The Eastern Berber languages are a group of

Berber languages The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight,, ber, label=Tuareg Tifinagh, ⵜⵎⵣⵗⵜ, ) are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related languages spoken by Berber commun ...

spoken in Libya and Egypt. They include

Awjila Awjila (Awjila language, Berber: ''Awilan'', ''Awjila'', ''Awgila''; ar, أوجلة; Latin: ''Augila'') is an oasis town in the Al Wahat District in the Cyrenaica region of northeastern Libya. Since classical times it has been known as a place wh ...

, Sokna and Fezzan (El-Fogaha), Siwi and

Ghadamès Ghadames or Ghadamis (Berber: ''ʕadémis''; ar, غدامس, Libyan vernacular: ''ɣdāməs'', Latin: ''Cidamus, Cydamus'', it, Gadames) is an oasis Berber town in the Nalut District of the Tripolitania region in northwestern Libya. The indi ...

, though it is not clear that they form a valid genealogical group. Eastern Berber is generally considered as part of the Zenatic Berber supergroup of Northern Berber.

Classification

Kossmann Kossmann or Koßmann is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Alfred Kossmann (1922–1998), Dutch poet and prose writer *Ernst Kossmann (1922–2003), Dutch historian and twin brother of Alfred *Hans Kossmann (born 1962), Can ...

(1999:29, 33) divides them into two groups: * one consisting of

and

. These two languages are the only

to preserve proto-Berber *β as β;Kossmann 1999:61. elsewhere in Berber it becomes ''h'' or disappears. * the other consisting of

Nafusi Nafusi (also spelt Nefusi; ber, Ažbali / Maziɣ / Mazoɣ, script=Latn, label=in Nafusi) is a Berber language spoken in the Nafusa Mountains (), a large area in northwestern Libya Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State ...

(excluding Zuwara and southern Tunisia), Sokna (El-Foqaha) and Siwi. This shares some innovations with

Zenati The Zenati languages are a branch of the Northern Berber language family of North Africa. They were named after the medieval Zenata Berber tribal confederation. They were first proposed in the works of French linguist Edmond Destaing (1915) (19 ...

, and others (e.g. the change of *ă to ə and the loss of *β) with

Northern Berber The Northern Berber languages are a dialect continuum spoken across the Maghreb, constituting a subgroup of the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic family. Their continuity has been broken by the spread of Arabic, and to a lesser extent by the Zen ...

in general. Blench (ms, 2006) lists the following as separate languages, with dialects in parentheses; like ''Ethnologue'', he classifies Nafusi as Eastern Zenati. * Siwa *

* Sokna † *

* Zurg † The "Lingvarium Project" (2005) cites two additional languages: the

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

language of

Jaghbub Jaghbub ( ar, الجغبوب) is a remote desert village in the Al Jaghbub Oasis in the eastern Libyan Desert. It is actually closer to the Egyptian town of Siwa than to any Libyan town of note. The oasis is located in Butnan District and was th ...

and the still-spoken Berber language of Tmessa, an oasis located in the north of the Murzuq District. Blažek (1999) considers the language spoken in Tmessa as a dialect of Fezzan.Václav Blažek, "Numerals: Comparative-etymological Analyses of Numeral Systems and Their Implications : Saharan, Nubian, Egyptian, Berber, Kartvelian, Uralic, Altaic and Indo-European Languages", in: Filozofická Fakulta: Opera Universitatis Masarykianae vol. 332, p. 57, Facultas Philosophica - Masarykova Univerzita Brno, 1999 ()

Notes

External links

"Oriental Berber", a collaborative blog on the Berber languages of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt
Eastern Berber languages Berber languages Berbers in Egypt Berbers in Libya Languages of Egypt Languages of Libya {{Berber-lang-stub