Zenaga language

Zenaga
Tuḍḍungiyya
Native to Mauritania, Senegal
Region Mederdra
Native speakers
 200 in Mauritania (2013)[1]
2,500 immigrants in Senegal (no date)[2]
Language codes
ISO 639-2 zen
ISO 639-3 zen
Glottolog zena1248[3]

Zenaga (autonym Tuḍḍungiyya) is a Berber language spoken from the town of Mederdra in southwestern Mauritania to the Atlantic coast and in Senegal.

It shares its basic linguistic structure with other Berber idioms, but specific features are quite different. In fact, Zenaga is probably the most divergent surviving Berber language, with a significantly different sound system made even more distant by sound changes such as /l/ > /dj/ and /x/ > /k/, as well as a difficult-to-explain profusion of glottal stops.

The name "Zenaga" comes from that of a much larger ancient Berber tribe, the Iznagen, who are known in Arabic as the Sanhaja.

Adrian Room's African Placenames[4] gives Zenaga derivations for some place-names in Mauritania.

Demographics

Zenaga was once spoken throughout much of Mauritania, but fell into decline when its speakers were defeated by the Maqil Arabs in the Char Bouba war of the 17th century. After this war, they were forbidden to bear arms, and variously became either specialists in Islamic religious scholarship or servants to more powerful tribes. It was among the former, more prestigious group that Zenaga survived longest.

In 1940 (Dubié 1940), Zenaga was spoken by about 13,000 people belonging to four nomadic tribes distributed in an area roughly bounded by St. Louis, Podor, Boutilimit and Nouakchott (but including none of these cities):[5]

These tribes, according to Dubié, traditionally specialised in Islamic religious scholarship and led a nomadic lifestyle, specialising in sheep and cows. (Camel-herding branches of the same tribes had already switched to Arabic.) Even then, many speakers were shifting to Hassaniya Arabic, the main Arabic variety spoken in Mauritania, and all were bilingual. Zenaga was used only within the tribe, and it was considered impolite to speak it when non-speakers were present; some speakers deliberately avoided using Zenaga with their children, hoping to give them a head start in Hassaniya. However, many speakers regarded Zenaga as a symbol of their independence and their religious fervour; Dubie cites a Hassaniya proverb: "A Moor who speaks Zenaga is certainly not a Zenagui (a member of a servant tribe.)"

Half a century later, the number of speakers is reportedly around 2,000. While Zenaga appears to be nearing extinction, Hassaniya Arabic contains a substantial number of Zenaga loanwords (more than 10% of the vocabulary.[6])

Dialects

There are significant dialect differences within Zenaga, notably between the Id-ab-lahsen and Tendgha dialects.

References

  1. ↑ Zenaga at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
  2. ↑ Senegal at Ethnologue 19, 2016
  3. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Zenaga". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  4. ↑ Room, Adrian, African Placenames, McFarland & Co. Jefferson, North Carolina. 1994.
  5. ↑ (Zenaga names from Nicolas (1953:102.)
  6. ↑ UNICE foundation: La "longue marche" de l'arabisation en mauritanie (in French)

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