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Tarifit language
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- Rifi redirects here, for the location of the same name in Greece, see Rifi, Greece
Tarifit is a Northern Berber language of the Zenati subgroup, spoken mainly in the Moroccan Rif and in other cities by about 4 million people. There is about 1 million Tarifit-speaking immigrants in Europe.
fit is a Berber language, belonging to the Zenati subgroup of Northern Berber, and possibly the Rif subgroup of Zenati.
fit is spoken mainly in the Moroccan Rif by about 4 million people, with a few speakers across the border in Algeria and a large minority in the Spanish Autonomous city of Melilla.
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Encyclopedia
- Rifi redirects here, for the location of the same name in Greece, see Rifi, Greece
Tarifit is a Northern Berber language of the Zenati subgroup, spoken mainly in the Moroccan Rif and in other cities by about 4 million people. There is about 1 million Tarifit-speaking immigrants in Europe.
Classification
Tarifit is a Berber language, belonging to the Zenati subgroup of Northern Berber, and possibly the Rif subgroup of Zenati.
Geographic distribution
Tarifit is spoken mainly in the Moroccan Rif by about 4 million people, with a few speakers across the border in Algeria and a large minority in the Spanish Autonomous city of Melilla. There are also speakers of Tarifit in Morocco outside the Rif, among significant communities in Oujda, Tangiers, Tetouan, Larache, Fes, and Casablanca. A substantial Tarifit-speaking community exists in the Netherlands as well as in other European countries including Belgium, Germany, France, and mainland Spain. Its own speakers simply call it Thamazight, or Tamazight, a term also often applied in a broader sense to Berber languages in general.
Dialects
There is a large amount of dialectal variation in Rif Berber; this can easily be seen using the dialect Atlas (Lafkioui 1997).
Sounds
Tarifit's most noticeable differences from other Berber languages are that:
- /l/ becomes /r/ as in ul (heart) -> ur
- postvocalic /r/ preceding a consonantal coda is dropped, as in taddart (house/home) -> taddat. Thus in tamara the /r/ is conserved because it precedes a vowel.
- /ll/ (i.e., geminated /l/) becomes /dj/ as in ylli (daughter) -> ydji.
- /lt/ becomes /tch/ as in ultma (sister) -> utchma.
- /k/ usually becomes /ch/ , while in some local sub-accents it is merely softened.
- Additionally, the initial masculine a- prefix is dropped in certain words, e.g., afus (hand) becomes fus, and afighar (snake) becomes fighar. This change, characteristic of Zenati Berber varieties, further distances Tarifit from neighbouring dialects such as Atlas-Tamazight and Tashelhiyt.
Writing system
Like other Berber languages, Tarifit has been written with several different systems over the years. Most recently (since 2003), Tifinagh has become official throughout Morocco, while the Arabic alphabet and Latin alphabet continue to be used unofficially online and in various publications. However, unlike the nearby Tachelhit (Tasusit), Tarifit has little written literature before the twentieth century.
See also
External links
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