-to-reach nomads.
In addition, these languages go by different names in their respective language communities -- a factor that confuses the issue of whether these are dialects of one language or different languages.
www.nvtc.gov /lotw/months/july/berber.html   (936 words)

  
 Teaching Berber in the Moroccan Primary Schools
Language has always been a sensitive issue, and teaching Berber, is a subject that interests not only the concerned students and teachers, but the whole Moroccan population with its educated people, politicians, and journalists.
Berber language is the spoken language used by almost the half of the Moroccan population.
Berbers tried to learn Arabic and teach it to their children, to be able to understand the meanings of the Holy Quran.
www.amazighworld.org /studies/language/teaching_berber_in_morocco.php   (1481 words)

  
 Semitic branch
Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in Mesopotamia from the 3rd to the 1st millennium B.C. Canaanite languages that include Hebrew, Phoenician, and Punic, were spoken in Palestine, Syria, and in scattered communities around the Mediterranean.
Phoenician is an ancient Semitic language that was spoken in Palestine and on the coast of Syria.
It was the language of Carthage and the Carthaginian empire.
www.nvtc.gov /lotw/months/august/SemiticLanguages.html   (1357 words)

  
 languagesexpl
Lithuanian and Latvian (or Lettish) are Baltic languages.
The Kordofanian languages are spoken in the Sudan.
Kanuri is spoken in Nigeria and Niger, Dinka and Luo in Kenya, Masai in Tanzania.
www.wgn.org /languagesexpl.htm   (2642 words)

  
 Berber
"The three Berber languages researched for this project are: Kabyle (Taqbaylit), spoken in northern Algeria; Tamazight (Berber), of central Morocco; and Tuareg, the indigenous name of which varies according to the dialect (Prasse 1972): Tamahaq in southern Algeria, Tamashaq in Mali, Tamajeq in Niger and in Libya (Ghat, where it may also be called Tamaziq).
However, the main languages and domains are identifiable from the many dialect studies and from the arrangement by region of entries in the bibliographical resources used here: A. Basset, LLB, 1952, and the chronicles entitled "Langue et litérature berbère" (LELB) by Basset and Chaker, in AAN.
Berber is written with several scripts: the Roman, adapted to French orthography or to phonetic conventions; the Arabic, perhaps also modified; or the Berber alphabet, known as tifinag, traditionally used by the Tuareg.
www.isp.msu.edu /AfrLang/language.php?id=7   (872 words)

  
 Linguistics
Language is said to be lateralized and processed in the left hemisphere of the brain.
A non-standard dialect is associated with covert prestige and is an ethnic or regional dialect of a language.
The Dravidian languages of Tamil and Telugu are spoken in southeastern India and Sri Lanka.
www.ielanguages.com /linguist.html   (8137 words)

  
 Berber
There are between 14 and 25 million speakers of Berber languages in North Africa (see population estimation), principally concentrated in Morocco and Algeria but with smaller communities as far east as Egypt and as far south as Burkina Faso.
Berber groups are first mentioned in writing by the ancient Egyptians during the Predynastic Period, and during the New Kingdom the Egyptians later fought against the Meshwesh and Lebu (Libyans) tribes on their western borders.
A second mixed army of Arabs and Berbers came in 712 under Ibn Nusayr himself, and are claimed to have formed approximately 66% of the Islamic population in Iberia, and supposedly that is the reason why they helped the Umayyad caliph Abd ar-Rahman I in Al-Andalus, because his mother was a Berber woman.
www.governpub.com /Languages-B/Berber.php   (3729 words)

  
 Launguages in Medieval Europe   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-02)
One overriding note is that even when a nation or province speaks one language more or less uniformly, it is still possible to travel ten miles and encounter mutually incomprehensible versions of the same language.
Berber: spoken in Moorish Spain and Northern Africa.
Caucasian languages: A wide variety of languages are spoken in the Caucasian mountains, with only a passing similarity to each other.
www.oz.net /~nataraja/ars/characters/languages.html   (670 words)

  
 Historical Background on Colonialism
In the northern part of the continent, Arab Moslems had already penetrated by the tenth century, but since relations between the Arab world and Europe were strained at best, little knowledge of sub-Saharan Africa was available to the medieval West.
Despite their proximity to Europe, Arab and Berber states in North Africa had remained independent of European colonization until the 19th century - the pirates of the Barbary Coast which the U.S. Navy fought in the early years of the 19th century were Berbers.
Language: Alienation of the postcolonial subject is in particular the result of language: “To speak.
www.northern.edu /hastingw/colonialhistory.htm   (4951 words)

  
 Berber languages - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This state of affairs was protested by Berbers in Morocco and Algeria - especially Kabylie - and is now being addressed in both countries by introducing Berber language education and by recognizing Berber as a "national language",
Tamazight is a member of the Afro-Asiatic language family (formerly called Hamito-Semitic).
Traditional genealogists of tribes claiming Arab origin often claimed that Berbers were Arabs that immigrated from Yemen.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Berber_languages   (2042 words)

  
 Linguistics 001 -- Fall 1998 -- Languages of the World
The local variants of Latin that became Spanish and Portuguese developed in the frontier regions on the northern fringe of the Arab conquest, during the early middle ages.
By contrast, speakers of different varieties of Arabic generally feel themselves to be members of the same linguistic community, tied together by their common language of formal discourse, which is essentially the language of the Quran.
Thus we might ask how many distinct vowels a language has, and how they are arranged; what sorts of syllable-final consonants a language has, if any; whether the language has word-stress, and if so, if its location is predictable from the structure of the word.
www.ling.upenn.edu /courses/Fall_1998/ling001/world_languages.html   (1886 words)

  
 Ethnologue: Spain
The northern limit is the Pyrenean border, separating Aragon from Occitania; the western limit is the border of Navarra; the eastern limit is north of Montsó.
The Academy of the Asturian Language was formed in 1981, to revive the academy of the 18th century.
It has had many decades of development as a language of serious literature, including poetry, essays on novel, ideological, philosophical, and sociological topics, and for all levels of education, including higher education.
www.christusrex.org /www3/ethno/Spai.html   (1795 words)

  
 Tarifit   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-02)
This is one of the languages of the Berber people.
The Berber or Amazigh peoples live in Northern Africa throughout the Mediterranean coast, the Sahara and Sahel.
This Afro-Asiatic language may have 2,000,000 speakers in Morocco and Algeria.
www.flw.com /languages/tarifit.htm   (38 words)

  
 Web resources for Berber languages
There are at least 6 Berber languages, all of which are spoken in northern and western Africa (cfr Wolff 1981):
Types of language spread and their archaeological correlates: the example of Berber (PDF).
The nature of vocoids associated with sylabic consonants in Tashlhiyt Berber.
goto.glocalnet.net /maho/webresources/berber.html   (538 words)

  
 The sci.lang FAQ: 8
A language family is a group of languages that have been proven to have descended from a common ancestral language.
All the Germanic languages have a common ancestor, Proto-Germanic; farther back, this ancestor was descended from Proto-Indo- European, as were the ancestors of the Italic, Slavic, and other branches.
LANGUAGE ISOLATES: A number of languages around the world have never been successfully shown to be related to any others-- in at least some cases because any related languages have long been extinct.
www.zompist.com /lang8.html   (939 words)

  
 Ethnologue report for Egypt
Of those, 11 are living languages and 1 is extinct.
Bedouin regions in Sinai and along parts of the Red Sea coast, most of the way to the southern border, along the whole east bank until it reaches the Bedawi language.
Northern Province, northwards from Burgeg to the Egyptian border at Wadi Halfa.
www.ethnologue.com /show_country.asp?name=Egypt   (411 words)

  
 [No title]
Sanskrit; Hindustani is a popular variant of Hindi/Urdu spoken widely throughout northern India but is not an official language
native African languages belonging to Sudanic family spoken by 90% of the population
Afrikaans common language of most of the population and about 60% of the white population
www.daml.org /2003/09/factbook/languages   (262 words)

  
 CIA -- The World Factbook 2000 -- Languages   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-02)
Mahorian (a Swahili dialect), French (official language) spoken by 35% of the population
French (official and the language of commerce), Ewe and Mina (the two major African languages in the south), Kabye (sometimes spelled Kabiye) and Dagomba (the two major African languages in the north)
English (official national language, taught in grade schools, used in courts of law and by most newspapers and some radio broadcasts), Ganda or Luganda (most widely used of the Niger-Congo languages, preferred for native language publications in the capital and may be taught in school), other Niger-Congo languages, Nilo-Saharan languages, Swahili, Arabic
permanent.access.gpo.gov /lps35389/2000/languages.html   (1565 words)

  
 Berber language and culture
FROM WIKIPEDIA The Berber languages form a branch of the Afroasiatic linguistic family comprising many closely related varieties, including Kabyle, Tachelhit, and Central Atlas Tamazight, with a total of roughly 14-25 million speakers.
The Berber languages descended from the proto-Afro-Asiatic language; on the basis of linguistic migration theory, this is most commonly believed by historical linguists (notably Igor Diakonoff and Christopher Ehret) to have originated in east Africa no earlier than 12,000 years ago, although Alexander Militarev argues instead for an origin in the Middle East.
Also called BERBERO-LIBYAN, group of languages spoken in scattered areas throughout northern Africa from Egypt westward to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Niger River northward to the...
www.lonweb.org /link-berber.htm   (542 words)

  
 PanAfrLoc | PanAfrLoc / Berber   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-02)
However, other terms were used by other groups; for instance, many parts of western Algeria called their language 'taznatit' or Zenati, while the Kabyles called theirs 'thaqvaylith', the inhabitants of Siwa 'tasiwit', and the Zenaga 'Tuddhungiya' [http://www.rosettaproject.org/live/search/showpages?ethnocode=ZENanddoctype=detailandversion=0andscale=six].
Tifinagh is the original script of these languages but they have also been transcribed using the Arabic script and in more recent history with modified Latin scripts.
In practice, which varies by locality, three scripts have to one degree or another been and are used.
www.bisharat.net /wikidoc/pmwiki.php/PanAfrLoc/Berber   (889 words)

  
 EnglishLibrary.net | Reference > Language Lab (language profiles & study courses)
Ethnologue.com: Afrikaans — A Language of South Africa
Ethnologue.com: Khmer, Northern — A Language of Thailand
Ethnologue.com: Czech — A Language of the Czech Republic
www.davidap.com /library/languages.htm   (322 words)

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