Sened is an extinct East Zenati Berber language that was spoken in the nearby towns of Sened and

Majoura Sened ( ar, السند ') is a commune and small town in central Tunisia in Gafsa Governorate, and is also the name of the extinct Berber language The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight,, ber, label= Tuareg Tif ...

(Berber ''Tmagurt'') in southern

Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...

until the mid-20th century. In 1911, the whole town of Sened spoke Berber; by 1968, only the elderly did.

Sample

From a section translated from the epic

Taghribat Bani Hilal Al-Sirah al-Hilaliyyah (), also known as the Sirat Bani Hilal (سيرة بني هلال ''Sīra Banī Hilāl'') or the al-Hilali epic, is an Arabic epic oral poem that recounts the tale of the journey of the Bedouin tribe of the Banu Hilal fr ...

, detailing the incursion of the

Banu Hilal The Banu Hilal ( ar, بنو هلال, translit=Banū Hilāl) was a confederation of Arabian tribes from the Hejaz and Najd regions of the Arabian Peninsula that emigrated to North Africa in the 11th century. Masters of the vast plateaux of th ...

, in Provotelle's ''Etude sur la Tamazir't ou Zenatia de Qalaât Es-sned (Tunisie)'' (1911). The Arabic and French transcriptions of the text are reproduced unchanged; in the latter, r' represents a

voiced uvular fricative The voiced uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , an inverted small uppercase letter , or in broad transcription if rh ...

, kh a

voiceless uvular fricative The voiceless uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , the Greek chi. The sound is represented by (ex with underdot) in A ...

, ch represents English sh, ou represents /u/ or /w/, i represents /i/ or /j/, and e represents

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

References

External links

Tamazight in Tunisia: by Ahmed Boukous
(

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music ...

) Berber languages Berbers in Tunisia Extinct languages of Africa Languages of Tunisia Languages extinct in the 20th century {{Berber-lang-stub