Proto-Berber language reached the stage where these different branches of this language family evolved. From that perspective, Proto-Berber was the first Berber stage to depart from Proto-Afrosiatic in the eighth millennium. It was restructured several times during the almost 10,000 years that separated it from its modern shape, which has preserved few relics. Roger Blench (2018) suggests that Proto-Berber speakers experienced intense language leveling about 2,000 years ago as the Roman Empire was expanding in North Africa. Hence, although Berber had split off from Afroasiatic several thousand years ago, Proto-Berber itself can only be reconstructed to a period as late as 200
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