Tifinagh

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Tifinagh (Image:Tifinagh in Tifinagh.svg in Neo-Tifinagh, Tifinaɣ in Berber Latin alphabet, pronounced [tifinaɣ]) is an alphabetic script used by some Berbers to write their language. It is not in widespread use as a means of daily communication, but often serves to politically and symbolically assert a Berber identity.

[edit] Tifinagh or Neo-Tifinagh?

The original Tifinagh script (which has almost no vowels and a small number of letters) is used exclusively by the Tuareg, the only Amazigh people who have kept usage of the ancient Libyco-Berber script; it derives from an older script sometimes named the Libyan (French: libyque) or Libyco-Amazigh alphabet, used by speakers of Amazigh languages all across North Africa and possibly on the Canary Islands until the late Roman era.

Modern variants were consciously re-established and adapted for modern use by Berberist intellectuals and activists in recent times. Thus, in current usage, Tifinagh often refers to (variants of) the Neo-Tifinagh developed by the Académie Berbère in the 1960s, with fixed left-to-right directionality and vowel letters. Recently, fonts for PCs and Macs have been written. (See bottom of page for links.)

[edit] History

An older version of Tifinagh, sometimes named the Libyan (libyque) or Libyco-Berber alphabet, was more widely used by speakers of Berber languages all across North Africa and on the Canary Islands. It is attested from the 3rd century BC to the 3rd century AD. It is usually assumed to be of Phoenician origin. The word Tifinagh is a feminine plural noun whose singular in Tamashek is Tafineqq; it means 'the Phoenician (letters)', according to the most known opinions. For a discussion, see [1] and [2].

[edit] Libyco-Berber script

• There are two variants: eastern and western.
• The eastern variant was used in what is now Constantine, the Aures region and Tunisia. It is the best-deciphered variant, due to the discovery of several Numidian bilingual inscriptions in Libyan and Punic (notably at Dougga in Tunisia.) 22 letters out of the 24 were deciphered.
• The western variant was more primitive (Février (1964–1965). It was used along the Mediterranean coast from Kabylie to the Canary Islands. It used 13 supplementary letters.
• The Libyco-Berber script was a pure Abjad, it had no vowels.
• Gemination was not marked.
• The writing was usually from the bottom to the top, although right-to-left, and even other orders, were also found.

[edit] The Traditional Tifinagh (Tuareg)

Traditionally, the script marks no vowels, except word-finally; however, various proposals to allow it to mark vowels have been made in recent times. In some areas, Arabic vowel diacritics are combined with Tifinagh characters to mark vowels.

The letter forms vary significantly across the wide area where Tifinagh is used. The direction of writing varies; right-to-left is common, but the older "Libyan" inscriptions most commonly use the unusual orientation bottom-to-top. Occasionally the script has been used to write other neighboring languages, such as Tagdal Songhai.

[edit] The Neo-Tifinagh script

In the 1960s, a group of young Kabyle Berberists created the Académie berbère and put forward a new version of the script, nowadays called "Neo-Tifinagh", it is written left to right, marks vowels and has more letters. The Académie berbère published several texts and magazines in this script, and since then it has become popular among the Kabyle movement, the JSK, The Mouvement culturel berbère, the Rally for Culture and Democracy, and has then spread to all Berber-speaking areas.

Salem Chaker, professor at INALCO had proposed a change in Neo-Tifinagh (Tafsut 1990 #14). There were other proposals as well, from the association Afus Deg Wfus (Roubaix, France), the review Tifinagh (Morocco), software producers Arabia Ware Benelux (Netherlands), and Moroccan IRCAM.

Until recently, virtually no books or websites were published in this alphabet, with activists favouring Latin (or, more rarely, Arabic) scripts for serious usage; however, it is extremely popular for symbolic use, with many books and websites written in a different script featuring logos or title pages using Neo-Tifinagh. However, in Morocco, the king took a "neutral" position between the claims of Latin script and Arabic script by adopting the Neo-Tifinagh script in 2003; as a result, books are beginning to be published in this script, and it is taught in some schools. Outside Morocco, it has no official status. Ironically, the Moroccan state arrested and imprisoned people using this script during 1980s and the 1990s. [3]

[edit] Code chart for the Neo-Tifinagh script

Neo-Tifinagh is encoded in the Unicode range U+2D30 to U+2D7F, starting from version 4.1.0. There are 55 defined characters, but there are more characters being used than those defined. In ISO 15924, the code Tfng is assigned to Neo-Tifinagh.

Here is a comparison chart for the character glyph and the transliteration.

[edit] Unicode fonts for Neo-Tifinagh

• DejaVu (recommended for clarity and readability)
• Code2000
• Hapax Berbère
• MPH 2B Damase
• Fixedsys Excelsior (a stylized ornamental font, not recommended for running text)

[edit] Bibliography

• Aghali-Zakara, Mohamed (1994). Graphèmes berbères et dilemme de diffusion: Interaction des alphabets latin, ajami et tifinagh. Etudes et Documents Berbères 11, 107-121.
• Aghali-Zakara, Mohamed; and Drouin, Jeanine (1977). Recherches sur les Tifinaghs- Eléments graphiques et sociolinguistiques. Comptes-rendus du Groupe Linguistique des Etudes Chamito-Sémitiques (GLECS).
• Ameur, Meftaha (1994). Diversité des transcriptions : pour une notation usuelle et normalisée de la langue berbère. Etudes et Documents Berbères 11, 25-28.
• Boukous, Ahmed (1997). Situation sociolinguistique de l’Amazigh. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 123, 41-60.
• Chaker, Salem (1994). Pour une notation usuelle à base Tifinagh. Etudes et Documents Berbères 11, 31-42.
• Chaker, Salem (1996). Propositions pour la notation usuelle à base latine du berbère. Etudes et Documents Berbères 14, 239-253.
• Chaker, Salem (1997). La Kabylie: un processus de développement linguistique autonome. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 123, 81-99.
• Durand, O. (1994). Promotion du berbère : problèmes de standardisation et d’orthographe. Expériences européennes. Etudes et Documents Berbères 11, 7-11.
• O’Connor, Michael (1996). The Berber scripts. The World’s Writing Systems, ed. by William Bright and Peter Daniels, 112-116. New York: Oxford University Press.

• Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. Tifinagh.

[edit] External links

• Amanar Pictures of Tifinagh fonts used in books, magazines
• http://www.ancientscripts.com/berber.html
• http://amazighworld.net/studies/articles/touareg_histoire.php
• http://ennedi.free.fr/tifin.htm
• Ircam Official website of the Royal Institute of the Amazigh Culture (in French)
• http://www.mondeberbere.com/langue/tifinagh/tifinagh_origine.htm
• http://www.omniglot.com/writing/tifinagh.htm
• Unicode character picker for Moroccan Tifinagh
• Tifinagh Font for Windows

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