The Berbers and their languages

Berber girl in Morocco, 2006

The Berber languages are a group of closely related languages belonging to the Afro-Asiatic languages phylum. There is a strong movement among Berbers to unify the closely related northern Berber languages into a single standard, Tamazight, which is a frequently used generic name for all Berber languages. There are around three hundred local dialects among the scattered Berber populations.

The exact population of Berber speakers is hard to ascertain, since most Maghreb countries do not record language data in their census data. Early colonial censuses may provide documented figures for some countries; however, those statistics are no longer a reliable measure. It is estimated that there are between 14 and 25 million speakers of Berber languages inNorth Africa, principally concentrated in Morocco and Algeria, with smaller communities as far east as Egypt and as far south as Burkina Faso.

Among the Berber languages are Tarifit or Riffi in northern Morocco, Kabyle in Algeria and Tashelhiyt in central Morocco. Tamazight has been a written language, on and off, for almost 3,000 years; however, this tradition has been frequently disrupted by various invasions. It was first written in the Tifinagh alphabet, still used by the Tuareg; the oldest dated inscription is from about 200 B.C.E. Later, between about 1000 C.E. and 1500 C.E., it was written in the Arabic alphabet, particularly by the Shilha of Morocco; since the beginning of the twentieth century, it has often been written in the Latin alphabet, especially among the Kabyle. A variant of the Tifinagh alphabet was recently made official in Morocco, while the Latin alphabet is official in Algeria, Mali, and Niger; however, both Tifinagh and Arabic are still widely used in Mali and Niger, while Latin and Arabic are still widely used in Morocco.

After independence, all the Maghreb countries, to varying degrees, pursued a policy of "Arabization," aimed primarily at displacing French from its colonial position as the dominant language of education and literacy. But under this policy the use of both Berber languages and Maghrebi Arabic have been suppressed as well. This state of affairs has been contested 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," though not necessarily an official one. No such measures have been taken in the other Maghreb countries, whose Berber populations are much smaller. In Mali and Niger, there are a few schools that teach partially in the Tamasheq language.