JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1995, Page 31
Maghreb Mirror
Berber: Linguistic "Substratum" of
North African Arabic
By Professor Ernest N. McCarus
The term "Berber" is applied to the various languages
or dialects spoken by the Berbers, who are found in North Africa
from the Canary Islands in the Atlantic to the Western Desert of
Egypt, and from the Mediterranean coast south across the Sahara
to Mali and Togo.
Berbers are most numerous in Morocco, where they probably constitute
half of the population. Moving east, they form decreasing proportions
of the populations of the Arab states from Algeria, Tunisia and
Libya to Egypt, where they are found primarily in the Siwa Oasis.
They are an ancient people, their language being related to the
language of ancient Libya, "Libico-Berber."
Most Berber men today are bilingual, speaking both their own Berber
language as well as the official language of their country, usually
Arabic or French or both, whereas in many instances Berber women
know only Berber. Berber is a branch of the Afro-Asiatic (formerly
"Hamito-Semitic") family of languages, which includes
Semitic (Arabic, Hebrew, Akkadian, etc.), hieroglyphic Egyptian
and Coptic, the Cushitic languages of the Nile valley, and the Chadic
languages (Hausa).
Berber generally is not written today, although the Tuareg use
a script called Tifinag. It stems from an ancient Lybic script
that had 37 geometrical signs written from right to left.
The principal Berber languages or dialects are Shluh, Tamazight
and Riff in Morocco; Kabyle and Shawia in Algeria; and Tuareg in
North Africa and across the Sahara into Mali, Togo, Niger and other
sub-Saharan nations.
Following the seventh century Islamic conquest of North Africa,
the Berbers came under the political domination of the Arabs. After
the conversion to Islam of the Berbers, their language came to be
greatly influenced by the Arabic language. In general, religious,
administrative and scientific terminology in Berber has been borrowed
from Arabic. During the past century, with the French conquest of
parts of North Africa, the French language also has had considerable
influence on Berber vocabulary.
In its turn, Berber, as the substratum language, also has exerted
great influence on the Arabic dialects of North Africa, affecting
in particular their phonology and making spoken Arabic in North
Africa quite distinctive from the Arabic dialects of the Middle
East.
Dr. Ernest
N. McCarus is professor of Arabic and Kurdish linguistics at the University
of Michigan in Ann Arbor. |