Arab-Berber Arab-Berber Arab-Berbers (; ) are an ethnic group native to Maghreb, a North African region along the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Arab-Berbers are people of mixed Berber and Arab origin and whose native language is a variant of Maghrebi Arabic. Many Arab-Berbers identify primarily as Arab and secondarily as Berber. While some Arab-Berbers claim West Asian descent, genetic studies there have determined that Arab and non-Arab Berbers are genetically nearly identical. This suggest that the processes of "Arabization" in the Maghreb was probably mainly cultural rather than genetic. The Arab-Berber identity came into being as a direct result
Proto-Berber language are the only Berber languages to preserve Proto-Berber *β as β; elsewhere in Berber it becomes "h" or disappears. The Proto-Berber consonantal system reconstructed by Allati (cf. Allati, 2002, 2011) is based on remains from the ancient stages of this language preserved in the ancient toponymical stratas, in Libyan inscriptions and in the modern Berber varieties. It had stops b, t, d, k, g; fricative s; nasal n and liquids l, r. The stops of the phonological system have evolved since the proto-Berber stage into variants from which other consonants have been progressively formed (Allati, 2002, 2011). Karl G. Prasse