Zenaga
Sign in to saveAlso known as Zenaga language, Amazigh Zenaga language
moribund Amazigh (Berber) language of Mauritania and Senegal
Key facts
- Native to
- Mauritania
- Region
- Mederdra
- Native speakers
- 3,500 (2018–2021)
- Language family
- Afro-Asiatic Berber Western Zenaga
- Dialects
- Tendgha Id-ab-lahsen
- Recognised minority language in
- Mauritania
- Iso 639 2
- zen
- Iso 639 3
- zen
- Glottolog
- zena1248
- Elp
- Zenaga
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- modern language
- Subclass of
- Western Berber / Amazigh
- Country
- Senegal
- Image
- Tamazight Zenaga language in Senegal and Mauritania.png
Show 7 more facts
- linguistic typology
- verb–subject–object
- indigenous to
- Mederdra
- number of speakers, writers, or signers
- 200
- topic's main category
- Category:Zenaga
- writing system
- Berber Arabic alphabet
- P10369
- corruption
Sources (8)
via Wikidata · CC0
~13 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Zenaga (endonym: Tuẓẓungiyya or āwӓy ən uẓ̄nӓgӓn) is a Berber language spoken in Mauritania and northern Senegal by thousands of people. Zenaga Berber is spoken as a mother tongue from the town of Mederdra in southwestern Mauritania to the Atlantic coast and in northern Senegal. The language is recognized by the Mauritanian government.
It shares its basic linguistic structure with other Berber idioms, but specific features are quite different. In fact, Zenaga is probably the most divergent surviving Berber language, with a significantly different sound system made even more distant by sound changes such as /l/ > /dj/ and /x/ > /k/, as well as a profusion of glottal stops with no correspondents in other Berber varieties that are interpreted as the only segmental survivor of a Proto-Berber *ʔ.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Zenaga” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.