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je suis fiere d'etre AMAZIGHIYA vive les AMAZIGHS

je suis fiere d'etre AMAZIGHIYA vive les AMAZIGHS
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Au Maroc, les trois parlers amazighs sont Tamazight, Tacelh'it et Tarifit. Imazighen, les locuteurs de Tamazight, occupent une vaste étendue géographique (Maroc central) à l'intérieur de laquelle les populations amazighes partagent les mêmes moeurs et modes de vie. On parle parfois de Moyen Atlas pour désigner cette région, mais en réalité, Tamazight déborde largement les limites géographiques du moyen Atlas. Imazighen se composent de nombreuses confédérations toutes issues du vaste rameau des Sanhaja qui s'est détaché du tronc commun des Imazighen, et a poussé vers le Nord-ouest au cours des siècles à partir du Sahara. On y regroupe: Ayt Bugemmaz - Ayt H'diddu - Ayt Merghad - Ayt Mgild - Ayt Nd'ir - Ayt Um Lbext - Ayt Seghruccen - Ayt Sgugu - Ayt Suxman - Ayt Warayen - Ayt Yah'ya - Ayt Izdegh - Ayt At't'a - Iz'ayan - Imermucen - Ayt Yussi - Ayt Sadden - Zemmur. Michael Peyron dit d'eux: "Tribus transhumantes, guerrières et remuantes, se faisant une âpre concurrence dans la recherche de nouveaux pâturages, elles ont, par leur dynamisme, tissé la trame principale de l'histoire de ces régions du XV au XIXeme siècle." Lire Isaffen Ghbanin (Rivière profondes). Jusqu'en 1912, période à laquelle le protectorat français commençait à s'ingérer dans les affaires de ces tribus, celles-ci géraient leur vie selon des coutumes ancéstrales (Azerf, L3orf) et n'étaient pas soumises à l'autorité du Sultan. Plutôt que de les affronter par les armes, Lyauté initia une politique vicieuse reconnaissant aux Imazighen leurs droits coutumiers, ce qui aboutira au décret du 16 mai 1930, le "Dahir Berbère", scéllé par Mohamed V. Le protectorat français, et en particulier la politique berbère qu'il a initiée (La politique berbère de la France et le nationalisme marocain. Gilles Lafuente, 1999, l'Harmattan) a eu des conséquences désastreuses sur l'avenir de cette région. Ce fameux "Dahir Berbère" est brandit encore par les pan-arabistes à chaque fois que les Imazighen expriment leur revendication culturelle.
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Tamazight language History :

The Tamazight language consists of many dialects, which, in their turn, also consist of many subdialects. All these dialects and subdialects are spoken in a vast area, which stretches from east to west, covering the span between the oasis of Siwa in Egypt and Morocco at the Atlantic Ocean, and from north to south, covering the area between the Mediterranean coast of North Africa and Burkina Faso. Though most of this vast area originally was the land of the Amazigh (Berbers), today Tamazight is spoken only in rather small areas.

The largest speaking Tamazight area including several countries is that inhabited by the Tuareg nomads in the south. However, most Berbers are concentrated in Morocco and Algeria. Almost half of the Moroccan population is Tamazight-speaking, while about 30 percent of the Tamazight-speaking population in Algeria is concentrated in Kabylia and the massif of the Aures. If one proceeds to statistical investigation of Berbers, he/she would probably arrive at the number of not less than 15 million. But the Tamazight language does not really exist as a homogenous language in the sense of a socio-communicative reality, but is spoken in different countries and in different versions, among which some are quite different from one another.

Generally speaking, the more Tamazight-speaking areas are close geographically, the more the corresponding dialects are linguistically close to one another.

Apart from the dialects of the island of Djerba in Tunisia, Siwa in Egypt, Aoudjila and Neffousa in Libya and other lesser known dialects, which are spoken by very small populations, it is possible to classify the Tamazight language in 7 main dialects:

1) the Kabyle dialect (including the dialects spoken in the massif of Chenoua and the Ouarsenis) in the north of Algeria.
2) the Chaoui dialect in the massif of Aures in the east-south of the capital in Algeria.
3) the Mzab dialect in the northern desert of Algeria.
4) the Rifain dialect in northern Morocco.
5) the Tamazight dialect in central Morocco.
6) the Tachelhit dialect in southern Morocco
7) the Tuareg dialect (spoken mostly in the south of Algeria, the north of Niger and Mali and the north of Burkina Faso)

For teaching purposes, these 7 dialects can furthermore be reduced to 3 main Tamazight dialects: the Tuareg Berber, the Algerian Berber (Chaoui, Kabyle, and Mzab) and the Moroccan Berber (Rifain, Tamazigt, and Tachelhit).

There are, of course, derogations to this classification. For example, regarding some linguistic aspects, some dialects can be closer to the most remote dialects than the nearest ones geographically speaking. This is, for example, the case for the Rifain dialect in Morocco, which has more phonetic similarities with the northern Algerian dialects than with other closer Moroccan dialects, such as Tacelhit.

These derogations also concern subdialects. In fact there are subdialects in the Kabyle dialect in Algeria, which are in some aspects closer to the Moroccan dialects than to other subdialects in the Kabyle dialect itself. However, even though subdialects from different dialects might have some common linguistic features, the mutual comprehensibility might not be possible at all, whereas there is almost full mutual comprehensibility inside the dialects, even though these dialects have subdialects which differ a lot from each other.

Actually, although two Kabyles coming from opposite sides of the Kabyle region might speak in very different subdialects, they will nevertheless understand each other without a problem. That is why it is legitimate to speak of the Kabyle dialect, the Tuareg dialect, etc. as being relatively homogenous dialects. In fact, homogenous to such a degree, that they may be said to constitute separate languages. But now, considering the Tamazight language in its repartition in many dialects and subdialects, one might be led to believe that the Tamazight language cannot be taught as one language. The question is indeed very debatable. In fact, the situation of the Tamazight language is not very different from any official language in the world. Actually there is not a single language which is not differentiated. The difference between the Tamazight language and any official language is that the latter has previously been subject to a standardization process involving, at worst, one dominating dialect. As an example, the French language goes back mainly to the dialect of l'?le de France, where the ruling elite abode. Most of the known official languages have been subject to the same phenomenon.

This is the case for English, Danish, German etc. The Tamazight language has never been taught, for which reason there has never been a need of standardization of one or another dialect of the language. All ruling Berbers throughout history have been educated in foreign languages. So the Tamazight language has unfortunately never been taken care of towards its constitution as a national language. Theoretically then, the Tamazight language is not so different from other languages, and the language can, in fact, easily be subject to standardization by choosing one or another dialect on the basis of some fixed criteria. Some people might think this is suitable, but many would surely react against such a solution. Even the Kabyles, who are probably the greatest defenders of the Tamazight language, would think this is not fair. We are living in modern times, which in spite of everything, are imbued with humanism and egalitarian ideas. Many Amazigh scholars think that a standardized Tamazight has to be carried out on the basis of some sort of reconstruction. Before discussing negative and positive sides of standardization, let us see what this might imply on other planes. There is no doubt that such an issue, besides being a linguistic matter, also implies much politics.

The Tamazight language has until recent years never been recognized as an active part of the countries in which it is spoken. In the Algerian Constitution of 1996, the term "Amazighité" (= Berber identity) appeared in the official texts for the first time. This does not mean that the Tamazight language was now made official or even national, but only that the language could be taught if needed. Recently, president Bouteflika stated that the Tamazight language would never be officialized, and its nationalization could only become a reality if all Algerian people accepted it by means of a referendum. This to show that identity is now made a matter of an election. There are millions of Berbers, both in Algeria and in the neighbourhood, many of whom do not even speak Arabic, who are still denied their right to be educated in their mother tongue. Though pretending to be a democrat, Mr. Bouteflika, without any doubt, carries the same dictatorial discourse of the past, which states that the whole of the Algerian people is Arab, and its language is exclusively Arabic. Considering these elements, the matter of standardization of the Tamazight language cannot be discussed without considering it from two aspects: the political aspect and the linguistic aspect.

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# Posté le mercredi 11 octobre 2006 21:37

Modifié le mercredi 31 octobre 2007 14:24

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