21 Facts About Berber languages

Berber languages, known as the Amazigh languages, are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family.

The languages were traditionally written with the ancient Libyco-Berber script, which now exists in the form of Tifinagh.

Berber languages is spoken by large populations of Morocco, Algeria and Libya, by smaller populations of Tunisia, northern Mali, western and northern Niger, northern Burkina Faso and Mauritania and in the Siwa Oasis of Egypt.

Large Berber languages-speaking migrant communities, today numbering about 4 million, have been living in Western Europe, spanning over three generations, since the 1950s.

In 2001, "Berber languages" became a constitutional national language of Algeria, and in 2011 "Berber languages" became a constitutionally official language of Morocco.

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In 2016, "Berber languages" became a constitutionally official language of Algeria alongside Arabic.

Term Berber languages has been used in Europe since at least the 17th century and is still used today.

European languages distinguish between the words "Berber" and "barbarian", while Arabic has the same word for both meanings.

Since modern Berber languages are relatively homogeneous, the date of the Proto-Berber language from which the modern group is derived was probably comparatively recent, comparable to the age of the Germanic or Romance subfamilies of the Indo-European family.

Morocco is a country with several competing Berber languages, including French, Modern Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic and Amazigh.

Morphology of Berber languages is fusional, which is reflected especially in the frequent use of apophony.

Similarly to the case system of other languages, the Berber noun has two so-called statuses: Status absolutus and Status annexus.

Personal pronouns of Berber languages can be divided into two main groups: free forms and clitics, the latter being further classified according to their syntactic function.

Apart from that, the Berber languages have a system of verbal derivation inherited from the Proto-Afroasiatic, mostly operating with affixes:.

Above all the northern Berber languages have replaced a great part of the inherited vocabulary with Arabic loans.

The Berber languages often have original Berber designations besides the Arabic loans; for instance, both the inherited word ataram and the loan l??rb coexist in Kabyle.

In more recent times, European languages have had some influence on Berber, so that words such as "internet" were adopted in it.

Exact population of Berber languages speakers is hard to ascertain, since most North African countries do not record language data in their censuses.

Listing of the other Berber languages is complicated by their closeness; there is little distinction between language and dialect.

Plus a few peripheral Berber languages, spoken in isolated pockets largely surrounded by Arabic, that fall outside these continua, namely.

Berber languages have influenced Maghrebi Arabic languages, such as Moroccan, Algerian, Libyan and Tunisian Arabic.