| Tuareg language(s) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tamasheq, Tamajaq, Tamahaq | ||||
| Spoken in | Algeria Burkina Faso Libya Mali Niger |
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| Region | Sahara | |||
| Ethnicity | Tuareg people | |||
| Native speakers | 4 millions (Ethnologue) (date missing) | |||
| Language family |
Afro-Asiatic
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-2 | tmh | |||
| ISO 639-3 | tmh – Macrolanguage individual codes: thv – Tahaggart Tamahaq taq – Tamasheq ttq – Tawallammat Tamajaq thz – Tayart Tamajeq |
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Tuareg /ˈtwɑrɛɡ/ (also Tamasheq /ˈtæməʃɛk/, Tamajaq, ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵌⴰⵆ Tamahaq) is a Berber language or family of very closely related languages and dialects 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]
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Other Southern-Berber languages and Tamashaq are quite mutually comprehensible, and are commonly regarded as a single language (as for instance by Karl Prasse); they are distinguished mainly by a few sound shifts (notably affecting the pronunciation of original z and h). They 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. They are traditionally written in the indigenous Tifinagh alphabet; however, the Arabic alphabet is commonly used in some areas (and has been since medieval times), while the Latin alphabet is official in Mali and Niger.
The Tuareg languages may be written in the Latin alphabet, the Arabic script, or Tifinagh. 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.[2]
The Arabic script is mostly in use by tribes more involved in Islamic learning, and little is known about its conventions.[3]
Tifinagh usage is restricted mainly to writing magical formulae, writing on palms when silence is required, and recently letter-writing.[4]
| DNAFLA | Tifinagh | Arabic |
|---|---|---|
| b | ب | |
| d | د | |
| ḍ | ض | |
| f | ف | |
| g | ݣ | |
| j | ﭺ | |
| ɣ | ﻍ | |
| h | ﻩ | |
| k | ک | |
| l | ﻝ | |
| m | ﻡ | |
| n | ن | |
| q | ﻕ | |
| r | ﺭ | |
| s | ﺱ | |
| ṣ | ﺹ | |
| š | ﺵ | |
| t | ﺕ | |
| ṭ | ﻁ | |
| w | ﻭ | |
| x | ﺥ | |
| y | ﻱ | |
| z | or | ﺯ |
| ẓ | or | ﻅ |
| ž | or | ﺝ |
| (ḥ) | ﺡ | |
| (ç) | ﻉ |
The DNAFLA system is a somewhat morphophonemic orthography, not indicating initial vowel shortening, always writing the directional particle as < dd>, and not indication all assimilations (e.g. <Tămašăɣt> for [tămašăq]).[6]
In Burkina Faso the emphatics are denoted by "hooked" letters, as in Fula, e.g. <ɗ ƭ>.[7]
The vowel system includes 5 long vowels, /a, e, i, o, u/, "emphatic" versions of /e, o/, and two short vowels, /ə, ă/.[8] Karl Prasse argues that /e/ and /o/ generally derive from /i/ and /u/, while 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/.[9]
Before emphatics, vowels lower, turning /ə/ into [ă], /e, i/ into "emphatic" [e], and /u, o/ into "emphatic" [o], with some dialectal variation (with the realizations of /i, u/ "less open" than /e, o/).[10]
| Labial | Coronal | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | b | t tˤ d dˤ | ɟ[12] | k g | q | ||
| Fricative | f | s sˤ z zˤ ʃ ʒ | x ɣ[13] | (ħ ʕ) | h (ʔ) | ||
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||||
| Lateral | l (lˤ) | ||||||
The consonant inventory largely resembles Arabic: differentiated voicing; uvulars, pharyngeals (traditionally referred to as emphatics) /tˤ/, /lˤ/, /sˤ/, /dˤ/, /zˤ/; requiring the pharynx muscles to contract and influencing the pronunciation of the following vowel (although /lˤ, sˤ/ only occur in Arabic loans and /lˤ/ only in the name of Allah).[14]
/ŋ/ is rare, /ʒ/ is rare in Tadraq, and /ħ, ʕ/ are only used in Arabic words in the Tanəsləmt dialect (most Tamasheq replace them with /x, ɣ/ respectively).[11]
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.[10]
Gemination is contrastive.[15] Normally /ɣɣ/ becomes [qː], /ww/ becomes [ɡː], and /dˤdˤ/ becomes [tˤː].[15] /q/ and /tˤ/ are, with a few exceptions, always geminate. In addition, in Tadraq /ɡ/ is usually geminate, but in Tudalt singleton /ɡ/ may occur.[15]
Voicing assimilation occurs, with the first consonant taking the voicing of the second (e.g. /edˤkăr/ > [etˤkăr]).[16]
Cluster reduction turns word/morpheme-final /-ɣt, -ɣk/ into [-qː] and /-kt, -ɟt, -ɡt/ into [-kː] (e.g. /tămaʃăɣt/ > [tămaʃăq] 'Tamasheq'[17]).[18]
Syllable structure is CV(C)(C), including glottal stops (see above).[10]
Contrastive stress may occur in the stative aspect of verbs.[8]
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.[19] 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 /i/ and /j/. For example, tidət is pronounced [tidʲət] in Tayart.[20]
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 Japanese), allowing the emphasized concept to be placed first, be it the subject or object, the latter giving an effect somewhat like the English passive.[21] Sudlow uses the following examples, all expressing the concept “Men don’t cook porridge” (e denotes Sudlow’s schwa):
| meddăn wăr sekediwăn ăsink | SVO |
| wăr sekediwăn meddăn ăsink | VSO |
| ăsinkwăr ti-sekediwăn meddăn | ‘Porridge, men don’t cook it.’ |
| wădde meddăn a isakădawăn ăsink | ‘It isn’t men who cook porridge.’ |
| 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.[22] Sudlow’s example (s denotes voiceless palato-alveolar fricative):
| essensăɣ enăle | ‘I bought millet.’ |
| enăle a essensăɣ | ‘It was millet that I bought.’ |
The indirect object marker takes the form i/y in Tudalt and e/y in Tadraq.[23]
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:
| Person | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| s | 1 | ...-ăɣ | |
| 2 | t-...-ăd | ||
| 3 | m | y-... | |
| f | t-... | ||
| part.[25] | m | y-...-ăn | |
| f | t-...-ăt | ||
| pl | 1 | n-... | |
| 2 | m | t-...-ăm | |
| f | t-...-măt | ||
| 3 | m | ...-ăn | |
| f | ...-năt | ||
| part.[25] | ...-nen | ||
| Person | Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | ektabaɣ ‘I wrote’ | nektab ‘We wrote’ | |
| 2nd | (m) | tektabad ‘You (2s) wrote’ | tektabam ‘You (2p/m) wrote’ |
| (f) | tektabmat ‘You (2p/f) wrote’ | ||
| 3rd | (m) | iktab ‘He wrote’ | ektaban ‘They (3p/m) wrote’ |
| (f) | tektab ‘She wrote’ | ektabnat ‘They (3/p/f) wrote’ | |
The verbal correspondence with Japanese continues with the use of aspect; Tamasheq uses four, as delineated by Sudlow:
| Verb | Perfective/simple perfect | Stative/intensive perfect | Imperfective/simple perfect | Cursive/intensive imperfect |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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.[27]
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