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| VOCABULARY DATABASE > BERBER LANGUAGES > INFORMATION |
Tamazight is the standard form of Berber languages, which are spoken by probably more than 11 million people, most of which live in the Sahara. Tamazight belongs to the familiy of Afro-Asiatic (Hamitic) languages.
Written Tamazight dates back to 3,000 years ago. Tamazight is written in an alphabetical script called Tifinagh, of disputed origin. This script is usually written from right to left. "Neo-Tifinagh", a left-to-right form of the latter sponsored by the Académie Berbère in the 1960s, was adopted in Moroccan schools in 2003. In Algeria and other countries, Tamazight is written in the Latin alphabet.
After independence, the Arabization policy adopted by the governments of the new Northern African states led to the marginalization of Berber languages in education and public life. Recently, this process was reversed and Tamazight has been recognized as a "national" language in Morocco and Algeria, although it did not attain official status.
Tamazight nouns have two cases, two numbers and two genders.
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