Berber writing system adaptable to the modern age

By Lyes Aflou for Magharebia in Algiers – 30/03/07
Source : magharebia

An international colloquium on Tifinagh, the earliest alphabet used to transcribe the Amazigh language, took place on Thursday (March 22nd) in Algiers. Organized by the High Commission for Amazigh (HCA), the conference was attended by distinguished social science experts from Niger, Morocco, Tunisia and France. Those in attendance deliberated the alphabet's use and how best to preserve it as a part of the Berber people's cultural heritage

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Writing Berber Languages: a quick summary

By Lameen Souag

This topic has become quite hot since I wrote the first version of this; in Morocco, Tifinagh has been adopted officially for the first time ever - not long after the first full translation of the Quran into Tamazight ever was published - while in Algeria Tamazight has been recognized as a "national language", and even the Libyan Ibadhi diaspora has been working on preserving their language and traditions; Tifinagh is inching closer to being included in Unicode, and historical linguists such as Prof. van den Boogert have been uncovering earlier medieval manuscript traditions than were thought possible. But it still suffers from intellectual fragmentation; this is an attempt at an overview...more