Berber orthography modern printed works is the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO) standard, designed for phonemicity. Older systems from the colonial French era are still found in place names and personal names. The older colonial system showed marked influence from French, for instance writing as and as , and was inconsistent in marking many Berber sounds, for instance writing as a circumflex over the vowel, and often leaving emphatics unmarked. The Tifinagh script is the traditional script for written Berber; but Latin Script remains the predominant orthography for Berber literature for the general public in North Africa. Some Tamazight
Proto-Berber language the use of a lingua franca which became Proto-Berber. Reconstructions of the ancient stages of this language are based on comparisons with other Afro-Asiatic languages in various stages and on the comparisons between the varieties of modern Berber languages or with Touareg, considered by some authors like Prasse to be the variety that best preserved proto-Berber. Some authors have criticised the reconstructed Proto-Berber phonological systems as being too close to those of modern Berber varieties because the common elements derived from the comparisons project modern phonology onto the Proto-Berber stage. Some earlier attempts to derive the phonemic inventory of Proto-Berber