Maarten Kossmann Profile picture
Berber linguistics - linguistique amazighe - ⵜⵎⵓⵙⵏⵉ ⵏ ⵜⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ
Hassan abou-adam Profile picture 1 subscribed
Jan 12, 2021 11 tweets 4 min read
Now what about scattered variables? Some of them look very old and thus kind of put our basic ideas of continuity and large-group classifications in question.
Let’s take a look at a couple of them and shiver at their non-consistency.

(1) The 2SG subject marker on the verb.

GREEN: -d
YELLOW -t (possibly a development from -d)
ReRED: -ḍ / -ṭ

There is no regular phonetic correspondence of -d to -ḍ.
Jan 12, 2021 21 tweets 5 min read
Amazigh (Berber) languages are quite close to each other and in most places nearby varieties are mutually intelligible. They function like a discontinuous dialect continuum.

A loooong thread with maps (and no memes☹️). So can we do sub-classification?

Many people say “no”, like André Basset’s famous quote: “cette langue s’éparpille directement ou à peu près en une poussière de parlers de 4 à 5 mille peut être” (1952:1) and Alfred Willms (1980). Others are a bit more nuanced.
Jul 17, 2020 11 tweets 5 min read
I am very proud of my collection of modern literature in #Tarifiyt (#Tarifit, #amazigh).

Therefore a thread on Tarifiyt literature in the Netherlands. Image 1993 was the year that the first books with modern literature in Tarifiyt were published.
One was a collection of poems by Salam Essemghini published in Morocco. Image