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
Berber orthography word divisions, the premodern orthography may be characterized as conjunctive (in contrast to most European orthographies, which are disjunctive). Thus, elements such as prepositions, preverbials, pronominal affixes, demonstrative and directional particles are written connected to a noun or verb form, e.g. ‹urānɣiḍhir manīɣurikfis iblisī› = "ur anɣ iḍhir mani ɣ ur ikfis iblis-i" “it is not apparent to us where Iblis has not sown [his depravity]”. Berber orthography Berber orthography is the writing system(s) used to transcribe the Berber languages. In antiquity, the Libyco-Berber script (Tifinagh) was utilized to write Berber. Early uses of the script have been found on