Tlemcen: medieval folk etymologies and their implications

In the mid-14th century work Bughyat al-ruwwād fī dhikr il-mulūk min banī ʕAbd al-Wād, Yaḥyā Ibn Khaldūn (brother of the more famous Ibn Khaldūn) ventures two possible etymologies for the name of Tlemcen (Standard Arabic Tilimsān, dialectal Arabic Tləmsān):

تسمى بلغة البربر تلمسنين كلمة مركبة من تلم ومعناه تجمع وسين ومعناه اثنان اي الصحراء والتل فيما ذكر شيخنا العلامة ابو عبد الله الابلي رحمه الله وكان حافظا بلسان القوم ويقال ايضا تلشان وهو ايضا مركب من تل ومعناه لها وشان اي لها شان
In the Berber language it is called "T.l.msīn", a word composed of t.l.m, meaning "she/it gathers", and sīn, meaning "two" - i.e. the Sahara and the Tell - according to our shaykh the most learned Abū ʕAbd Allāh al-Ābilī, may God have mercy on him, who was well-versed in the people's tongue. It is also said "T.l.šān", which is also a compound, of t.l., meaning "she/it has", and šān, i.e. "it has status".

Both etymologies are easy enough to interpret in the light of comparative Berber data. In the nearest (barely) surviving Berber variety - Beni Snous (Aṯ Snus), some 40 km west of the town - "Tlemcen" is indeed Tləmsin, not Tləmsan (cf. Destaing's Etude, pp. 368, 370, 371, etc.) This variety, however, does not use the word sin for "two" - it uses ṯnayən, like the Rif to its west (cf. Destaing, Dictionnaire, p. 98). The closest varieties to preserve a Berber word for "two" - geographically and genetically - use sən, in common with the rest of the Zenati subgroup to which Beni Snous belongs. The nearest varieties using the form sin are Kabyle, far to the east, and Middle Atlas Tamazight and Tashlḥiyt, far to the west. For the verb, one might consider t-əlləm "she/it spun", but the gloss given better matches a widespread dialectal Arabic word that could well have been borrowed into Berber: t-ləmm "she/it gathers". The second is obviously a compound of Arabic ša'n "affair, rank, status" and the Berber verb t-la "she/it has". Today this verb survives in Beni Snous, as in Kabyle, only residually, in the construction wi-h y-il-ən "who does it belong to?" (Destaing, Grammaire, p. 88). But it may have been more productive at that time, as it still is in Middle Atlas Tamazight.

Obviously, the first of these etymologies is implausible, while the second is a self-aggrandising play on words rather than an attempt to explain the name. But the fact that the first one could seriously be suggested is strong evidence that the meaning of Tlemcen was no more transparent to 14th century Berber speakers than it is to 21st century ones - as is not unusual for placenames. A better etymology can be proposed by taking into account comparative data - and allows us to explain the cross-linguistics differences in the final vowel - but I'll leave that for another day.

"Berber" language in early Arabic texts

Searching Shamela, I recently realised that the earliest references to a language of (al-)Barbar in Arabic go back further than I had assumed, to the second century AH. While these are unlikely to shed much light on actual linguistic practices, they are worth a look.

Two occur in the Qur'ānic commentary (tafsīr) of Mujāhid ibn Sulaymān (d. 150 AH = 767 AD); one in his discussion of sūrat al-Isrā':

فقال عبد الله بن الزبعري السهمي: إن الزقوم بلسان بربر التمر والزبد. قال أبو الجهل: يا جارية ابغنا «٣» تمرا فجاءته. فقال لقريش وهم حوله تزقموا من هذا الزقوم الذي يخوفكم به محمد «٤» .
And ʕAbd Allāh ibn al-Zabʕarī al-Sahmī said: Zaqqūm means 'date' and 'butter' in the tongue of Barbar. Abū Jahl said "Slave-girl, find us some dates", and she came to him, and he said to Quraysh as they were about him: "Have some of this zaqqūm that Muhammad is scaring you with".

And one, almost identical, in his discussion of sūrat al-Dukhān:

بلسان بربر وأفريقية الزقوم يعنون التمر والزبد، زعم ذلك عبد الله بن الزبعري السهمي، وذلك أن أبا جهل قال لهم: إن محمدا يزعم أن النار تنهت الشجر وإنما النار تأكل الشجر، فما الزقوم عندكم؟ فقال عبد الله بن الزبعري: التمر والزبد. فقال أبو جهل بن هشام: يا جارية، ابغنا تمرا وزيدا. فقال: تزقموا.
In the tongue of Barbar and Ifrīqiyah, zaqqūm they mean 'date' and 'butter'. So claimed ʕAbd Allāh ibn al-Zabʕarī al-Sahmī, on the basis that Abū Jahl said to them "Muhammad claims that the Fire grows trees, yet fire consumes trees! So what is zaqqūm according to you?" And ʕAbd Allāh ibn al-Zabʕarī said: "Dates and butter". And Abū Jahl ibn Hishām said: "Slave-girl, find us some dates and butter!" And he said: "Have some zaqqūm."

One is vaguely reminded of Siwi a-zəggar "a (single) date"; but if indeed this were a word of "Barbar and Ifrīqiyah", one would hardly expect it to trip from the lips of Abū Jahl, and still less to be familiar to his audience. (For those unfamiliar with the context: Abū Jahl was the foremost enemy of early Islam, and ʕAbd Allāh ibn al-Zabʕarī was an anti-Islamic poet; their assertion that in some foreign language zaqqūm means "dates and butter" was almost certainly intended as mockery of the Qur'ān, not as serious lexicography.) The juxtaposition of "Barbar and Ifrīqiyah", however, seems to corroborate that the intended reference is indeed to the Berbers rather than to any East African groups.

Another is to be found in the earliest Arabic dictionary - the Kitāb al-ʕAyn, by al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad:

والقَيطونُ: المخدع في لغة البربر ومصر.
qayṭūn: chamber, in the language of the Barbar and Egypt.

The ultimate origin of this word, unlike that of zaqqūm, is perfectly clear: it comes from Greek κοιτών, probably via Aramaic. The term is used in Coptic too: ⲕⲟⲓⲧⲱⲛ. In modern Berber varieties its form (e.g. aqiḍun) has a q, suggesting a more recent borrowing from Arabic, but one may reasonably suspect that Berbers in Cyrenaica and the Western Desert (most of whom have since switched to Arabic) would have been familiar with some version of the Greek term before Arabic influence.

A number of references to the "Barbar" are to be found in the works of Imām Mālik ibn Anas. None of these refer to the language, but one, in al-Mudawwanah, makes a clear reference to skin colour in the context of what counts as a legally punishable insult, confirming (unless this was a later scribe's addition) that the term's reference was indeed to North rather than (as Rouighi's hypothesis might suggest) East Africa:

بَلَغَنِي أَنَّ مَالِكًا قَالَ فِي الْمَوَالِي كُلِّهِمْ: مَنْ قَالَ لِبَرْبَرِيٍّ يَا فَارِسِيُّ أَوْ يَا رُومِيُّ أَوْ يَا نَبَطِيُّ أَوْ دَعَاهُ بِغَيْرِ جِنْسِهِ مِنْ الْبِيضِ كُلِّهِمْ فَلَا حَدَّ عَلَيْهِ فِيهِ، أَوْ قَالَ يَا بَرْبَرِيُّ وَهُوَ حَبَشِيٌّ فَلَا حَدَّ عَلَيْهِ وَهُوَ قَوْلُ مَالِكٍ.
It has reached me that Mālik said of mawlās in general: "Whoever says to a Berber 'Hey, Persian!' or 'Hey Roman!' or 'Hey Nabaṭī!', or calls him by any other nation of the whites - he is not to be punished for it. Or if he says 'Hey Berber!' when he is really Ethiopian, he is not to be punished for it. That is Mālik's statement.

Ngər "die out"

In Algerian Arabic, ngər نڨر means "to perish, to die out, to become extinct", used primarily of patrilineal families; nəgru نڨرو "they died out" typically means they died leaving no descendants bearing the family name. I've usually heard it in reference to small families that had no sons, but it can also be caused by mass killing, as recent events horribly remind us; expressions used in the news, alongside "wiped out", include the oddly bureaucratic formulation "erased from the civil registry".

This verb has no connection to Arabic نقر naqara "peck, hollow out, etc.", as its non-emphatic r betrays. It is a denominal verb formed within Arabic from the Amazigh (Berber) noun anəggaru "end, latter", derived from the verb gʷri "remain behind" (originally *ăgrəβ; forms cited are from Kabyle). Nevertheless, it has been been reborrowed from Arabic into a wide range of Amazigh languages, e.g. Kabyle ngər, glossed by Dallet as "die leaving behind neither descendants nor relatives; die out (family); be exterminated".

This concept, unambiguously expressed by a single word in most North African languages, doesn't seem to be lexicalised in English. Is it lexicalised elsewhere?

Chenoua and the rectification of names

According to Ethnologue - or even to the HCA - Chenoua (Tacenwit) is one of the larger Berber/Amazigh languages of Algeria, spoken west of Algiers from Tipasa almost to Tenes. Unfortunately, no one seems to have told the speakers, who call their own language Haqḇayliṯ or Haqḇayləḵṯ - i.e. Kabyle. Chenoua is the name of one particular area, a mountain near Tipasa, and speakers from other areas are often entirely unfamiliar with the term; I recently learned of a first-language speaker who had reached her twenties without ever hearing of it.

This is not to say that they speak the same language in Tipasa as in Tizi-Ouzou! In fact, "Chenoua" is much more closely related to Chaoui than to what is usually called "Kabyle". But "Kabyle" is just an Anglicisation of Arabic qbayǝl - "tribes". It came to be applied to mountain-dwelling groups like this in the Ottoman period as a broad ethno-political category, not a linguistic one; around Jijel, communities who have spoken Arabic for many generations still call themselves Kabyle.

What should you call a language in a situation like this? "Chenoua" takes a part for the whole, and as such is confusing, as well as privileging one group of speakers over others. "Kabyle" matches speakers' traditional self-understanding, but misleads linguists, who are accustomed to using this for the much larger, not very closely related Berber variety spoken further west. "Western Algerian Berber" is potentially too broad; perhaps "Dahra Berber" is better, after the low-lying mountain range where most speakers live, but it presupposes a distinction from "Ouarsenis Berber" that is probably not linguistically justified.

But neither "Berber" nor the currently preferred term "Tamazight" correspond to traditional usage among speakers. "Berber" has never been used in any Berber variety; it has always been a term used by outsiders to label them, and in traditional coastal Algerian usage bǝṛbṛiyya actually referred to colloquial Arabic, not to Berber. And before the Amazigh identity movement gained ground in the late 20th century, most speakers in northern Algeria had never heard of "Tamazight".

In contexts like this, it makes no sense for a linguist to insist on using the name speakers use. Folk categories simply don't divide languages up at the same level as the one the linguists are interested in, nor for the same purposes. (In Bechar, šəlħa "Shilha" refers not only to several very different Berber varieties, but to the completely unrelated Songhay language Korandje). That doesn't mean denying the validity of folk categories; people can call whales "fish" if they want to. It does mean making sure not to get misled by them.

Book review: Zenati-Arabic Arabic-Zenati Lexicon, Haji (2019)

I got my hands on a copy of a recent dictionary of the Berber variety of Ouargla: Muʕjam al-mufradāt zanātī-ʕarabī ʕarabī-zanātī : Warqalah, Ngūsah, Tmāsint, Baldat ʕumar, ɣumrah, Maqrīn, Timīmūn wa-ḍawāḥīhā معجم المفردات زناتي-عربي عربي-زناتي : ورقلة، نڨوسة، تماسنت، بلدة عمر، غمرة، مقرين، تميمون وضواحيها, by Abderrahmane Haji, published 2019 with Afrmād in Algeria. The variety of Ouargla, Təggargərənt, is relatively well-documented thanks primarily to the texts and dictionary published by Jean Delheure. Delheure's work, however, was based on fieldwork between 1941 and 1976, and as such represents the speech of several generations ago. The primary merit of Haji (2019) is in presenting an up-to-date picture of Ouargla Berber as currently spoken and seen by a first-language speaker; it is also of sociolinguistic interest for presenting a heartfelt argument for linguistic diversity and "dialect" preservation from an essentially populist nationalist-conservative perspective. Unfortunately, however, apart from an understandable lack of linguistic training, the book is marred by an astonishing number of typographical errors (the Arabic text of the introduction gives the impression of never having been proof-read at all) and an orthography which fails to distinguish /ə/ from /a/; the author notes that he had to rapidly reconstruct the work from scratch after losing his original manuscript file.

The introduction starts by noting the constitutional position of "the Amazigh language" in Algeria and objecting that the variation across Berber is far higher than such a phrase might seem to imply, with only 2.4% (?) of vocabulary common across all varieties. He claims to be able to understand only 35% of Kabyle and 65% of Tuareg as against 80% of Chaouia, 95% of Tumzabt, and 95% of Timimoun; more surprisingly (typo?), he reports understanding only 40% of the rather similar varieties of Tiout, Boussemghoun, and Beni Ounif. A brief overview of Amazigh/Berber/Algerian history includes an original etymology of "Amazigh": he derives it from am jjiɣ, "as I left (it)", an idea made possible by Ouargli's tendency to merge š/ž with s/z, explaining his eccentric spelling of it as أمزيغ rather than أمازيغ. He then presents his objections to standardisation: "The attempt to create an Amazigh language in the laboratory, without immersion in its principles and the depths of its components spread across the nation is in itself self-destructive, and may find no one to feed it or protect it, being rootless and inauthentic and asocial... How can 17 dialects be reduced to one dialect which no one has deemed the source or the original? As Algerians say: 'When the crow tried to imitate the partridge, it forgot how to walk'." For good measure he takes such efforts to reflect "this savage project known as globalisation, which since 1945... has imposed what it (globalisation and pragmatism) considers appropriate for its ambitions and desires to let loose and satisfy the instincts and consumption in all its forms, and release blind freedoms and illusory democracy." Specifically, "dialectal diversity is a strong fortress and effective tool [against this project] which must not be reduced or destroyed for nothing."

The next section presents his perspective on the history of Arabic in Algeria. He seems to take for granted that the Kutama were descended from Himyar, and therefore that Kabyles are actually Arab, unlike Zenata (such as himself) who are indigenous, but who "learned Arabic of their own free will, far from the Hilalians and Riah and those under their influence, who preferred the wilds and transhumance, entering the town to buy and sell but leaving in the afternoon". He insists that, as with Berber, "In Algeria there are Arabics and not just one Arabic, which must likewise be gathered and corrected and preserved from oblivion." The main thrust of the section, however, is to argue against the exclusion of Arabic loanwords, since they are historically well-entrenched: "is it not true that most of English comes from French ... and most of French from Latin..? Is Arabic not our neighbour, even ahead of Islam being our religion"?

The next section briefly presents a linguistic geography of Algeria from a Saharan-focused perspective: Tuareg around Djanet, Tamanrasset, Borj and Tin-Zaouatine and Timelaouine; Regueibat (non-Amazigh) around Oued Daoura, Matar Ennaga, Hassi-Khebi, Tindouf, Ghar Djbeilat, and the Western Sahara; Zenati in Ouargla, Ngoussa, Goug, Beldet Amor, Temacint, Meggarine, Ghomra, Timimoun, Beni Ounif; Shilha in Tiout, Sfissifa, Boussemghoun, Chellala; Chaouia from Zeribet el-Oued to the Tunisian border, and from El Kantara to the edge of Souk Ahras; Kabyle in a rectangle from the edge of Setif to the sea of Bejaia and from Bouira to the edge of Algiers and Boumerdes - plus Zenati around Cherchell, as an afterthought.

He then briefly and polemically addresses script choice: "I write in Arabic, in accordance with article 2 of the Algerian constitution of 2016, and because Arabic came down from Paradise with Adam AS and Eve, and the Quran is in flawless Arabic... Moreover, Arabic is indisputably the oldest language in the world... Latin script destroyed the country and the people, and stole our goods and property, and split our unity; the people of the South reject it and don't want to learn it." He adds that Zenati has adopted plenty of Arabic loanwords, as well as others from "French and Hausa and Zarma and Bambara and Adadi[?] and other languages".

The next section is an overview of prior publications on Ouargla Berber, short yet replete with mistaken identifications ("Hodson" (sic: rather Hodgson) is identified as a general, René Basset as a member of the René missionary family) and apparently cut short in the middle of the first sentence to mention Delheure ("deleu").

Finally, he moves on to "the rules of Zenati" (قواعد الزناتية), summarizing the fully vocalised orthography he adopts (including new characters for ẓ, ṇ, ṃ, ṛ, but sadly no distinct solution for ə), and then describing the morphology. The headings adopted are "Feminine", "Verb", "Pronoun suffixed to the verb or noun", "Plural", "Negation", "Masdar", "Interrogative", "Warning", "Intimidation", "Calling for help", "Ululation", "Colours", "Relative pronoun", "Demonstratives", "Locative adverbs", "Nisba", "Paucal plural", "Free pronouns", "Demonstrative" (yes, twice), "Ownership", "Demonstratives suffixed to the noun", "Suffixed genitive pronoun", "Numerals and counting in Zenati", "Counting money", "Metre and poetry" (with basically no content), "Keys to Ouargli" (a list of function words). Many of these include asides on subjects that would not be expected based on the section title. These are followed by a series of paradigm tables: "Free pronouns", "Genitive pronoun suffixes", "Free pronouns" (absolute possessives), an unlabelled table of the conjugation of "say", "Conjugation of 'say' in the present then in the past", "Conjugation of 'say' in the negative'", "Conjugation of 'come' in the past then the present then the imperative", "Conjugation of 'give' with a first person subject in the past and the present and the imperative", "Conjugation of 'give' with a third person subject in the past and the present", "Form of exaggeration", ... and many other verb paradigms.

The remainder of the work is divided into three alphabetically ordered sections: a short phrasebook, "Phrases and expressions, Zenati-Arabic"; then the dictionary proper, "Zenati-Arabic dictionary of lexemes" and "Arabic-Zenati dictionary of lexemes".

On the whole, I found this work disappointing; with a better transcription system and some training in linguistics, the author could have created a definitive reference work rather than a miscellany. Nevertheless, serious students of the Berber varieties of the northern Sahara should not neglect it; it covers areas of modern life absent from earlier sources, and addresses some aspects of pragmatics neglected by more professional treatments.

Delicious Berber apples

While most Berber varieties use an Arabic loanword for "apple", several are reported to preserve a non-Arabic word: Jerbi a-ḏəffu (Brugnatelli), Nefusi dəffu (Motylinski), Zuara a-dəffu (Baghni). This word was derived by Vycichl (1952) from Punic *tappūḥ, a derivation generally accepted in subsequent work; Kossmann (2013:146) explains various forms along the lines of ta-dəffaḥ-t as blends between this and the Arabic form. Such an etymology makes sense on extra-linguistic as well as linguistic grounds: domestic apples originated much further east, in Central Asia, so a loanword is expected a priori, and given the important role of Carthage in early North African history, Punic appears the obvious source.

Talking to a speaker from near Batna yesterday, however, I realised that the Chaoui word for "apple" is really aḍfu, with an emphatic d. This cannot be explained in terms of regular sound change from the Punic form: the distinction between d and ḍ is in general very stable in Berber, particularly in the absence of any adjacent emphatic or laryngeal, and the apparent loss of gemination is also irregular.

The solution is Berber-internal. In more westerly varieties (cf. Nait-Zerrad, p. 451), we find a root ḍf-t for "taste, savour": Ait Atta t-aṭfi (verb iṭfi-t), Tashelhiyr tiḍfi (verb aḍfu-t), Zenaga taṭfih - also borrowed into Korandje təṭfi. While its geographical distribution seems relatively limited, nothing about this root suggests a foreign origin, and its attestation in Zenaga suggests a priori that it goes back to proto-Berber. We may therefore plausibly assume that at some point it was familiar to Chaoui speakers, if it isn't still. An otherwise unanalysable term for "apple" would therefore have been reinterpreted as, essentially "the tasty one".

Power and nephewhood from the Ahaggar to Hombori

Throughout In most Tuareg varieties, the verb 'be able' is dub-ət (pf. yă-ddob-ăt, impf. ti-dubu-t). There are no compelling cognates for this in Berber outside Tuareg, as Naït-Zerrad's comparative dictionary confirms; at best, one might speculatively compare Siwi dabb "a lot" and Tarifit dab 'have an appetite', both within Macro-Zenati. The word can therefore not be reconstructed for proto-Berber. A better candidate for 'be able' in proto-Berber would seem to be *ăzmər; cf. Awjila, Kabyle əzmər "be able", Tamajeq əzmər "stand up to, endure", etc. The corresponding verbal noun a-dabu has, however, been borrowed from Tuareg into Standard Algerian Tamazight to provide the noun "power"; its widespread use in political discourse in reference to le pouvoir has made this one of the more successful neologisms.

The Tamahaq of the Ahaggar Mountains attests a second sense of dub-ət that seems to be isolated even within Tuareg. Foucauld glosses it (p. 153) as:

2. ("by extension") 'be able to succeed someone (to an office), by virtue of his being your maternal uncle'
3. ("by extension") 'have as maternal uncle'

It yields the equally Ahaggar-specific word tădabit "person(s) of either sex with the right to succeed to someone's suzerainty due to the latter being their maternal uncle", used in the Ahaggar instead of pan-Tuareg tegăze. Examples include (retranscribed, perhaps imperfectly):

Biska d Mənnək ăddoben Musa daɣ ăra n tăññaten.
Biska and Mennek are potential successors to Musa by virtue of being sisters' children.

Luki d Mikela ăddoben Musa kaskab.
Luki and Mikela are potential successors in suzerainty to Musa.

Barka wa-n ăkli yăddobăt akli hin Mămmădu kaskab.
Barka the slave has as maternal uncle my slave Mămmădu, in a maternal uncle-nephew relationship.

Note the very un-Berber-looking word kaskab, lacking even the characteristic Berber nominal prefix, in the latter two examples. In the not obviously related sense of "metallic part of a camel bridle", akăskabbu (Tamasheq kiskab) is attested throughout Tuareg; but kaskab, in the relevant sense, appears just as unique to the Ahaggar as this sense of dub-ət. Foucauld's entry on the term runs to three pages (pp. 918-920), with neat kinship diagrams, but starts "in the direct line of succession to suzerainty, from maternal uncle to nephew or niece (in a kinship relation of maternal uncle to child of full sister or maternal sister (when speaking of succession to suzerainty over vassals))". One might be tempted to link the first half to Tuareg kus "inherit", but the vowel and the absence of any good explanation for the second half militates against it.

Not to beat around the bush, both dub-ət and kaskab look like great candidates for non-Berber substratum vocabulary loaned into Tuareg, especially in the kinship sense. Considered from this perspective, a non-Berber comparison for the former immediately presents itself: Songhay *túbí "inherit (v.); inheritance (n.)", with its derivative *túbá "sister's child (of either sex)" (the latter may be absent in Zarma and Dendi; both are absent from Northern Songhay, which substitutes Tuareg loanwords). Reflexes of the former include Zarma, Gorwol, Hombori, Djougou túbú (in Hombori also "succeed as chief", just as in Tuareg), Gao and Timbuktu tubu (in Gao also "bequeath, leave (to)"), Kikara túbí ...; of the latter, Gorwol túbéy, Gao tubey / tuba, Hombori túbê, Kikara túbá, Timbuktu tuba. (For modern Timbuktu Heath instead documents kaaya for "inherit", but Dupuis-Yacouba recorded "toubou".)

To my mind, a borrowing from Songhay into Tuareg looks more appealing, as I would expect a high-low tone if it came from Tuareg to reflect Tuareg stress; but the opposite direction could also be defended. Either way, however, there can be no reasonable doubt, given the good formal match and perfect semantic correspondence, that the Ahaggar forms are related to the Songhay ones. (Oddly enough, Nicolaï appears to have missed this connection in his wide-ranging hunt for Berber matches, instead focusing on Kabyle (originally Arabic) ətbəʕ "follow".) Yet their distribution is almost the opposite of what one would expect: in both groups, they are attested only in the varieties least in contact with the other. This suggests that the contact situation they reflect happened quite early, rather than being recent.

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(References consulted include, for Tuareg, the dictionaries of Foucauld, Heath, and Alojaly; for Awjila, Paradisi; for cross-Berber comparison, Naït-Zerrad; for Songhay, Heath, White-Kaba, Ducroz and Charles, Zima, and Dupuis-Yacouba, not to mention Nicolaï's La force des choses.)

Siwi corpus

A small part of the Siwi corpus I gathered during PhD and postdoctoral fieldwork is now publicly accessible online, with more planned. Despite my best efforts, there will undoubtedly be some number of errors in transcription and translation; hopefully being able to listen to the audio will make these easier to correct in the long term. (Feel free to comment here or by email.) Some of these recordings may be of particular interest:

• Four facts about Siwa, short as it is, is a perfect starting point for understanding Siwa anthropologically; the speaker chooses four questions about Siwa, of his own devising, and answers them.
• The story of the Prophet Joseph is probably the best long narrative I was privileged to record during my fieldwork, retelling a well-known Islamic story with energy and eloquence, and giving numerous examples of grammatical features rarely attested in shorter texts.
• Paradigm of the Siwi verb əlməd "learn" - does what it says on the tin, and as such makes a great introduction to Siwi verb morphology. Pay particular attention to the position of stress. Not all forms of the verb are included in this recording, but the remainder can easily be derived from these ones.

The speaker recorded in these, Sherif Bougdoura, was a thoughtful and intelligent person, trying to find the right balance between local and national cultures, who made his living as a repairman for lack of opportunities to take his education further. He sadly died young in a work accident several years ago. I hope these recordings will serve to preserve his memory as well as to facilitate linguistic analysis.

The *Bugzu of Bagzan?

Mt. Băgzăn, at the heart of the predominantly Tuareg-speaking Air massif in Niger, bears a not very Tuareg-looking name. The only Berber meaning for the root BGZ found in Nait-Zerrad is a word used by the neighbouring Iwellemmedan, taken from Alojaly's dictionary: ebăgez, pl. ibəgzan "vessel for dogs or for rubbish"; this corresponds regularly to Tahaggart ebăǵăh, pl. ibəǵhan "crude vase or plate (used for giving dogs their food and for gathering rubbish)", with a feminine tebăǵăht, pl. tibəǵhin "flat, slightly concave instrument used as a dustpan" (Foucauld). Not a root one would want to reconstruct very far back in Berber, nor an obvious source for the name of a mountain.

Hausa provides a surely related form that may shed light on the term's history: the ethnonym būzu < *bugzu (by Klingenheben's Law, as shown by the pl. bugā̀jē) "serf of the Azben [Air] people" (Bargery). The term refers to ex-slaves, iklan, what in Mali would be called Bella. It presumably does not share an etymology with būzu pl. būzā̀yē "undressed skin mat, loin-cloth", with no *g, for which Skinner (1996) gathers plausible cognates elsewhere in Chadic.

Combining the two, we get what looks like a brief glimpse of morphology: the homeland of the *Bugzu is *Bagzan (perhaps their manufactures included crude plates). From a Tuareg perspective, -ăn looks like a masculine plural ending; but the specific vowel alternation would be hard to explain Tuareg-internally, though Tuareg has a-ablaut in other plural types. From a Chadic perspective, one is reminded of the -n plurals of Bade and Ngizim, e.g. Bade zawa-n pl. zawa-n-ən "stick" (Schuh ms), Ngizim gâzbə́r̃ pl. gázbàarín "tall" (Schuh ms, 1972); Ngizim even offers parallels for the vowel alternation, and a-ablaut plurals are widespread in Chadic more generally. The Bade-Ngizim subgroup includes geographically the closest Chadic varieties spoken to the Air besides Hausa, located almost due south of the Air, so it seems a promising point of comparison; could the *Bugzu have spoken a since lost West Chadic B.1 language? But of course, nothing guarantees that Bagzan should be an old plural; perhaps -ăn was a locative suffix, or something else entirely.

I wouldn't be surprised if some early 20th century work proposes this connection, but I haven't come across it in the literature so far; if you have, let me know.

Review: "Inventing the Berbers"

I finally got a chance to read Ramzi Rouighi's Inventing the Berbers recently; much food for thought.

The book is primarily the history of a name: how did certain people in North Africa come to be called "Berbers", and how did the reference and connotations of this label change over time? Viewed as such, it has a good deal of useful material. He argues that, rather than being derived directly from Latin or Greek "barbari", the label was transferred from East Africa to Northwest Africa as the Arabs moved west; its original associations would be with slavery rather than with barbarism as such. (Traces of the original usage persist: in Nubia, as I first learned on a trip to Aswan, "Berber" is still understood to mean "Nubian"!) In the early medieval period, it was used primarily for rebels and enemies on the fringes; groups with a closer involvement tended to be referred to by more specific terms. Ibn Khaldun's usage is more complex, reflecting Andalusi practice as it emerged in the context of elite competition between Berber and Arab noble families, but shows clear traces of the older tendency to reserve it for "outsiders" to the ruling elite. The modern European usage of the term comes essentially from Ibn Khaldun as filtered through De Slane's essentialism (which turned Berbers into a "race") and subsequent academic and ideological debates, largely in the context of the French colonization of Algeria.

In the penultimate chapter, however, he lays his cards on the table, presenting the term Amazigh as a mere relabelling of the neo-Khaldunian concept of "Berber", constructed with insidious intent and making an already misleading discourse even more ahistorical:

In the early 1950s, a few specialists proposed to replace “Berber” with “Amazigh,” the name some people in northern Morocco had.... “Amazigh” could not fully conceal its colonial birthmark, however. Its rejection of Arab imperialism of centuries past, its search for an authentic indigenous category, and its reliance on the fruits of colonial historiography, epigraphy, and linguistics to do so are all telltale signs. Calling for name change could have led to the realization of the historicity of all names and from there to the historicity of Berberization. It did not... “Amazigh” (indigeneity) was the parting gift of a dying colonialism to the frail nationalisms it had never accepted. Pulling the rug from under “Algeria” and “Morocco,” which as the colons repeated were new and artificial, “Amazigh” dealt a blow to anticolonial nationalism.

The 2-page discussion of “Amazigh” is unacceptably simplistic, especially after multiple chapters of careful examination of the changing semantics of "Berber". The author would have been better off omitting the term entirely than giving it such a caricatural treatment, massively understating the geographic distribution of the term (not just northern Morocco but as far off as northwestern Libya...); his medieval focus cannot entirely excuse the omission, as this term is (less frequently) attested in the medieval period. A proper examination - and, yes, historicization - would have been all the more valuable given that the term was used as an endonym in many regions long before the emergence of the modern trans-national ideology, whereas "Berber" has not been adopted in ordinary Berber speech anywhere, remaining an exonym, and usually an exclusively learned one at that.

Reading as a linguist, I can appreciate the attention given to semantic shifts and to the arbitrariness not only of the sign but of the signified. But as a historical linguist, it feels rather at cross-purposes to the questions of interest to me. Fundamentally, I don't much care which ethnic label people identify or are identified with: for me, "Berber", like "Arabic", is primarily useful as a linguistic category. And its referent has a history starting far earlier than the earliest attestation of "Berber", "Tamazight", or any other label one might choose to apply to it. It is necessary and appropriate to historicize such labels - to be aware that Masinissa or Dihya or Fatma n'Soumer were not acting in the name of some kind of Amazigh nationalism, and may not even have been familiar with "Amazigh" as a name, let alone as an identity. But how this relatively close-knit language family spread, and retreated, remains a historical question, of interest to archeologists and population geneticists as well as linguists, which an exclusive focus on ethnic labels erases.

It should, however, help to provoke reflection on the appropriate choice of label for this language family. "Berber", neutral though it undoubtedly is in English or French, does have a problematic history; the derivation from "barbarian" may be inaccurate, but this book really underscores the extent to which its usage in Arabic has been overwhelmingly negative and "othering" for most of the region's history. "Amazigh" does not have this problem, but is strongly associated with a projection of shared ethnicity into the past which risks distorting our picture of language spread. In an ideal world, one might prefer a purely geographical label ("Northwest African"?), or, better yet, a purely linguistic one (iles-languages, after the usual word for "tongue"?) In practice, however - here as elsewhere - it seems preferable to live with the occasional misunderstandings caused by the use of a well-known "ethnic" term than to confuse the public with a completely novel one.

Kabyle-Arabic phraseological convergence

Kabyle Berber and (especially north-central) Algerian Arabic show the marks of massive convergence, often reflected in the use of phraseology that translates literally with identical meaning. A nice example I came across recently (p. 186, Poèmes kabyles anciens, Mammeri 1980/2009) is the following sentence:

Ur as zmireɣ, ur iffiɣ felli.
NEG 3SG.DAT be.able.NEG.PFV-1SG, NEG 3MSG-go.out.NEG.PFV on-1SG
Literally:
I can't handle it, it doesn't suit me.

This translates perfectly into (north-central) Algerian Arabic:

ما قدرتلو، ما خرج عليّا.
Ma qdertlu, ma xrej 3liyya.
NEG be.able.PFV-1SG-3SG.DAT, NEG 3MSG-go.out.PFV on-1SG
Literally: I can't to it, it doesn't go out on me.
I can't handle it, it doesn't suit me.

In languages further removed from the area, however, a literal translation would be comically nonsensical:

• EN: *I can't to it, it doesn't go out on me.
• FR: *Je ne lui peux, il ne sort pas sur moi.

Another case was highlighted on Twitter by Noureddine Chikh: the use in both languages of "where do I know?" for "how would I know?" The latter proved to have some near-parallels elsewhere (with "Whence do I know?"), but no perfect ones were reported. How about this one? Can you think of any other idiomatic phrases that translate literally across the two languages?

Scattered etymological notes

I'm posting these mostly so I don't forget them...

Algerian Arabic jəḥmum جحموم "blackbird", and its Kabyle counterpart ajeḥmum, derive from Classical Arabic yaḥmūm يحموم "soot-black". This otherwise very irregular change y- > j- is perfectly paralleled in another animal name of the form yaCCūC: jəṛbuʕ جربوع "jerboa" from yarbūʕ يربوع. Could this be the regular outcome of this particular template? We need to check if any other yaCCūC animal names have survived.

The Korandje word for "vulva", imən, looks phonologically like an obvious match for Berber iman "soul, self". However, I could never see any sufficiently clear connection between the two semantically. The missing link is provided by Colin's (1918:118) description of the Moroccan Arabic dialect of Taza: there, rōḥ is glossed as a euphemistic term for "vulve de la jument ou de la vache". Is this attested in Berber itself anywhere, I wonder?

Another Korandje word, tasənɣəyt, refers to a type of rock; after Paleolithic discoveries near Tabelbala, paleoarcheologists ended up giving its name to an Acheulian cleaver type, the "Tachenghit" cleaver. This seems to match Jijel Arabic ašənɣud "pierre lisse (pour broyer)" (Marçais 1954:333), although Hassaniya Arabic may offer a more direct point of comparison. I don't remember seeing this in any Berber dictionary so far; is that attested?

Getting lost in the NW Sahara

Two languages of the northwestern Sahara, spoken reasonably close to each other, have basic motion verbs derived from a word that originally meant GET LOST. Let's see if we can figure out how that happened.

For COME, practically all Berber languages consistently use reflexes of the proto-Berber word *asəʔ. In the largest Berber variety, however - Tashelhiyt, in southern Morocco - this root has been lost, and a quite different verb is used: ašk (ⴰⵛⴽ). The original meaning of this verb can still be seen in other Berber languages, such as Tamasheq: GET LOST (a meaning which in Tashelhiyt has been replaced by what's probably a borrowing from Arabic جلا.) Presumably, GET LOST came to mean WANDER, and WANDER (over) came to mean COME.

In Songhay, GET LOST is *dere(y), preserved as such in most varieties. In Korandje in western Algeria, however - uniquely within the family - this root's reflex has undergone a very similar shift in meaning: dri now means GO. (Songhay speakers might assume this comes from dira WALK, but this word, from Proto-Songhay *dida, rather corresponds to Korandje zda WALK.) Meanwhile, Berber *aškəʔ GET LOST has itself been borrowed - probably from Tamasheq - as wuška GET LOST (the vowels reflect the Berber perfective form.)

In summary:

	COME	GET LOST	GO
Tashelhiyt	ašk	žlu	ddu
Tamasheq	as	ašk	ăkk
Gao Songhay	kaa	dere	koy
Korandje	ka	wuška	dri

Both changes can be summarized as GET LOST > BASIC-MOTION-VERB. Lexically, Korandje shows heavy influence from southern Moroccan Berber, much of which seems to match Tashelhiyt better than it does the Southern Tamazight varieties currently spoken closest to Tabelbala. That makes it rather tempting to seek a contact explanation. But if Korandje was copying a Tashelhiyt pattern, why would it replace GO rather than COME?

To make sense of what happened, I think we have to envision an intermediate earlier stage where WANDER (from GET LOST) was getting used as a generic verb of motion irrespective of direction in some (perhaps expressive) contexts. Both Tashelhiyt and Korandje require direction towards (and sometimes away from) the speaker to be expressed with a directional morpheme outside the verb root proper, so no ambiguity would necessarily result. From this situation, WANDER could end up replacing either COME or GO, while still maintaining the existing (seemingly superfluous) lexical distinction between the two by keeping the other root.

Now I think about it, British English offers a possible parallel for the initial stages of such a development, with particles substituting for the directionals of Berber and Songhay. In phrases like "he wandered over" ("he came over"), "he wandered off" ("he went away"), the original implication of aimlessness has faded away in informal usage to the point of being virtually absent. Should we expect some peripheral English dialect to replace "come" or "go" with "wander" altogether? Check back in a few centuries to find out...

Berber-Arabic macaronic verse

I recently came across a poem in praise of the oasis of Awjila in eastern Libya, attributed to its patron saint, the 15th-century Moroccan traveller Abu'l-`Abbas Ahmad ibn `Isa al-Fasi "al-Zarruq". The poem is in Arabic, but its first few verses stand out for including bits of the Berber language of Awjila:

أواجلة قوم يسوقون عيرهم	The Awjilis are a people who drive their caravans
إلى مصر والسودان في طلب التبر	To Egypt and Sudan in search of gold.
كلامهم "سوقات" في كل موطن	Their speech is suq-at (drive!) in every country,
"أكا وكاقني" على أمد الدهر	Akka (here it is!) and mag-nni (where is it?) all the time;
و"ييد وقيم ديلا" ألفاظ كلها	And yid (come) and qim dila (sit here) are the words of all of them
و"أزل فيسا" لغاهم على الأثر	And azzel fisa (run quickly!) is their accustomed utterance.

I can't vouch for the attribution, but it so happens that Morocco did have a tradition of Berber-Arabic macaronic verse, whose best-known exemplar is al-Rasmuki's 17th-century comic poem Qawm `ijāf ("A starved people"); the latter begins:

بسم الإله في الكلام إيزوار	"In the name of the God" in speech izwar (comes first)
وهو على عون العبد إيزضار	For He to help a person iẓḍar (is able),
وهو الذي له توليغتين	And He is the one to whom belong tulɣiwin (praises),
وهو المجير عبده من تومريتين	And He is the protector of his servant from tumritin (trials);
وبعده على النبي تازاليت	And after that, upon the Prophet be taẓallit (prayer),
أعظم بها أجرا ولو تاموليت	Great in reward, even if only tamullit (one time).
سافرت دھرا ووصیفي وینزار	I set off one day with my servant Winzar,
في سنة قد قل فیھا ءانزار	In a year where there was little anẓar (rain).
والقصد في السفر جوب تیمیزار	The purpose of the journey was to reach timizar (lands),
والسیر في خیامھا وإیكیدار	And travel in their tents and igidar (fortresses).
حتى حللت بعد سير أوسان	Until I stayed, after a trip of ussan (days),
في قرية يدعونها بأورفان	In a village that they call Urfan...

Given that the phenomenon is attested from both ends of the Berber world, it would be interesting to explore how widespread such poetry was, and whether it can be considered as constituting a genre in its own right.

More Algerian protest songs

A whole bunch more protest songs are emerging, as singers ride the wave. I don't think any of them have the kind of reach that La Casa d'El Mouradia does, but they should help counterbalance the Algiers-centrism of the previous post...

From the eastern plateau, in Chaoui (Berber), we have Sami Youress' "Ulac n cinquième" (No fifth term). Now I speak some Siwi, and a bit of Kabyle, but no Chaoui, so I wouldn't be able to translate this without the helpful subtitles, and my transcription is probably wrong in parts, but it starts:

Ulac ulac ulac, ulac n cinquième No no no, no fifth term,
Neṣbeṛ εecrin sna, temlim-aneɣ s imezgan We've waited twenty years, you've loaded us with problems.
Monsieur le Président ṛuḥ Ṛebbi ad yeεfu fell-ak Mr. President, go, God have mercy on you,
Ugir gg ubrid nnek, awid id-ek ayetma-k Go on your way, and take your brothers with you.
Agdud ad yeqqaṛ-ak εecrin sna bzayed fell-ak The people tell you twenty years is too much for you,
Ddzayer tamurt nneɣ ur teɣrid c sɣer baba-k / Algeria is our country, you didn't get it from your father.
Ddzayer tamurt nnek macci d elwert n baba-k. Algeria is your country, not your paternal inheritance.

Prominent opposition rapper Lotfi DK, from further east in Annaba, rose to the occasion as expected with Bandiyya (Bandits); there are whole theses on his oeuvre (well, at least one) so I won't devote too much effort to it here, but here's a short excerpt:

الشعب كرهكُم يا الكلاب The people are fed up with you, you dogs,
عشرين سنة بزّاف Twenty years is too much,
جمعنا أزمات البلاد باعوها في المزاد We've gathered crises, they've sold the country at auction,
البلاد رقّاسات ولبسات راهو زاد The country is dancers and costumes, it's gotten worse,
والرّئيس فلابوسات مانعرف مات ولاّ مازال And the President is in a stroller, don't know if he's dead or not yet...

Down in the Sahara in Adrar, a band calling themselves Gsariyine came up with their own take, with interestingly savvy lyrics as well as an unexplained goat:

واش بغيتوا فينا ضركا What do you want of us now?
البلاد راهي في غرقة The country is drowning;
انتُم عاطينها للسرقة You're handing it over to theft
والشعب خصروا النفقة And the people have lost the spending.
بغيتوا تزيدوا لينا عُهدة You want to impose on us another term
باش تديروا الزردة So you can have a party
تدخّلونا في هردة And get us in a mess
وتلعبوا فوقنا الروندة And play hopscotch all over us;
بلادي، c'est le moment - My country, it's the time
باش الشعب يتكلّموا For the people to speak up
ونكونوا يد واحدة And we'll be [as] one hand
ونبلّعوا للظالم فُمّهُ And close the wrongdoer's* mouth.
إيلا هوما ما حشموا If they have no shame,
حنايا نكونوا نفهموا We'll still understand
ونكونوا حضاريين And we'll be civilized
باش مبعد مانندموش So we don't regret it later.
في هاد اللخضة خصّنا نكونوا سلميين At this moment we must be nonviolent,
باش مايضحكوش علينا الُخرين So that "others" don't laugh at us.

And, moving back to the Algiers area for completeness, some sort of anonymous/Anonymous group came up with a catchy chaabi/country song. It ends:

إذا ادّاوا هاذ العُهدة If they get this term,
ما بقى في الدزاير قعدة No more staying in Algeria;
تتباع في سوق الخُردة It'll be up for sale in the flea market.
افّظنوا يا لا جوناس Wake up, youth,
ولّينا عرّة فالاجناس We've become the laughingstock[?] of peoples,
قولوا هاذ المرّة خلاص Say: This time it's enough.

I assume there are similar songs coming out in the west, and surely in Kabyle, but none of them have crossed my path; if you find any, let me know!

---

* Corrected following comment on Twitter.

We're all related: a calque from Kabyle into Darja

Algerian Arabic (or at least Dellys Arabic) has a verb for "be related to" (as family): kul كول, taking the dative, as in waš y-kul-lek? واش يكوللك "what relation is he to you?" In the reciprocal form, this yields tkawel تكاول "be related to each other"; "we're related to each other" is ne-tkawl-u نتكاولوا. These only seem to be used in the (present) imperfective; I've never heard anyone say *kal كال.

This verb clearly derives from an Arabic word still used in its own right in Algerian Arabic: kun كون "be", with regular assimilation of n+l to ll and reinterpretation of the root. waš y-kul-lek واش يكوللك "what relation is he to you?" was originally waš y-kun-lek واش يكونلك "what is he to you?" But that construction seems rather odd and unidiomatic from a Classical Arabic perspective. You don't normally use an equational verb "to be" in the indicative present tense like that, in Classical Arabic or even in Algerian Arabic; you would rather expect something with a pronoun, like *wašen huwwa lik واشن هو ليك (which you don't hear). What's going on here?

Flipping through Dallet's (1982) enormous dictionary of Kabyle as spoken by the Ait Menguellet, I came across the answer. The Kabyle verb ili "to be" (imperfective ttili) matches Arabic kun كون fairly well in its usage. In the imperfective, with the dative, it means "be related to" (his gloss: "être parent avec, avoir relation de parenté à"): d acu i-m tettili? "what relation is she to you?") It likewise has a reciprocal myili (imperfective ttemyili) "have in common; be related to each other", which in the latter sense only seems to show up in the imperfective: nettemyili "we're related to each other".

It seems clear that the Algerian Arabic verb derives from an excessively literal translation - a calque - of the Kabyle expression, probably by people whose first language was Kabyle. But since then it's taken its own path; whereas in Kabyle the meaning "be related to" remains a context-specific sense of the verb "be", in Algerian Arabic the change of n to l has allowed it to become an independent lexeme in its own right with no one-to-one Kabyle translation equivalent. Contact catalyses change, but the resulting change follows its own path.

Drawing water in Songhay and Zenaga

Almost every attested Songhay variety (Tasawaq is perhaps the only exception) has a reflex of the proto-Songhay word *gúrú "draw water" (from the river, from a pond, from a well, etc.)  To express this concept, most Berber varieties (including Tashelhiyt, Kabyle, Tumzabt, Ghadames, Awjila, Tamajeq...) use reflexes of a verb *āgum "draw water", which is thus equally securely reconstructible for proto-Berber.  Zenaga, however, has a rather different verb: ägur "puiser l'eau d'un puits, remonter le delou, tirer la corde du seau; faire parvenir qqc (à qqn)" and "se lever (astre)", with an irregular corresponding noun tgäʔrih "eau tirée du puits".  It seems to be distinct from äggur "pull".

The only Berber cognates Taine-Cheikh suggests for ägur are reflexes of a verb that may be reconstructed as *agir "throw; rise (of sun)" (eg Tashelhiyt gr, Kabyle gər, Chaoui gər).  Presumably the semantic shift of "throw" to "draw water" would be explained via the idea of throwing the bucket down the well.  If the comparison is accepted, then the verb shows an innovative semantic shift specific to Zenaga.  (It would be interesting to see if Tetserrét shares this, but unfortunately the relevant term doesn't seem to have been recorded.)

If the Zenaga word is indeed cognate to the suggested Berber forms, then it seems reasonable to draw the conclusion that proto-Songhay borrowed *gúrú "draw water" from an early relative of Zenaga.  This would fit well with the evidence for a Western Berber language having played an important role in the history of at least northern Mali.  If not, then it would become tempting to draw a conclusion much harder to fit with what is known of the region's history: that Zenaga borrowed the word from proto-Songhay.

Zenaga dialectal reflexes of ʔ, :

For the purposes of Berber historical linguistics, arguably the most important thing about Zenaga is its thoroughgoing retention of the glottal stop. Some Zenaga glottal stops derive from *q, corresponding to ɣ elsewhere in Berber, but many derive from *ʔ, lost without trace in most Berber varieties. When a rather carefully transcribed new source of dialectal Zenaga data comes to light, it thus seems logical to start by seeing how the glottal stop is reflected there. For convenience, I restrict this first pass to two of Ahmadou Ismail's wordlists: body parts, and herding vocabulary. The results are fairly clear.

In general, Taine-Cheikh's Vʔ corresponds regularly to Ismail's V:, with the length clearly marked, as distinct from Taine-Cheikh's short V, which Ismail consistently transcribes short. Thus:

	Ismail	Taine-Cheikh
young camel	awāra	äwaʔräh
waterbag	āga	äʔgäh
moustache	āya	aʔyäh
donkey m.	ājji	aʔž(ž)iy
donkey f.	tājil	taʔž(ž)əL
beard	tāmmart	taʔmmärt
camels	īyman	iʔymän
cows	tiššīđan	ətšiʔđaʔn / ətšiʔđän
lamb	hīmmar	iẕ̌iʔmär
donkey foal	īgiyu	iʔgiyi
shoulder(blade)	tūṛiḍ	toʔṛuḌ
donkeys	ūjjayan	uʔž(ž)äyän
shoulder(blade)s	tūrdin	tuʔṛäđän

There are only two contexts where this correspondence does not hold.  In the context / _C#, if C is a stop or fricative, Ismail retains the glottal stop; if C is a sonorant, it disappears without affecting vowel length.  (More examples of this context would be useful to confirm the exact conditioning.)

spring	taniʔđ	täniʔḏ
cow	taššiʔđ	täšši
head	iʔf	iʔf
camel	ayyim	äyiʔm
camel f.	tayyimt	täyi(ʔ)mt

Word-finally, the variety Taine-Cheikh describes has no overtly realised glottal stops (*ʔ > Ø / _#); the contrast, however, is maintained, since all originally vowel-final words now end in h (*V > Vh / _#). In Ismail's dialect, the latter change never happened:

waterbag	āga	äʔgäh
moustache	āya	aʔyäh
young camel	awāra	äwaʔräh
stomach	taxṣa	taḫs(s)äh
goat	tikši	təkših
ewe	tīyyi	tīyih

Nevertheless, the two classes have not completely merged; final *i remains i, but final *iʔ becomes u:

billy-goat	ahayu	äẕ̌äyi
mouth	immu	əmmi
tooth	awkšu	äwkši
tongue	itšu	ətši
donkey foal	īgiyu	iʔgiyi
calf	īrku	īrki

 
In the variety Taine-Cheikh describes, long vowels derive not from *Vʔ but from *Vh (ultimately *Vβ). Given that vowel length can be a reflex of a former glottal stop in Ismail's dialect, the next thing we need to check is what happens to *Vh there; it turns out that there too it yields long vowels:

small cattle	tākšin	tākšən
calf	īrku	īrki
ewe	tīyyi	tīyih
nostril	tīnhart	tīnẕ̌ärt
nose	tīnharin	tīnẕ̌ärän

The regularity of these correspondences is a testimony to the accuracy of both parties' work, and confirms the value of Zenaga as a data source for Berber historical phonology.

"Don't impose on me a language that isn't a vehicle of science": the Salhi scandal

Two years ago, the Algerian state finally decided to make Tamazight (Berber) an official language. In practice, this has not by any means implied giving it the same status as Arabic (much less as French). It has encouraged an expansion of Tamazight teaching, which is being extended to all wilayas (provinces) rather than just the ones with large numbers of Berber speakers. But Tamazight lessons - unlike Arabic, French, or English - remain completely optional. Most parents have no desire for their children to learn Tamazight, and were regularly complaining even before the question arose that the curriculum was too packed. Nevertheless, the very idea that Tamazight might someday be a required school subject seems to have been enough to drive at least one MP - the now-notorious Naima Salhi - into a ranting fury.

I've been reluctant to post about the Naima Salhi scandal, since it's obviously being used by this nonentity as a way to inflate her public profile. But when I heard the actual words of her paranoid rant against Berber, I realized I had to. Her words, thankfully, have been overwhelmingly repudiated by her peers. But her "reasoning" is a perfect specimen of a linguistic ideology that many people all over the world subscribe to, with a few instructive twists coming from the diglossic context of Algeria. As such, it's worth a closer look. Here's what she said, translated from - dialectal - Algerian Arabic into English:

"So don't impose on me a language - it's not a language anyway - don't impose on me a language that isn't a vehicle of science; don't impose on me a language that isn't recognized, isn't understood by people outside; what good is it to me? Study science with it? It doesn't have - it isn't a vehicle of science. Study technology with it? It isn't a vehicle of technology. Go abroad with it, to speak to people abroad? They don't know it and don't understand it. For God's sake, what good is it to us?
When it comes to the Arabic language - and oh, what a language! - which is the world language, which more than a billion people speak, they say we won't study it; a language which has billions of books, and billions of manuscripts, and billions of - everything - you say you won't study it and don't need it. Then you bring me a dead language, which doesn't have letters, and doesn't have meanings, and doesn't have words - you want to hold me back with it so you can make progress - and you go off, and eventually you get to the point, and you tell me: Me, I'm studying English, and I'm studying German, and Spanish, and Turkish, and you all don't know them. You're going to hold me back with this?
My little daughter was studying in a private school where most of them were Kabyles. She naturally learned the language with them, because her classmates' parents taught them to speak Kabyle, so it would continue and spread. So my daughter, with the best of intentions, learned with them. She'd come and speak it, and I never asked her "Why?" I didn't shut her up; I left her free to do as she likes. But now that we've gotten to the point where it's obligatory, I told her: Say another word in Kabyle (Berber) and I'll kill you, I'll discipline you if you say another word.
And I'm saying it plainly and challenging everyone: When we were going by intentions / naive, we didn't say a thing; now that it's become "push me and I'll step on you", don't push me and I won't step on you. Now we're going to make it about who's stronger? And the most for the stronger one? The majority is stronger. You'd have been better off leaving it down to intentions. Now that you think you're so smart and coming out with insults against us, now I'll insult you.
People like me, and people who are real men, and those who don't accept humiliation and aren't used to it, and whose family aren't used to it, won't accept from you something like this. And I now forbid my children from pronouncing a single word in Tamazight. I mean the Frenchified Kabyle made by the MAK and the treasonous terrorist MAK movement. And we need to demand that the MAK is a terrorist movement."

Let's pass over the bizarre misconceptions and factual errors for now (it doesn't have words???), and go to the heart of the matter. It's not an unusual phenomenon anywhere to find speakers of a majority language objecting to having to learn a supposedly useless minority language - look at Swedish in Finland, or Welsh in Wales, or even Irish in Ireland. In this case, however, diglossia introduces a further twist, making her very examples undermine her ideas.

She presents Kabyle as useless for what seem like bluntly utilitarian reasons: it's only spoken by other Algerians and it won't help you study science and technology. Yet most Algerians spend most of their lives in Algeria, and most people anywhere don't study science and technology past high school. By her own testimony, Kabyle is widely enough spoken that her daughter could pick it up in a private school even in a non-Kabyle area. Had her daughter failed to do so, she would presumably have had fewer friends, and found herself excluded from routine social interactions. Yet somehow, for Salhi, that fact doesn't even register as relevant to the question of the language's usefulness. The dialectal Arabic she's speaking is not taught in any school, and the idea of teaching it would no doubt drive her to even greater fury. Dialectal Arabic is by far the most widely used language in Algeria, without which she would find herself deaf and dumb in her own country - just ask any Kabyle outside Kabylie whether it's worth learning - yet that doesn't enter into her definition of "useful" either. A language is "useful", in fact, only if its presence in daily life is so limited as to make it useless in most contexts. Only then can speaking it be a valuable accomplishment that gives you access to coveted jobs, rather than a routine ability that remains invisible until you run into someone who lacks it. Only then is it an appropriate subject for study.

But Tamazight activism threatens to upset that basic rule. If Tamazight ever does become part of compulsory education, that would lead to children studying and getting graded on a language that some of them already speak. How hideously unfair! The Kabyle-speaking children won't need it, and the Arabic-speaking children won't want it. Clearly the only possible explanation for such a move is that Kabyle speakers want to give themselves an unfair advantage at school, and handicap the Arabic speakers. (/sarcasm) The idea that there might be another side to this - that Kabyle speakers would still have to learn dialectal Arabic on their own as they always have, getting no extra credit for that effort, whereas Arabic speakers would be getting government help in learning Kabyle - doesn't even seem to cross her mind.

Tokenistic Tifinagh #fail 2

The Algerian government recently decided to make the Amazigh New Year (really the Julian New Year) - coming up tomorrow - an official holiday. This holiday is actually traditional in a lot of Arabic-speaking areas too, in Algeria and across North Africa - and its origins are of course Roman - but over the past few decades it has been reinterpreted as an Amazigh holiday rather than a North African one, and the government made it official specifically as a gesture towards Amazigh identity. In non-Amazigh areas, this creates some quandaries, as illustrated by the announcement below by the government of the wilaya (province) of Blida...

The Algerian flag in the middle is flanked on all sides by easily recognizable signs of Amazigh identity - the letter aza, the abzim pins, etc. - none of which are particularly associated with Blida (even though there are still small Berber communities in the mountains above Blida, not to mention Kabyle migrants.)  The main text is in Arabic, but there is one line of Berber in Arabic script - تفاسكا ن يناير tfaska n Yennayer "holiday of Yennayer", using a word for "holiday" that in a Kabyle context amounts to a modern neologism - and two lines written in Tifinagh, whose geometric shapes add yet another easily recognizable symbol of Berber identity.  If you try to read those lines, though, they turn out in each case to be simple transcriptions (not translations) of the line of Arabic above them:

"Celebration of the Amazigh New Year"
احتفالية رأس السنة الأمازيغية iḥtifāliyyat ra's as-sanah al-'amāzīɣiyyah
 ⴰⵃⵜⴼⴰⵍⵉⴰ ⵔⴰⵙ ⴰⵍⵙⵏⴰ ⴰⵍⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵉⴰ aḥtfalia ras alsna alamaziɣia

"Algerian and proud of my Amazigh identity"
جزائري وبأمازيغيتي أفتخر jazā'irī wabi'amāzīɣiyyatī 'aftaxir
ⵊⵣⴰⵉⵔⵉ ⵡⴱⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵉⵜⵉ ⴰⴼⵜⵅⵔ jzairi wbamaziɣiti aftxr

It's arguably not quite as bad as the Oran case we saw last time; at least this transcription doesn't randomly discard letters.  Nevertheless, the message it sends is once again clear: nobody involved in the making of this official, centralized celebration of Amazigh identity speaks Berber, or thought it would be worthwhile to get someone who does speak it to help them out.  If the Algerian government seriously wants to make Tamazight official throughout the country, it's got a long way to go...

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PS (update 19/01/2018): Not worth a whole post, but I just came across yet another example:
العمال يطالبو... | وزارة الفقر والسّعادة has:

ارحل ...ارحل ....ارحل
بالعربية : ارحل
بالامازيغية : ⴷⴹⴳⴰⴳⴹ
بالفرنسية : Dégage
بالانجليزية : Get out

ⴷⴹⴳⴰⴳⴹ is dḍgagḍ, where ḍ happens to look just like an e; explanation is hopefully superfluous...