Ghadamès ( Berber: ⵄⴰⴷⴻⵎⴻⵙ / ,

Standard Arabic Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA), terms used mostly by linguists, is the variety of standardized, literary Arabic that developed in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; occasionally, it also ref ...

Libyan Arabic Libyan Arabic ( ar, ليبي, Lībī) is a variety of Arabic spoken mainly in Libya, and neighboring countries. It can be divided into two major dialect areas; the eastern centred in Benghazi and Bayda, and the western centred in Tripoli and ...

) is a

Berber language 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 comm ...

that is spoken in, and named after, the oasis town of

Ghadames 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 ...

Nalut District Nalut ( ar, نالوت ''Nālūt'', ber, Nalut ''Lalūt'') is one of the districts of Libya. Its capital is the city of Nalut. The second most notable city is Ghadames. To the north and west, Nalut district borders Tunisia (Medenine and Tataoui ...

, western

Libya Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Su ...

Research

Ghadamès language materials have been gathered by two linguists. The first materials were published in 1903 and 1904 by Adolphe de Calassanti Motylinski (1854–1907). A more copious and reliable source is provided by the works of White Father Jacques Lanfry (1910-2000), who stayed in Ghadames from 1944 to 1945 and who published his main works in 1968 and 1973. No new research has been undertaken on location since then. Recently,

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 ...

(2013) has published a modern grammar of Ghadamès based on Lanfry’s materials.

Number of speakers

Lanfry mentions the number of c. 4,000 speakers as an optimistic estimate. The actual number of speakers is not known with certainty. ''Ethnologue'' cites a number of 13,100 speakers in 2016, including 2,000 living outside the area. However, this number reflects the total number of inhabitants of Ghadames, who are not all native speakers of Ghadamès, while the number of 2,000 emigrant speakers is based on a very old source.''Encyclopaedia of Islam'', 2nd edition, article ''Ghadāmis'' (1952): 2,000 persons with a background in Ghadames living in Tunis; quoted by Lanfry (1973:iv). ''Ethnologue'' classifies the language as 6b (Threatened).

The language

Ghadamès is a

on its own, preserving several unique phonological and morphological features, and the Ghadamès lexicon, as recorded by Lanfry, shows relatively little influence from Arabic. There is as yet no consensus on the classification of Ghadamès within the Berber language group. Aikhenvald and Militarev (1984) group it as Eastern Berber, and Kossmann (1999) specifically groups it together with

Awjila Awjila ( 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 where high quality ...

. '' Ethnologue'' classifies it as East

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 ...

Phonology

;Consonants Like other Berber languages and Arabic, Ghadamès has both

pharyngealized Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound. IPA symbols In the International Phonetic Alphabet, pharyngealization can be indicat ...

("emphatic") and plain dental consonants.

Gemination In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

is contrastive. Consonants listed between brackets occur only very sporadically. ;Vowels Most Berber languages have just three phonemic vowels. Ghadamès, like

Tamasheq Tamashek or Tamasheq is a variety of Tuareg, a Berber macro-language widely spoken by nomadic tribes across North Africa in Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Tamasheq is one of the three main varieties of Tuareg, the others being Tamaj ...

, has seven vowels.

Basic vocabulary

Below is the Leipzig-Jakarta list for Ghadames, extracted from Lanfry (1973). Lanfry's unconventional transcription has been adapted to modern usage. Symbols are equivalent to IPA . Lanfry's length notation on vowels probably represents lexical stress (Kossmann 2013: 5, 15).

References

Cited works

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ghadames Language Berber languages Berbers in Libya Languages of Libya

Language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...