Beni Snous dialect explained

Beni Snous
States:	Algeria
Region:	near Tlemcen
Speakers:	few
Familycolor:	Afro-Asiatic
Fam2:	Berber
Fam3:	Northern
Fam4:	Zenati
Isoexception:	dialect
Linglist:	086
Glotto:	none

Beni Snous is a Berber variety close to Zenati languages spoken near Tlemcen in Algeria.^{[1] [2] [3]}

In the early 20th century,^[4] Beni Snous Berber was spoken in the villages of Kef, Tghalimet, Bou Hallou, Ait Larbi, Ait Achir, Adziddaz, and Mazzer; all speakers were bilingual in the Arabic language. The Beni Snous had no trouble conversing with their Berber-speaking neighbours among the Beni Bou Said just to the west, and (with some difficulty) could communicate in Berber with people from Figuig, Beni Iznacen, beside the border in Morocco. However, they found Tashelhiyt (in southern Morocco) and Kabyle (in central Algeria) almost unintelligible.

Today, only a few elderly people in the region still speak Berber. Most of the Beni Snous have shifted to Arabic, retaining only a few words from their ancestral language, such as tabɣa "blackberries" or azduz "pestle".^[5]

See also

• Languages of Algeria

Bibliography

• Book: Destaing , Edmond . Edmond Destaing . Etude sur le dialecte berbère des Beni-Snous . Ernest Leroux . 1907 . Paris .
• Book: Destaing , Edmond . Edmond Destaing . Dictionnaire français-berbère: Dialecte des Beni-Snous . Ernest Leroux . 1914 . Paris .
• Souag . Lameen . Kherbache . Fatma . Syntactically conditioned code-switching? The syntax of numerals in Beni-Snous Berber . International Journal of Bilingualism . 18 . 4 . 97–115 . SAGE . 9 June 2014 . 1756-6878 . 10.1177/1367006914536002 . 144281357 .

External links

• Extinction de tamazight à Béni snous - the interviewer (speaking in Arabic) elicits Berber vocabulary from some of the last elderly speakers of Beni Snous Berber, in Kef

Notes and References

1. Web site: Souag . Lameen . Beni-Snous: Two unrelated phonetic forms for every noun? . Jabal al-Lughat . 2009-03-19 . 2010-01-08.
2. Book: Ilahiane, Hsain . Historical dictionary of the Berbers (Imazighen) . Rowman & Littlefield . 2006 . 84 . 978-0-8108-5452-9.
3. Web site: Centre de Recherche Berbère - Beni Snous. www.centrederechercheberbere.fr. fr. 2017-07-21.
4. Book: Destaing , Edmond . Edmond Destaing . Etude sur le dialecte berbère des Beni-Snous . Ernest Leroux . 1907 . Paris . XXVIII.
5. Souag . Lameen . Kherbache . Fatma . Syntactically conditioned code-switching? The syntax of numerals in Beni-Snous Berber . International Journal of Bilingualism . 18 . 4 . 97–115 . SAGE . 9 June 2014 . 1756-6878 . 10.1177/1367006914536002 . 144281357 .