Tarifit language

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Tarifit
Spoken in:	Morocco, Algeria
Region:	Rif
Total speakers:	4.5 million
Language family:	Afro-Asiatic Berber Northern Zenati Rif Tarifit
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`ber`
ISO/FDIS 639-3:	`rif`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

Tarifit is a Northern Berber language of the Zenati subgroup, spoken mainly in the Moroccan Rif by about 3.5 million people inside Morocco and by 1 million Moroccan immigrants in the Benelux, Germany, France and Spain.

1 Classification
2 Geographic distribution
3 Sounds
4 Writing system
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Classification

Tarifit is a Berber language, belonging to the Zenati subgroup of Northern Berber, and possibly the Rif subgroup of Zenati.

[edit] Geographic distribution

Tarifit is spoken mainly in the Moroccan Rif by about 2 million people, with a few speakers across the border in Algeria. There is also a substantial Tarifit-speaking community in the Netherlands. Its own speakers simply call it thamazighth, or Tamazight, a term also often applied in a broader sense to Berber languages in general.

[edit] Sounds

Tarifits most noticeable differences from other Berber languages are that:

/l/ becomes /r/ as in ul (heart) -> ur
/r/ after a vowel but not followed by a vowel is dropped, as in taddart (house/home) -> taddat. In e.g. tamara the /r/ is conserved because it is followed by a vowel.
/ll/ (geminated (double) /l/) becomes /dj/ as in ylli (daughter) -> ydji.
/lt/ becomes /tch/ as in ultma (sister) -> utchma.
Most /k/ becomes /ch/ while in some local sub-accents just a softened /k/.
Also, the initial masculin a- prefix gets dropped in certain words, like afus (hand) becomes fus, and afighar (snake) becomes fighar. This change, characteristic of Zenati Berber varieties, further distances Tarifit from neighbouring dialects such as Atlas-Tamazight and Tashelhiyt.

[edit] Writing system

Like other Berber languages, it has been written with several different systems over the years. Most recently (since 2003), Tifinagh has become official throughout Morocco, while the Arabic alphabet and Latin alphabet continue to be used unofficially online and in various publications. However, unlike the nearby Tachelhit (Tasusit), Tarifit has little written literature before the twentieth century.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

McClelland, Clive. The Interrelations of Syntax, Narrative Structure, and Prosody in a Berber Language (Studies in Linguistics and Semiotics, V. 8). Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000. (ISBN 0-7734-7740-3)