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Central Atlas Tamazight

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Also known as Tamazight, Atlasic

Amazigh language of the Afro-Asiatic language family

Key facts

Pronunciation
[ tæmæˈzɪxt, θæmæˈzɪxθ ]
Native to
Morocco
Region
Fès-Meknès , Béni Mellal-Khénifra and Drâa-Tafilalet
Native speakers
2.7 million (2024)
Language family
Afroasiatic Berber Northern Atlas Central Atlas Tamazight
Standard forms
Standard Moroccan Amazigh
Writing system
Tifinagh , Arabic
Regulated by
IRCAM
Iso 639 3
tzm
Glottolog
cent2194

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Instance of
modern language
Country
Morocco
Show 10 more facts
native label
ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ
number of speakers, writers, or signers
17000000
writing system
Arabic alphabet
linguistic typology
verb–subject–object
Wikimedia language code
tzm
indigenous to
Morocco
Commons category
Central Atlas Tamazight
Sources (4)

via Wikidata · CC0

~31 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Central Atlas Tamazight or Atlasic (native name: ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ, Tamaziɣt [tæmæˈzɪxt, θæmæˈzɪxθ]; Arabic: أمازيغية أطلس الأوسط) is a Berber language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken by around 2.7 million speakers, or 7.4% of the population of Morocco.

Central Atlas Tamazight is one of the most-spoken Berber languages, along with Tachelhit, Kabyle, Riffian, Shawiya and Tuareg. In Morocco, it comes second as the most-spoken after Tachelhit. All five languages may be referred to as "Tamazight", but Central Atlas speakers are the only ones who use the term exclusively. As is typical of Afroasiatic languages, Tamazight has a series of "emphatic consonants" (realized as pharyngealized), uvulars, pharyngeals and lacks the phoneme /p/. Tamazight has a phonemic three-vowel system but also has numerous words without vowels.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Central Atlas Tamazight” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.