A Tarifit Berber-English Dictionary

Download or read book A Tarifit Berber-English Dictionary written by Clive W. McClelland and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berbers are the original inhabitants of North Africa, in residence long before the Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals or the Arabs. Their languages, from the Afroasiatic language family, are spoken throughout the region, from the Siwa Oasis in Egypt to the Atlantic coast, and as far south as southern Niger and Mali. This book is a representation of the most commonly utilized words and phrases in one of these Berber dialects, in northeastern Morocco. Despite the fact that more than 1 million inhabitants speak the language today, social and economic changes are causing many young people to leave their mother tongue and concentrate on languages of upward mobility, such as Modern Standard Arabic, French and Spanish. Consequently, in an effort to help preserve this unwritten, little-studied and undocumented language, this work was produced.