Tashelhit is an Afro-Asiatic language of the Berber subgroup; it is spoken in Morocco and Algeria. Its SIL code is SHI. There are about 3.5 million speakers. Map showing the distribution of Afro-Asiatic languages The Afro-Asiatic languages are a language family of about 240 languages and 285 million people widespread throughout North Africa, East Africa, the Sahel, and Southwest Asia. ... Afro-Asiatic - Berber The Berber languages (or Tamazight) are a group of closely related languages mainly spoken in Morocco and Algeria. ... The Kingdom of Morocco is a country in northwest Africa. ... The People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, or Algeria, is a nation in north Africa, and the second largest country on the African continent. ... SIL International is a non-profit, faith-based, scientific organization with the main purpose to study, develop and document lesser-known languages for the purpose of expanding linguistic knowledge, promoting world literacy and aiding minority language development. ... One million (1000000), one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999999 and preceding 1000001. ...
See also:language, Africa As with any complex, emergent concept, language is somewhat resistant to definition. ... World map showing location of Africa A satellite composite image of Africa Africa is the worlds second-largest continent in both area and population, after Asia. ...
External link
Ethnologue Report for Tashelhit (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=SHI)
Epenthetic vowels in Tashlhiyt Berber (http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/~jcoleman/TPS.html)
Tashelhiyt (also Tashelhit or Tachelhit or Tachelhiyt or Shilha, native name: tal?iyt, French: tachelhit, Arabic: ??????) is the largest Berber language of Morocco both by number of speakers (between 8 and 10 million) and by the extent of its area.
Tashelhiyt is spoken in Southern Morocco an area ranging from the northern slopes of the High-Atlas to the southern slopes of the Anti-Atlas, bounded to the west by the Atlantic Ocean.
Etymologically, it means "language of the free" or "of the noblemen." Traditionally, the term "tamazight" (in various forms: "thamazighth", "tamasheq", "tamajeq", "tamahaq") was used by many Berber groups to refer to the language they spoke, including the Middle Atlas, the Rif, Sened in Tunisia, and the Tuareg.
The Berber languages have two cases of the noun, organized ergatively: one is unmarked, while the other serves for the subject of a transitive verb and the object of a preposition, among other contexts.
Subclassification of the Berber languages is made difficult by their mutual closeness; Maarten Kossmann (1999) describes it as two dialect continua, Northern Berber and Tuareg, and a few peripheral languages, spoken in isolated pockets largely surrounded by Arabic, that fall outside these continua, namely Zenaga and the Libyan and Egyptian varieties.
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