Gurara (Gourara) is a

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 ...

Berber language spoken in the Gourara (''Tigurarin'') region, an archipelago of oases surrounding the town of Timimoun in southwestern

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , religi ...

. ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') 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 comprehensi ...

'' gives it the generic name ''Taznatit'' ("Zenati"), along with Tuwat spoken to its south; however, Blench (2006) classifies Gurara as a dialect of Mzab–Wargla and Tuwat as a dialect of the Riff languages.

Characteristics

Gurara and Tuwat are the only Berber languages to change ''r'' in certain coda positions to a laryngeal ''ħ''; in other contexts it drops ''r'', turning a preceding

schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...

into ''a'', and this latter phenomenon exists also in Zenata

Rif-Berber Tmazight or Tarifit Berber, also known as Riffian ( rif, Tmaziɣt , ) is a Zenati Berber language spoken in the Rif region in northern Morocco. It is spoken natively by some 1,271,000 Rifians primarily in the Rif provinces of Al Hoceima, Nador ...

in the far northern Morocco. There is inconclusive evidence for Songhay influence on Gurara.

''Ahellil''

The local tradition of ''ahellil'' poetry and music in Gurara, described in Mouloud Mammeri's ''L'Ahellil du Gourara'',Mouloud Mammeri, ''L ‘Ahellil du Gourara'', M.S.H.:Paris 1984. has been listed as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.

References

Berber languages Languages of Algeria {{Berber-lang-stub