Berber languages Berber languages The Berber languages, also known as Berber or the Amazigh languages (Berber name: , ; Neo-Tifinagh: ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ, Tuareg Tifinagh: ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵗⵜ, ⵝⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵗⵝ, , ), are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related dialects spoken by the Berbers, who are indigenous to North Africa. The languages were traditionally written with the ancient Libyco-Berber script, which now exists in the form of Tifinagh. Berber is spoken by large populations of Morocco, Algeria and Libya, by smaller populations of Tunisia, northern Mali, western and northern Niger, northern Burkina Faso and Mauritania and in the Siwa
Proto-Berber language the basis of the lexical reconstruction of livestock-herding, a Proto-Berber 1 (PB1) stage around 7,000 years ago and a Proto-Berber 2 (PB2) stage as the direct ancestor of contemporary Berber languages. In the third millennium BC, proto-Berber speakers spread across the area from Morocco to Egypt. In the last millennium BC, another Berber expansion created the Berber peoples noted in Roman records. The final spread occurred in the first millennium BC, when the Tuareg, now possessing camels, moved into the central Sahara; in the past, the northern parts of the Sahara were much more inhabitable than they are now. The