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. Today, there are large groups of Berber people in Morocco and Algeria, important communitites in Mali, Niger and Libya, and smaller groups in Tunis, Mauritania, Burkina-Faso and Egypt. The Tuareg of the desert also belong to the Berber group. The Berber people speak 26 closely related languages.

The oldest known Berber inscriptions date back to the 4th century B.C., but Berber-speaking people have lived in North Africa since at least 3,000 B.C., and references to them occur frequently in ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman sources. The name "Berber" comes from the Greek word barbaros "barbarians." It is understandably disliked by many Berbers who prefer the term "Tamazight" which is often used instead, particularly with reference to Northern Berber languages. However, "Tamazight" also refers to a language spoken in the Atlas Mountains region of Morocco, thus creating some terminological confusion.

Click here to listen to the Berbers of North Africa from BBC.

After independence from France, all Maghreb countries pursued a policy of "Arabization" in an attempt to replace the hitherto dominant French with Arabic. This did not help to promote the cause of Berber languages which continued to be suppressed.

Beyond its traditional use in the home and the local ethnic groups, the use of Berber languages varies with each locality. Two radio stations in Niger and one in Mali broadcast in local Berber dialects. In Morocco, government radio regularly broadcasts in Tachelhit, Tamazight, and Tarifit, although these languages are not recognized officially. In Algeria, radio broadcasts in Kabyle have survived from colonial times. As a result of protests in Morocco and Algeria, Berber languages were recognized and Berber language education was introduced in these countries. In Algeria, Tamazight was recognized as a national language in 2002. No such measures have been taken in the other Maghreb countries with smaller Berber populations. However, in Mali and Niger, there are a few schools that teach partially in Tamasheq.

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. The table below is based on data reported by Ethnologue and includes only languages with speaker populations of over 100,000. Some of the data may be old and unreliable.

There is no standard orthography for Berber. Differences in the sound systems of Berber languages make it difficult to develop a standardized orthography for all of them. At present, Berber is written with several scripts:

• Roman
• Arabic
• Tifinagh

The Arabic alphabet is used for all Berber languages, except Tamazight and Tamasheq which continue to use an ancient Berber alphabet known as Tifinagh.

Tamazight has been a written language for almost 3,000 years. It was first written in the Tifinagh alphabet that is thought to have been derived from the Phoenician alphabet. It is used by the nomadic Tuareg people who inhabit a large part of the Sahara desert and the north-central part of Sahel. The increasing use of Kabyle as a modern, written language has increased the use of the adapted Roman script. In Morocco, however, Arabic notation predominates.

The Tifinagh alphabet is a consonant-based syllabic writing system, much like the ancestral Phoenician alphabet on which many Semitic alphabets are based. A modern version of Tifinagh adapted to fit Northern Berber phonology was developed in the 1960's. It contains letters that represent vowels, and is written from left to right, unlike the original version that contained consonants only and was written from right to left. This modified version has been adopted for use in primary schools in Morocco. Here is a sample of Tifinagh writing.

Click here to learn more about writing Berber languages.

Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Tamazight.

1. Can you find any words you can recognize?
2. What is peculiar about the punctuation?

Berber language and culture resources
UCLA Language Materials Project (search under "Berber")
Less Commonly Taught Languages Course Offering
Berber Language Page
A Bibliography of Berber Language Materials
Berbers