| Tamashek | |
| Ethnicity: | Tuareg |
| Date: | 2020–2022 |
| Speakers: | million |
| Ref: | e27 |
| Region: | Sahara and Sahel |
| Familycolor: | Afro-asiatic |
| Fam2: | Berber |
| Child1: | Northern (Tamahaq) |
| Child2: | Southern (Tamasheq, Air Tamajeq, Tawellemmet) |
| Map: | Tuareg area.png |
| Iso2: | tmh |
| Iso3: | tmh |
| Glotto: | tuar1240 |
| Glottorefname: | Tuareg |
The Tuareg languages constitute a group of closely related Berber languages and dialects. They are spoken by the Tuareg Berbers in large parts of Mali, Niger, Algeria, Libya and Burkina Faso, with a few speakers, the Kinnin, in Chad.[1]
Tuareg dialects belong to the South Berber group and are sometimes regarded as a single language (as for instance by Karl-Gottfried Prasse). They are distinguished mainly by a few sound shifts (notably affecting the pronunciation of original z and h). The Tuareg varieties are unusually conservative in some respects; they retain two short vowels where Northern-Berber languages have one or none, and have a much lower proportion of Arabic loanwords than most Berber languages.
The Tuareg languages are traditionally written in the indigenous Tifinagh alphabet. However, the Arabic script is commonly used in some areas (and has been since medieval times), while the Latin script is official in Mali and Niger.
Blench (ms, 2006) lists the following as separate languages, with dialects in parentheses:[3]
Speakers of Tin Sert (Tetserret) identify as Tuareg, but the language is Western Berber.
The Tuareg languages may be written using the ancient Tifinagh (Libyco-Berber) script, the Latin script or the Arabic script. The Malian national literacy program DNAFLA has established a standard for the Latin alphabet, which is used with modifications in Prasse's Lexique and the government literacy program in Burkina, while in Niger a different system was used. There is also some variation in Tifinagh and in the Arabic script.
Early uses of the Tifinagh script have been found on rock art and in various sepulchres. Among these are the 1,500 year old monumental tomb of the Tuareg matriarch Tin Hinan, where vestiges of a Tifinagh inscription have been found on one of its walls.[4]
Tifinagh usage is now restricted mainly to writing magical formulae, writing on palms when silence is required, and in letter-writing.[5] The Arabic script is mostly in use by tribes more involved in Islamic learning, and little is known about its conventions.[6]
| Niger[8] | Tifinagh | Arabic | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Image | Unicode | ||||
| a | a | ||||
| â | |||||
| ă | ă | ||||
| ǝ | ǝ | ||||
| b | b | ⵀ | ب | ||
| (ḅ) | |||||
| c | |||||
| d | d | ⴷ | د | ||
| ḍ | ḍ | ⴹ | ض | ||
| e | e | ||||
| ê | |||||
| f | f | ⴼ | ف | ||
| g | g | ⴳ | |||
| i | i | ||||
| î | |||||
| j | j | ⴶ | چ | ||
| ǰ | |||||
| ɣ | ɣ | ⵗ | غ | ||
| h | h | ⵂ | ه | ||
| k | k | ⴾ | ک | ||
| l | l | ⵍ | ل | ||
| ḷ | ḷ | ||||
| m | m | ⵎ | م | ||
| n | n | ⵏ | ن | ||
| ŋ | ŋ | ||||
| o | o | ||||
| ô | |||||
| q | q | ⵆ, ⵈ | ق | ||
| r | r | ⵔ | ر | ||
| s | s | ⵙ | س | ||
| ṣ | ṣ | ⵚ | ص | ||
| š (ʃ) | š | ⵛ | ش | ||
| t | t | ⵜ | ت | ||
| ṭ | ṭ | ⵟ | ط | ||
| u | u | ||||
| û | |||||
| w | w | ⵓ | و | ||
| x | x | ⵅ | خ | ||
| y | y | ⵢ, ⵉ | ي | ||
| z | z | ⵌ, ⵣ | ز | ||
| ẓ | ẓ | ⵥ | ظ | ||
| ž (ʒ) | ǧ | ⵊ | ج | ||
| ḥ | ⵆ | ح | |||
| (ʕ) | ⵄ | ع | |||
The DNAFLA system is a somewhat morphophonemic orthography, not indicating initial vowel shortening, always writing the directional particle as < dd⟩, and not indicating all assimilations (e.g. (Tămašăɣt) for [tămašăq]).
In Burkina Faso the emphatics are denoted by "hooked" letters, as in Fula, e.g. (ɗ ƭ).
The vowel system includes five long vowels, pronounced as //a, e, i, o, u// and two short vowels, pronounced as //ə, ă// (on this page, pronounced as //ă// is used to represent IPA pronounced as /[æ]/). Some of the vowels have more open "emphatic" allophones that occur immediately before emphatic consonants, subject to dialectal variation. These allophones include pronounced as /[ɛ]/ for pronounced as //e// and pronounced as //i// (although pronounced as //i// may be less open), pronounced as /[ɔ]/ for pronounced as //o// and pronounced as //u// (although pronounced as //u// may be less open), and pronounced as /[ă]/ for pronounced as //ə//. Karl Prasse argued that /e/ goes back to Proto-Berber, while /o/ is derived from /u/.[9] Comparative evidence shows that /ə/ derives from a merger of Proto-Berber */ĭ/ and */ŭ/.
Sudlow classes the "semivowels" /w, j/ with the vowels, and notes the following possible diphthongs: /əw/ (> [u]), /ăw/, /aw/, /ew/, /iw/, /ow/, /uw/, /əj/ (> [i]), /ăj/, /aj/, /ej/, /ij/, /oj/, /uj/.
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Glottal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | emphatic | |||||||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||||
| Plosive | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | (pronounced as /ink/) | ||||
| b | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | (pronounced as /ink/) | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | (pronounced as /ink/) | pronounced as /ink/ | |||
| pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | (pronounced as /ink/) | ||||||
| Lateral | pronounced as /ink/ | (pronounced as /ink/) | ||||||||
The consonant inventory largely resembles Arabic: differentiated voicing; uvulars, pharyngeals (traditionally referred to as emphatics) pronounced as //tˤ/, /lˤ/, /sˤ/, /dˤ/, /zˤ//; requiring the pharynx muscles to contract and influencing the pronunciation of the following vowel, and no voiceless bilabial plosive.
The glottal stop is non-phonemic. It occurs at the beginning of vowel-initial words to fill the place of the initial consonant in the syllable structure (see below), although if the words is preceded by a word ending in a consonant, it makes a liaison instead. Phrase-final /a/ is also followed by a phonetic glottal stop.
Gemination is contrastive. Normally pronounced as //ɣɣ// becomes pronounced as /[qː]/, pronounced as //ww// becomes pronounced as /[ɡː]/, and pronounced as //dˤdˤ// becomes pronounced as /[tˤː]/. pronounced as //q// and pronounced as //tˤ// are predominantly geminate. In addition, in Tadɣaq pronounced as //ɡ// is usually geminate, but in Tudalt singleton pronounced as //ɡ// may occur.
Voicing assimilation occurs, with the first consonant taking the voicing of the second (e.g. pronounced as //edˤkăr// > pronounced as /[etˤkăr]/).
Cluster reduction turns word/morpheme-final pronounced as //-ɣt, -ɣk// into pronounced as /[-qː]/ and pronounced as //-kt, -ɟt, -ɡt// into pronounced as /[-kː]/ (e.g. pronounced as //tămaʃăɣt// > pronounced as /[tămaʃăq]/ 'Tamasheq').
Syllable structure is CV(C)(C), including glottal stops (see above).
Contrastive stress may occur in the stative aspect of verbs.
Different dialects have slightly different consonant inventories. Some of these differences can be diachronically accounted for. For example, Proto-Berber *h is mostly lost in Ayer Tuareg, while it is maintained in almost every position in Mali Tuareg. The Iwellemmeden and Ahaggar Tuareg dialects are midway between these positions. The Proto-Berber consonant *z comes out differently in different dialects, a development that is to some degree reflected in the dialect names. It is realized as h in Tamahaq (Tahaggart), as š in Tamasheq and as simple z in the Tamajaq dialects Tawallammat and Tayart. In the latter two, *z is realised as ž before palatal vowels, explaining the form Tamajaq. In Tawallammat and especially Tayart, this kind of palatalization actually does not confine itself to z. In these dialects, dentals in general are palatalized before pronounced as //i// and pronounced as //j//. For example, tidət is pronounced pronounced as /[tidʲət]/ in Tayart.[10]
Other differences can easily be traced back to borrowing. For example, the Arabic pharyngeals ħ and ʻ have been borrowed along with Arabic loanwords by dialects specialized in Islamic (Maraboutic) learning. Other dialects substitute ħ and ʻ respectively with x and ɣ.
The basic word order in Tuareg is verb–subject–object. Verbs can be grouped into 19 morphological classes; some of these classes can be defined semantically. Verbs carry information on the subject of the sentence in the form of pronominal marking. No simple adjectives exist in the Tuareg languages; adjectival concepts are expressed using a relative verb form traditionally called 'participle'. The Tuareg languages have very heavily influenced Northern Songhay languages such as Sawaq, whose speakers are culturally Tuareg but speak Songhay; this influence includes points of phonology and sometimes grammar as well as extensive loanwords.
Tamasheq prefers VSO order; however it contains topic–comment structure (like in American Sign Language, Modern Hebrew, Japanese and Russian), allowing the emphasized concept to be placed first, be it the subject or object, the latter giving an effect somewhat like the English passive. Sudlow uses the following examples, all expressing the concept "Men don't cook porridge" (e denotes Sudlow's schwa):
| Tamashek: meddăn wăr sekediwăn ăsink | SVO | |
| Tamashek: wăr sekediwăn meddăn ăsink | VSO | |
| Tamashek: ăsinkwăr ti-sekediwăn meddăn | 'Porridge, men don't cook it.' | |
| Tamashek: wădde meddăn {{not a typo|a | 'It isn't men who cook porridge.' | |
| Tamashek: meddăn a wăren isekediw ăsink | 'Men are not those who cook porridge.' |
Again like Japanese, the "pronoun/particle 'a' is used with a following relative clause to bring a noun in a phrase to the beginning for emphasis," a structure which can be used to emphasize even objects of prepositions. Sudlow's example (s denotes voiceless palato-alveolar fricative):
| Tamashek: essensăɣ enăle | 'I bought millet.' | |
| Tamashek: enăle a essensăɣ | 'It was millet that I bought.' |
The indirect object marker takes the form i/y in Tudalt and e/y in Tadɣaq.
As a root-and-pattern, or templatic language, triliteral roots (three-consonant bases) are the most common in Tamasheq. Niels and Regula Christiansen use the root k-t-b (to write) to demonstrate past completed aspect conjugation:
| singular | plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st person | Tamashek: ...-ăɣ | Tamashek: n-... | |
| 2nd person | Tamashek: t-...-ăd | Tamashek: t-...-ăm | |
| 3rd person | Tamashek: y-... | Tamashek: t-...-măt | |
| Tamashek: t-... | Tamashek: ...-ăn | ||
| Participle form, i.e. "who ..." | Tamashek: y-...-ăn | Tamashek: ...-năt | |
| Tamashek: t-...-ăt | Tamashek: ...-nen | ||
The verbal correspondence with the use of aspect; Tamasheq uses four, as delineated by Sudlow:
| z-g-r | izgăr | izgăr | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 'He went out' | 'He has gone out' | |||
| b-d-d | ibdăd | ibdăd | ||
| 'He stood up' | 'He stood up (and so he is standing up)' | |||
| ekkeɣ hebu | ekkêɣ hebu | |||
| 'I went to market' | 'I am going to market' | |||
| l-m-d | ad elmedăɣ Tămasăq | lammădăɣ Tămasăq | ||
| 'I will learn Tamasheq' | 'I am learning Tamasheq' | |||
| a-dd-as asekka | ||||
| 'He will arrive (here) tomorrow' | ||||
| iwan tattănăt alemmoZ | ||||
| 'Cows eat straw' | ||||
| ăru tasăɣalăɣ siha | ||||
| 'I used to work over there' |
Commands are expressed in the imperative mood, which tends to be a form of the imperfective aspect, unless the action is to be repeated or continued, in which case the cursive aspect is preferred.