logotipo

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In the first place, and before analyzing the language amazigh, we should make some precisions around the term “race”. This term was very used, and today is still it, although in progressive disuse, to divide or to classify to the mankind in several different groupes. Then the trickery would come from trying to demonstrate a supposed superiority of some on other, what was very in vogue in the XIX century and it continues still fluttering today. It is not anything strange this, if we keep in mind that it is the time of the great European imperialistic expansion and that these theories were not but intents, anything innocent, of to mask or to justify with supposedly scientific arguments their domain and exploitation on other peoples.

This division in races is a fallacy, since on the contrary of what happens in other vegetable and animal species, at the moment in the mankind a single and only race exists, the one classified as “Homo Sapiens Sapiens”. Genetic characteristics that determine fenotípics aspects differed as they can be the color of the skin, the form and tonality of the hair and other facial or corporal characteristics are irrelevant variations, considered scientifically, and they take place inside the same species and race.

At the present time the diverse classifications that are made on the population that populates the planet have as central element the concept of  “ethnos”, derived of the Greek  “ethnos” that could translate for “people”. One of the fundamental elements, although not the only one, to define a certain ethnos, refers to the language in that their components communicate and they lay the foundation their culture. In this sense it is necessary to understand that the imazighen is an ethnos with a specific culture, but at all a separate race.

It counts the Bible -enough book but “historical” of what could seem at first sight- that the patriarch Noé, that man that built the ark in the times of the “flood”, he had three children: Sem, Cam, and Jafet. Supposedly of Sem the Semitics peoples would proceed, of Cam the Camitics, and of Jafet the Indo-European ones. At the present time, when we speak of semitics, camitics or Indo-European, -that it´s very far, like it is logical, of embracing these three big divisions to the entirety of the human beings because there are many more divisions to the long and wide of the five continents - we refer to people that speak languages of three big linguistic families, classified this way by the investigators: semita, camita or Indo-European.

Semitics is Hebrews or Jews -because not in vain they wrote the Bible and they were made descend of Sem, the first-born son-, but also other peolples. The languages semitics have their geographical origin apparently in what the Westerners call “Next East” or “Middle East”. And it already has among others the mentioned Hebrew, the Ugaritic, the Assyrian, the Acadian, the Phoenician, Aramaic and Arabic. Many of those mentioned are not you live at the present time.

The Indo-European ones extend for a vast domain that embraces from the almost entirety of Europe to the India of the North, going by the Caúcaso and Iran. At the moment and in the European environment, the great family Indo-European bill with several linguistic groups. These supposedly derived western groups of the promitive Indo-European are the Latin (ten alive languages: Portuguese, Galician, Castilian, Catalan, Provenzal, French, Rétic, Italian, Sardian and Rumanian), the Germanic one (English, Flemish, Dutch, Frison, German, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic), the Slav (Pole, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Serbocroatian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Russian and the Baltic ones: Lithuanian and Latvian) and the Celtic one (a lot but restricted: Scottish gaelic, Irish, Welsh and Breton gaelic). they also exist two isolated languages, in the sense that they are not part of any group, like they are on one hand the Greek and for other the Albanian, coming from the old Ilyrian.

The third of the big linguistic families to those that mentioned at the beginning, -y already discounted the Indo-European ones and the semitas - it would be that of the type camitic, that is to say descending of Cam. The ancient Egyptian were among them, later very blended, apparently, with semitics elements, and most of the languages of all Africa of the North, including the languages aboriginal of Canary Islands.

Today in day, and harassed mainly by Arabic, their domain has been notoriously reduced, being in form of “cultural islands” amid a lot of culture preponderant semitic arab . Nevertheless, these “islands”, they don't lack importance, mainly in the end western northafrican, in territories like those on those that settle the modern states of Algeria and Morocco. Nowadays we can say that, after centuries of monopoly cultural semitic, we begin to attend slowly a “cultural rebirth” of the camitics languages.

Nevertheless, we will clarify the words “barbary” and “amazigh” before continuing ahead. According to all the indications, the word “barbary” -translated “berbere” or “bereber”- it would come from the Greek “barboroi” that would also have their correspondence in Latin “barbarus” and in Arabic “to the barbar”. In a principle it has the generic meaning of “foreigners”, and also “uncivility”, that is to say to the margin of those “classic cultures”. This word has come designating to a series of peoples, all more or less married to each other that inhabit for everything North Africa from the preislámics times.

In very recent times, the peoples included in this denomination reject the same one expressly, considering that it has been imposed him outwardly by peoples different to them, rulers, and that it implies, anyway, in their origin a pejorative. As alternative they claim to be designated with the name that are given to themselves, from their own culture. And this it is not another that the, increasingly consent, of amazigh, in plural imazighen.

The diverse peoples amazighs, amaziges or imazighen -if one prefers to conserve the original plural-, they constitute an archipelago of etno-linguistic islands that they sprinkle the whole north of the African continent. We will make a brief enumeration of these languages, it stops later to concentrate on those that at the moment are spoken in the most western end of the Islamic world, making a geographical journey from East to West, following the classification of BASSET A. (1952).

4. Tanefusit (oasis of Nefuta, between Libya and Tunisia).
5. Tamerzet (south of Tunisia).
6. Tjerbit (island of Djerba, coast of Tunisia).

7. Tacawit (Chaouia, in Algeria).
8. Taqbaylit (the Kabilia, in Algeria).
9. Teggargent (Oargia, in Algeria).
10. Tamzabit (the Mzab, in Algeria).
11. Tazenanit (Tuat, in Algeria).

12. Tamahan (tuareg of the north, to the south of Algeria).
13. Tamaceq (tuareg of the south, in the north of Mali and Niger).

14 Tarifit (the Rif, in the north of Morocco).
15. Tamazight (the Middle Atlas, in the center of Morocco).
16. Tacelhit (south of Morocco).

17. Trarza (in Mauritania).
18. Taznagt (Zenega, in Mauritania).

In the Canary islands, conquered and colonized by feudal gentlemen to the service of the crown of Castile, or for the own crown, between 1402 and 1494, they also spoke to each other, even until having entered the XVII century, until seven languages of the trunk amazigh, one for each island. These would be the following ones:

Titeroygatre (Lanzarote)
Mahoh (Fuerteventura)
Tamarán (Grant Canaria)
Guanche (Tenerife)
Gomeroh (La Gomera)
Bimbache (El Hierro)
Huariti (La Palma)
 

All have extinguished, without any historian neither linguist have the success to pick up them. Nevertheless, the hundred of words that survive still, mainly place names, own names, and also some sentences and “endechas” -groups of verses of oral tradition-, although they are totally insufficient for the reconstruction of the same languages, yes that allow to affirm, without many reservations, that it was languages of the trunk amazigh for their similarity with those at the moment alive.

This group of different languages, but married by their ownership common to the ethnos amazigh, it has come to be generically, in growing consent, denominated as the language of the Middle Atlas, the tamazight, as general term that includes to all the other ones. This way the term Tamazight designates today to the whole group of amaziges languages.

The language Tarifit is the language Amazigh that at the moment survives in the north of the current State of Morocco. 

It extends on the solid one mountainous of the Rif, and it embraces mainly their portions power station and oriental. It is also known as " rifeño ", in the context Castilian speaker, or " chelha " in the arab. They manage it approximately some 22 communities imazighen, forming all a continuous one territorial, with the exception of the Ait Budra that have separated the rest, in a longitude but western, already in the well-known region as Gomara, and located on the coast. The continuous  territorial before mentioned  extends from the communities of Ibeqqauyen and Ait Seddat in the west, until the Ait Yeznasen, around the river Muluya in the east, and already in the limits of Algeria.

The three more important urban nuclei of the area, would be Al Hoceima, Nador, both provincial capitals in the State of Morocco, and the autonomous city of Melilla that it is part of the Spanish State. 

The same as most of the languages imazighen, the tarifit, is a spoken language, but that it doesn't usually write. The domain of Arabic's language for already long centuries in the area, it has prevented to develop an own literature in tarifit. In fact, and surprisingly, it is necessary to think that the percentage of illiteracy so high in the region in which one speaks, it has allowed the survival of the language that otherwise had been, perhaps, totally supplanted by Arabic, only official considered language, for the diverse dominance areas that have been happened in the area, with the exception of the Spanish domain in the first half of the current century. (1912-56). to the being spoken language, it lacks an own alphabet at the moment in the one that to be written. 

The imazighen of the Rif, the same as the rest of the Imazighen, once decided in the period but recent of their History to reactivate their Culture, they face with the problem of adopting an alphabet with the one that to capture in a written way and literary their own language.

At the moment three alternatives exist:

1º the alphabet Tifinagh.
 

It is the but old and but properly Amazigh, was already genuine creation of this etno-linguistic group in the night of the times, getting lost its use with posteriority and at the moment alone it is used among the tuareg.

Their advantage would reside in being own and genuine of the own ethnoses imazighen. Their disadvantage rests in being very restricted its use, since the languages imazighen have most a number of speaking scarce and they are isolated to each other apart from that most doesn't use the tifinagh for many centuries.

It is the one used by all the arab speakers, in even for other languages that are not at all semitics. This way for example the Persian or Iranian, of Indo-European root. The Turks that speak a language of the group uralo-altaic, also used it up to 1923 (in that changed it for the Latin).

Their advantage rests in that its use is family for the members of the communities amazigh, since it is the Arab language and its alphabet, the one that you/they have but next, in sense that it is the dominant one and or majority, in almost all the countries, where the imazighen constitutes in fact, islands, big or small, in a sea of Arab culture."

Their inconvenience would be since the relative contradiction that supposes, the imazighen they in fact claim its cultural identity as clearly differentiated of the Arab culture.

3º The Latin Alphabet.

 
It is the one that use all the western languages, and in general all the languages of Europe with the Greek's exception (they use the Greek alphabet), Bulgarian, Russian, and the Serbocroatian that use the Cyrillic alphabet. (Surprisingly the language Serbocroatian uses graph or cyrillic, but alone alphabet in Serbian, Montenegro and Macedonia, while in Bosnia and Croacia it uses the graph or Latin alphabet).

The use of the Latin alphabet supposes the advantage of entering with but easiness the language tarifit, and in general all the languages arrived tamazight the case, in the channels and circuits of information and international communication.

It would not be neither any tarnishing for the tarifit to use Latin alphabet, since that alphabet is used to each other without any problem by languages so different as the Basque or Basque (of absolutely unknown origin), Hungarian (of the trunk fine-ugrio) or all those of Indo-European origin spoken in Europe, with the this exceptions.

The only inconvenience could derive of supposing a difference and a difficulty for the communication with regard to its fellow citizens of Arab language, with those who share the imazighen the same space or political scenario.

 In definitive, they should be the own speakers of Tarifit, those that define their preference for a future to short and half term.

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vendredi 7 février 2003

Décision historique pour la langue berbère. L'Institut Royal Marocain de la Culture Amazigh a tranché : le tifinagh sera l'alphabet d'écriture de la langue amazigh. Trois types d'alphabets étaient candidats : le tifinagh, le latin et l'arabe. Il sera bientôt enseigné dans les établissements scolaires. Le Maroc se réapproprier non sans difficultés, une tradition millénaire. 
 

Le tifinagh sera l'alphabet d'écriture de la langue amazigh. Par ce geste le Maroc réhabilite tout un pan de son patrimoine. Selon Monsieur Boudris Belaïd, Directeur de la recherche didactique et des programmes pédagogiques de l'Institut Royal de la culture Amazigh (IRMCA) " la décision n'a pas été facile, mais elle a le mérite de restaurer une tradition ancienne. C'est grâce au tifinagh les femmes touaregs transmettent leurs savoirs aux enfants. Opter pour cet alphabet est un simple retour aux sources " Au sein même du Conseil d'administration, la décision est venue par le recours au vote. Une majorité des deux tiers s'est alors dégagée au bénéfice du tifinagh, ancien alphabet constitué de 33 consonnes, 4 voyelles et 2 semi-voyelles. Sa standardisation en cours à l'Institut amazigh, peut lui apporter la souplesse et l'accessibilité qui lui manquent. Quant aux programmes d'enseignement et à leurs méthodes, ils seront déterminés par l'IRMCA en coordination avec le ministère de l'Education nationale.