Standard Moroccan Tamazight

Standard Moroccan Tamazight is not anybody's mother tongue but a planned standard, assembled by the Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe from 2001 onward by pooling Morocco's three large Amazigh varieties — Tashelhiyt, Central Atlas Tamazight and Tarifit. It was made co-official with Arabic by Article 5 of the 2011 constitution, and since 2003 it has been written exclusively in Neo-Tifinagh, an alphabet revived from ancient Libyco-Berber inscriptions and encoded in Unicode. IRCAM's Dictionnaire Général de la Langue Amazighe supplies both the inherited core (aman 'water', tafukt 'sun', tiṭṭ 'eye') and coinages for the modern world, such as amssuds 'computer', built like French ordinateur from a root meaning 'to arrange'. Because the standard resolves competing dialect forms by choice rather than by usage, forms such as amucc 'cat' and keyyi 'you (m.)' can differ from what any given speaker says at home. Implementation in schools, courts and signage has been slow, and most Moroccan Amazigh speakers still read and write their own variety rather than the standard.

Wear this language Pick the words you like, printed in the same typeface the map uses. Make a T-shirt from Standard Moroccan Tamazight words →