The Eastern Berber languages are a group of
Berber languages
The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight, are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related but mostly mutually unintelligible languages spoken by Berbers, Berber communities, ...
spoken in Libya and Egypt. They include
Awjila
Awjila (Arabic: 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 where high-quality dates are farmed. The oasis was ment ...
,
Sokna and Fezzan (El-Fogaha),
Siwi and
Ghadamès
Ghadames or Ghadamis (Ghadamès language, Ghadamsi: ⵄⴰⴷⴻⵎⴻⵙ / ''Ɛadēməs'' �adeːməs , ) is an oasis town in the Nalut District of the Tripolitania region in northwestern Libya.
Ghadamès, known as 'the pearl of the dese ...
, though it is not clear that they form a valid
genealogical
Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kin ...
group.
Eastern Berber is generally considered as part of the
Zenatic Berber supergroup of Northern Berber.
Classification
Kossmann (1999:29, 33) divides them into two groups:
* one consisting of
Ghadamès
Ghadames or Ghadamis (Ghadamès language, Ghadamsi: ⵄⴰⴷⴻⵎⴻⵙ / ''Ɛadēməs'' �adeːməs , ) is an oasis town in the Nalut District of the Tripolitania region in northwestern Libya.
Ghadamès, known as 'the pearl of the dese ...
and
Awjila
Awjila (Arabic: 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 where high-quality dates are farmed. The oasis was ment ...
. These two languages are the only
Berber languages
The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight, are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related but mostly mutually unintelligible languages spoken by Berbers, Berber communities, ...
to preserve proto-Berber *β as β;
[Kossmann 1999:61.] elsewhere in Berber it becomes ''h'' or disappears.
* the other consisting of
Nafusi (excluding Zuwara and southern Tunisia),
Sokna (El-Foqaha) and
Siwi. This shares some innovations with
Zenati, and others (e.g. the change of *ă to ə and the loss of *β
) with
Northern Berber in general.
Blench (ms, 2006) lists the following as separate languages, with dialects in parentheses; like ''Ethnologue'', he classifies Nafusi as
Eastern Zenati.
*
Siwa
*
Awjila
Awjila (Arabic: 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 where high-quality dates are farmed. The oasis was ment ...
*
Sokna †
*
Ghadamès
Ghadames or Ghadamis (Ghadamès language, Ghadamsi: ⵄⴰⴷⴻⵎⴻⵙ / ''Ɛadēməs'' �adeːməs , ) is an oasis town in the Nalut District of the Tripolitania region in northwestern Libya.
Ghadamès, known as 'the pearl of the dese ...
*
Zurg †
The "Lingvarium Project" (2005) cites two additional languages: the
extinct
Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...
language of
Jaghbub 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
Fezzan ( , ; ; ; ) is the southwestern region of modern Libya. It is largely desert, but broken by mountains, uplands, and dry river valleys (wadis) in the north, where oases enable ancient towns and villages to survive deep in the otherwise in ...
.
[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
Berber languages
Berbers in Egypt
Berbers in Libya
{{Berber-lang-stub