Arabized Berber Arabized Berber Arabized Berber denotes an inhabitant of the Maghreb region in northwestern Africa, whose native language is a local dialect of Arabic and whose origins are Berber. The expression holds that most populations in North Africa are of Berber heritage, including those inhabiting Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Western Sahara, and Mauritania. The widespread language shift from Berber to Arabic happened, at least partially, due to the privileged status that the Arabic language has generally been given in the states of North Africa, from the Arab conquest in 652 up until the European conquest in the twentieth century, as well
Berber languages while the Kabyles called theirs "Taqbaylit", and the inhabitants of the Siwa Oasis called their language "Siwi". In Tunisia, the local Amazigh language is usually referred to as "Shelha", a term which has been observed in Morocco as well. One group, the Linguasphere Observatory, has attempted to introduce the neologism "Tamazic languages" to refer to the Berber languages. Berber is a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Since modern Berber languages are relatively homogeneous, the date of the Proto-Berber language from which the modern group is derived was probably comparatively recent, comparable to the age of the Germanic or Romance