| Rifian | |
|---|---|
| Tamazight Tarifit | |
| Spoken in | Morocco, Melilla (Spain) |
| Region | Rif |
| Ethnicity | Rifians |
| Native speakers |
1.4 million (In Morocco only - 2004 census)[1] |
| Language family | |
| Writing system | Arabic, Tifinagh and Latin |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | rif |
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Area of Rif
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Rifian or Rifian Berber (Rifian: Tarifit or Tamaziγt Tarifit), also called Rif, is a Northern variety of Berber spoken by about 4 million Rifian people mainly in the Moroccan Rif, in parts of eastern Morocco, and in other cities.
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Rifian is a Zenati Berber language.
Rifian is spoken mainly in the Moroccan Rif on the Mediterranean coast and in the Rif mountains, with a large minority in the Spanish Autonomous cities Melilla. There are also speakers of Rifian in Morocco outside the Rif region, among them are sizable communities in Oujda, Tangiers, Tetouan, Larache, Fes, and Casablanca. A substantial Rifian-speaking community exists in the Netherlands and Belgium as well as in other European countries including Germany, France, and mainland Spain. Its own speakers simply call it Tamazight, a term also often applied in a broader sense to Berber languages in general.
There is a large amount of dialectal variation in Rifian Berber; this can easily be seen using the dialect Atlas (Lafkioui, 1997).
Rifian's most noticeable differences from other Berber languages are that:
Like other Berber languages, Rifian 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 Shilha (Tasusit), Rifian has little written literature before the twentieth century.
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