Ait Seghrouchen Berber, or Seghroucheni (Seghrusheni), is a Zenati Berber language of the

Eastern Middle Atlas Berber Eastern Middle Atlas Berber is a cluster of Berber dialects spoken in the eastern and north-eastern parts of the Middle Atlas, in Morocco. These dialects are those of the tribes of Aït Seghrushen, Aït Waraïn, Marmusha, Aït Alaham, Aït Yub ...

cluster. It is spoken by the Ait Seghrouchen tribe inhabiting east-central

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria t ...

Classification

Ait Seghrouchen Berber is commonly classed as

Central Atlas Tamazight Central Atlas Tamazight or Atlasic (also known as Central Morocco Tamazight, variant of tashelhit, Middle Atlas Tamazight, Tamazight, Central Shilha and, rarely, Beraber or Braber; native name: ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ ''Tamazight'' , ) is a Be ...

. It is reported to be mutually intelligible with the neighbouring Berber dialect of Ait Ayache. Genetically, however, it belongs to the Zenati subgroup of Northern Berber, rather than to the Atlas subgroup to which the rest of Central Atlas Tamazight belongs, and are therefore excluded by some sources from Central Atlas Tamazight. Ait Seghrouchen is part of the

cluster of Zenati dialects, which is spoken in the eastern

Middle Atlas The Middle Atlas (Amazigh: ⴰⵟⵍⴰⵙ ⴰⵏⴰⵎⵎⴰⵙ, ''Atlas Anammas'', Arabic: الأطلس المتوسط, ''al-Aṭlas al-Mutawassiṭ'') is a mountain range in Morocco. It is part of the Atlas mountain range, a mountainous region ...

Phonology

Consonants

Ayt Seghrouchen is notable for having the lateral fricative as an

allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...

of the sequence . /k, g/ are pronounced as stops, unlike the closely related Ayt Ayache dialect in which they are fricatives. In the table below, when consonants appear in pairs, the one on the left is voiceless. Phonetic notes: # mainly in

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

borrowings # realization of the sequence /lt/ for some speakers, e.g. ultma 'sister', altu 'not yet' # For a small number of speakers, is sometimes lenited to # is aspirated

Vowels

Ait Seghrouchen Berber has a typical phonemic three-vowel system, similarly to Classical Arabic: These phonemes have numerous allophones, conditioned by the following environments: (# denotes word boundary, X denotes C_{��flat − −/sub>, C̣ denotes C_{flat
Flat or flats may refer to:

Architecture
* Flat (housing), an apartment in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and other Commonwealth countries
Arts and entertainment
* Flat (music), a symbol () which denotes a lower pitch
* Flat (soldier), ...
/sub>, G denotes C, , and )

Phonetic Schwa

There is a predictable non-phonemic vowel inserted into consonant clusters, realized as before front consonants (e.g. ) and before back consonants (e.g. . These are some of the rules governing the occurrence of :

(# denotes word boundary, L denotes , H denotes )

Stress

Word stress

In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as i ...
is non-contrastive and predictable — it falls on the last vowel in a word (including schwa).

Notes

References

Bibliography

*
*
* Destaing, Edmond. "Essai de classification des dialectes berbères du Maroc." (Etudes et Documents Berbères, 19-20, 2001-2002 (1915)
* Kossmann, Maarten G. "Les verbes à i final en zénète

* Kossman, Maarten G. ''Essai sur la phonologie du proto-berbère.'' Koppe Verlag, 1999.
* "Le Tamazight (Maroc central) – Tamaziɣt.

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Berber languages
Berbers in Morocco
Languages of Morocco}}