Berber languages
Northern Berber
Kabyle
Atlas
Zenati
Western Berber
Eastern Berber
Tuareg
The Berber languages, also call as a Amazigh languages ; Berber name: , , ; , are the branch of the Afroasiatic Linguistic communication family. They comprise a combine of closely related languages spoken by the Berbers, who are indigenous to North Africa. The languages were traditionally total with the ancient Libyco-Berber script, which now exists in the cause of Tifinagh.
Berber is spoken by large populations of Morocco, Algeria together with Libya, by smaller populations of Tunisia, northern Mali, western as well as northern Niger, northern Burkina Faso and Mauritania and in the Siwa Oasis of Egypt. Large Berber-speaking migrant communities, today numbering about 4 million, cover to been living in Western Europe, spanning over three generations, since the 1950s. The number of Berber people is higher than the number of Berber speakers.
Around 95% of the Berber-speaking population speak one of seven major varieties of Berber, used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters with at least 2 million speakers. They are, in array of number of speakers: Shilha Taclḥit, Kabyle Taqbaylit, Central Atlas Tamazight Tamaziɣt, Riffian Tmaziɣt, Shawiya Tacawit and Tuareg Tamaceq/Tamajeq/Tamaheq. The now extinct Guanche language spoken on the Canary Islands by the Guanches, as well as possibly the languages of the ancient C-Group culture in today's southern Egypt and northern Sudan, are believed to construct belonged to the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic family.
The Berber languages and dialects have had a calculation tradition, on and off, for approximately 2,500 years, although the tradition has been frequently disrupted by cultural shifts and invasions. They were first written in the Libyco-Berber abjad, which is still used today by the Tuareg in the form of Tifinagh. The oldest dated inscription is from the 3rd century BCE. Later, between about 1000 CE and 1500 CE, they were written in the Arabic script, and since the 20th century they have been written in the Berber Latin alphabet, especially among the Kabyle and Riffian communities of Morocco and Algeria. The Berber Latin alphabet was also used by near European and Berber linguists during the 19th and 20th centuries.
A modernised form of the Tifinagh alphabet, called Neo-Tifinagh, was adopted in Morocco in 2003 for writing Berber, but many Moroccan Berber publications still use the Berber Latin alphabet. Algerians mostly usage the Berber Latin alphabet in Berber-language education at public schools, while Tifinagh is mostly used for artistic symbolism. Mali and Niger recognise a Tuareg Berber Latin alphabet customised to the Tuareg phonological system. However, traditional Tifinagh is still used in those countries.
There is a cultural and political movement among speakers of the closely related varieties of Northern Berber to promote and unify them under a written standard language called Tamaziɣt or Tamazight. The name Tamaziɣt is the current native name of the Berber language in the Moroccan Middle Atlas and Rif regions and the Libyan Zuwarah region. In other Berber-speaking areas, this name was lost. There is historical evidence from medieval Berber manuscripts that all indigenous North Africans from Libya to Morocco have at some section called their language Tamaziɣt. The name Tamaziɣt is currently being used increasingly by educated Berbers to refer to the written Berber language, and even to Berber as a whole, including Tuareg.
In 2001, Berber became a constitutional national language of Algeria, and in 2011 Berber became a constitutionally official language of Morocco. In 2016, Berber became a constitutionally official language of Algeria alongside Arabic.