Central Atlas Tamazight or Atlasic (native name: , ; ) is a Berber languageCentral Atlas Tamazight may be referred to as either a Berber language or a Berber dialect. As Berber languages have some degree of mutual intelligibility, there is little consensus on what is considered a "language" and what a "dialect". Additionally, Berber activists like to consider all Berber dialects to be a language to emphasize unity, though this is not entirely linguistically sound (e.g. geographically non-proximate "dialects" may be mutually unintelligible), see of the Afroasiatic language family spoken by around 2.7 million speakers, or 7.4% of the population of Morocco.
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, 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. Words inflect for gender, number and state, using prefixes, suffixes and circumfixes. verbs are heavily inflected, being marked for tense, aspect, mood, 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.
Classification Central Atlas Tamazight is one of the four most-spoken Berber languages, together with Kabyle, Tachelhit, and Riffian, and it comes second as the most-spoken Berber language after Tachelhit in Morocco. Differentiating these dialects is complicated by the fact that speakers of other languages may also refer to their language as 'Tamazight'. The differences between all three groups are largely phonological and lexical, rather than syntactic. Tamazight itself has a relatively large degree of internal diversity, including whether spirantization occurs.
Central Atlas Tamazight speakers refer to themselves as Amazigh (pl. Imazighen), an endonymic ethnonym whose etymology is uncertain, but may translate as "free people". 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.Using for when embedding Berber words in English text follows the tradition set by French-language publications, even those written by Berbers . The name "Tamazirt" results from French transcription of Tamazight with the letter , which in French represents the similar-sounding phoneme . Cf.
In older studies, Central Atlas Tamazight is sometimes referred to as "Braber" / "Beraber", a dialectical Arabic term, or its Tamazight equivalent "Taberbrit". 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.
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 northeast and Shilha to its southwest. The basic lexicon of Tamazight differs markedly from Shilha, and its verbal system is more similar to Riff or Kabyle. Moreover, Tamazight has a greater amount of internal diversity than Shilha.
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. Although the characteristic spirantization of > ; > or ; > ; > or ; and > , or is apparent in Berber languages in central and northern Morocco and Algeria, 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. Southern dialects (e.g. Ait 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"). The differences between each of the three groups are primarily phonological.
Groups speaking Tamazight include: Ait Ayache, Ait Morghi, Ait Alaham, Ait Youb, Marmoucha, Ait Youssi, Beni Mguild, Zayane, Ait Zemmour, Ait Rbaa, Ait Seri, Guerouane, Ait Segougou, Ait Yafelman, Ait Sikhmane, Ayt Ndhir (Beni Mtir).( literally means "children of ~", see
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. 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,Edmond Destaing, "Essai de classification des dialectes berbères du Maroc", Études et Documents Berbère, 19-20, 2001–2002 (1915) and are therefore excluded by some sources from Central Atlas Tamazight.Augustin Bernard and Paul Moussard, "Arabophones et berbérophones au Maroc", Annales de Géographie 1924, Volume 33 Numéro 183, pp. 267-282. The Ethnologue lists another group of Zenati dialects, South Oran Berber (ksours sud-oranais), as a dialect of Central Atlas Tamazight, but these are even less similar, and are treated by Berber specialists as a separate dialect group.Maarten Kossmann, "Grammatical notes on the Berber dialect of Igli (Sud oranais, Algeria)", in ed. D. Ibriszimow, M. Kossmann, H. Stroomer, R. Vossen, Études berbères V – Essais sur des variations dialectales et autres articles. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe, 2010.
History
The Berbers have lived in North Africa between western Egypt and the Atlantic Ocean since before recorded history began in the region about 33 centuries ago. By the 5th century BC, the city of Carthage, founded by Phoenicians, had extended its hegemony across much of North Africa; in the wake of the Punic Wars, Rome replaced it as regional hegemon. The Central Atlas region itself remained independent throughout the classical period, but occasional loanwords into Central Atlas Tamazight, such as , "plough ox", from Latin , "team of oxen"Vermondo Brugnatelli, "I prestiti latini in berbero: un bilancio", 9° Incontro di Linguistica Afroasiatica (Camito-Semitica), Trieste, 23-24 aprile 1998, http://www.brugnatelli.net/vermondo/articoli/Trieste.html and aẓalim "onion" < Punic bṣal-im,Abdel-Massih 1971; Werner Vycichl, Berberstudien & A Sketch of Siwi Berber (Egypt). Ed. Dymitr Ibriszimow & Maarten Kossmann. Berber Studies, vol. 10. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. bear witness to their ancestors' contact with these conquerors.
Arabs conquered the area of modern-day Morocco and Algeria around the 7th century, prompting waves of Arab migration and Berber adoption of Islam. Particularly following the arrival of the Banu Hilal in modern-day Tunisia in the 11th century, more and more of North Africa became Arabic-speaking over the centuries. However, along with other high mountainous regions of North Africa, the Middle Atlas continued to speak Berber.
Between the 12th and 15th centuries, the Central Atlas, along with the rest of Morocco, successively fell within the domain of the Moorish Almoravid, Almohad, and Marinid dynasties. Since the 17th century the region has acknowledged the rule of the Alaouite Dynasty, the current Moroccan royal family. However, effective control of the region was limited; until the 20th century much of the Central Atlas was in a condition of siba, recognising the spiritual legitimacy of royal authority but rejecting its political claims.David Hart, Qabila: tribal profiles and tribe-state relations in Morocco and on the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier, 2001, p. 33 The expansion of the Ait Atta starting from the 16th century brought Tamazight back into the already Arabised Tafilalt region and put other regional tribes on the defensive, leading to the formation of the Ait Yafelman alliance.
The 1912 Treaty of Fez made most of Morocco a French-Spanish protectorate (under French and Spanish military occupation), leaving the Alaouite monarchy but establishing a French military presence in the Atlas region and installing a French commissioner-general. However, the Berber tribes of the Middle Atlas, as in other areas, put up stiff military resistance to French rule, lasting until 1933 in the case of the Ait Atta.
After Morocco's independence in 1956, a strong emphasis was laid on the country's Arab identity, and a national Arabic language educational system was instituted, in which Berber languages, including Middle Atlas Tamazight, had no place. However, in 1994 the government responded to Berber demands for recognition by decreeing that Berber should be taught and establishing television broadcasts in three Berber languages, including Central Atlas Tamazight.Joël Donnet, APRÈS DEUX MILLE ANS DE MÉPRIS: Renaissance berbère au Maroc, Le Monde diplomatique Jan. 1995 For the promotion of Tamazight and other Berber languages and cultures, the government created the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM) in 2001. Wikisource:Dahir n° 1-01-299
Geographic distribution Central Atlas Tamazight is mostly spoken in the entire Middle Atlas and its outcroppings, reaching east to Taza and west to the region near Rabat. It is also spoken in the central and eastern High Atlas mountains in Morocco. It is thus spoken across areas with widely varying ecological conditions — from the mountainous and forested regions of the Middle Atlas mountains to the oases of the northwestern Sahara (Tafilalt). Berber in Morocco is spread into three areas: Riff in the north, Central Atlas in the center, and Shilha in the south/southwest. Central Atlas is mutually intelligible with the dialects Riff and Shilha; but Shilha- and Riff-speakers cannot understand each other, although transitional varieties exist between these dialects, creating a smooth transition.