Ouargli, or Teggargrent (also ''Twargrit, Təggəngusit''), is a Zenati

Berber language 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 Berber communities, who ar ...

. It is spoken in the oases of

Ouargla Ouargla (Berber: Wargrən, ) is the capital city of Ouargla Province in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria. It has a flourishing petroleum industry and hosts one of Algeria's universities, the University of Ouargla. The commune of Ouargla had ...

(''Wargrən'') and

N'Goussa N'Goussa () is a town and commune, coextensive with the district of the same name, in Ouargla Province, Algeria. Some of its inhabitants speak the Ouargli language. As of 2008 the population of the town was 19,039, up from 13,344 in 1998, with ...

(''Ingusa'') in

Algeria Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...

. As of 1987, Ouargli had no more than 10,000 speakers.

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...

estimated only 5,000 speakers as of 1995. There are some differences between the dialects of Ouargla (''Təggargrənt'') and N'Goussa (''Təggəngusit''), notably in the position of pronominal

clitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic ( , backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...

s; within Ouargla, there are minor differences between the three tribes At-Brahim, At-Sisin and At-Waggin. Speakers from Ouargla regard the varieties of Ouargla, N'Goussa, Tugurt/Temacine and Tumzabt/Mozabite, and possibly other Zenati varieties, as dialects of a single language they call ''Twargrit''. According to Delheure (1987:355), ''at Wargrən fəhhəmən d awəḥdi tawsint'', "the Ouarglis understand Temacine very well." The principal grammatical study is Biarnay (1908); a less detailed sketch is provided in Basset (1893). Its lexicon is fairly extensively documented in Delheure's (1987) dictionary. The bilingual texts in Biarnay and Basset are more recently supplemented by the texts on daily life in Delheure (1988) and the folk tale collection in Delheure (1989);Jean Delheure, 1989, ''Contes et légendes berbères de Ouargla : Tinfusin'', Paris: Boîte à Documents the latter, unlike other work on Ouargli, includes texts from N'Goussa as well.

References

Bibliography

René Basset René Basset (24July 18554January 1924) was a French orientalist, specialist of the Berber language and the Arabic language. Biography René Basset was the first director of the "École des lettres d'Alger" created in 1879 during the French ...

, ''Étude sur la zénatia du Mzab, de Ouargla et de l'Oued-Rir, Paris, Leroux, 1893 *

Samuel Biarnay Samuel is a figure who, in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, plays a key role in the transition from the biblical judges to the United Kingdom of Israel under Saul, and again in the monarchy's transition from Saul to David. He is venerated a ...

, ''Étude sur le dialecte berbère de Ouargla'', Alger, Leroux, 1908 *Jean Delheure, ''Dictionnaire Ouargli-Français (Index Ricapitulatif Français-Ouargli)'', Paris, SELAF, 1987 - *Jean Delheure, "''Id akkaz ini id ahaji''. Devinettes et énigmes de Ouargla (Sud Algérien)", ''Études et Documents Berbères'' 3 (1987), pp. 76–83 - *Jean Delheure, ''Vivre et mourir à Ouargla / Tameddurt t-tmettant wargren'', Paris, SELAF, 1988 - *Jean Delheure, "Baghdidis et l'Ogre. ''Saynète'' dans le parler de Ouargla", ''Études et Documents Berbères'' 4 (1988), pp. 103–115 - *Jean Delheure, ''Contes et légendes berbères de Ouargla'', Paris, La Boîte à Documents, 1989 - *Jean Delheure, "''Izlan d id aghanni''. Poésie et chants de Ouargla", ''Études et Documents Berbères'' 5 (1989), pp. 85–104 - *Alain Romey, ''histoire, mémoire et sociétés, L'exemple de N'goussa: oasis berbérophone du Sahara (Ouargla)'', Paris-Alger, L'Harmattan-Awal, 1992 {{Authority control Berber languages Languages of Algeria