Nafusi (also spelt Nefusi ; in Nafusi: Ažbali / Maziɣ / Mazoɣ or Tanfust ) is a Berber language spoken in the Nafusa Mountains ( Adrar 'n Infusen ), a large area in northwestern Libya . Its primary speakers are the Ibadi communities around Jadu , Nalut ( Lalut ) and Yafran .
3-848: The dialect of Yefren in the east differs somewhat from that of Nalut and Jadu in the west. A number of Old Nafusi phrases appear in Ibadite manuscripts as early as the 12th century. The dialect of Jadu is described in some detail in Beguinot (1931). Motylinski (1898) describes the dialect of Jadu and Nalut as spoken by a student from Yefren. Nafusi shares several innovations with the Zenati languages , but unlike these other Berber varieties it maintains prefix vowels before open syllables. For example, ufəs "hand" < * afus , rather than Zenati fus . It appears especially closely related to Sokni and Siwi to its east. This Berber languages -related article
6-548: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Zenati languages The Zenati languages are a branch of the Northern Berber language family of North Africa . They were named after the medieval Zenata Berber tribal confederation. They were first proposed in the works of French linguist Edmond Destaing (1915) (1920–23). Zenata dialects are distributed across the central Berber world ( Maghreb ), from northeastern Morocco to just west of Algiers , and
9-576: The northern Sahara , from southwestern Algeria around Bechar to Zuwara in Libya . The most widely spoken Zenati languages are Tmazight of the Rif in northern Morocco and Tashawit Berber in northeastern Algeria, each of which have over 3 million speakers. According to Kossmann (2013: 21–24), Zenati is a rather arbitrary grouping, in which he includes the following varieties: According to Kossmann (1999:31-32, 86, 172), common innovations defining
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