Zenaga language
Zenaga (autonym
Tuḍḍungiyya) is a
Berber language spoken by some 200 to 300 people between
Mederdra and the
Atlantic coast in southwestern
Mauritania. The language shares its basic structure with other
Berber languages, but specific details are quite different; in fact, it is probably the most divergent surviving
Berber language, with a significantly different sound system made even more distant by sound changes such as l > dj and kh > k, as well as a difficult to explain profusion of glottal stops. The name 'Zenaga' comes from that of a much bigger ancient Berber tribe, known to medieval Arab geographers as the
Senhaja; the name "
Senegal" is thought to derive from "Zenaga" as well.
The language seems to be going extinct since its speakers do not teach it to their children. Those learn
Hassaniya, the dominant
Arabic language of Mauritania, which itself contains a substantial number of Zenaga
loanwords (more than[
1] 10% of the vocabulary.)
The people speaking Zenaga are
Muslim nomads. A few are descendants of
slaves that were captured centuries ago from various wars.
The
ISO 639-2 code for Zenaga is:
zen.
* Al-Chennafi M. & Norris H. T., "How the Hassaniyya vernacular of Mauritania supplanted Zenaga" -
The Maghreb-Review 76 (5-6), 1981. pp : 77-78.
* Basset, Andre. 1933b. 'Note sur les parlers zenaga'. In
Bull. Com. et. hist. sc. A.O.F., 319-32.
* Basset, Rene. 1909. Mission au Senegal. Bulletin de correspondance africaine 39. Paris: Leroux.
* Cohen, David & Catherine Taine-Cheikh. 2000. 'À propos du zénaga. Vocalisme et morphologie verbale en berbère'.
Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris XCV/1, pp. 267-319.
* Dubié, P. (1940). "L'îlot berbérophone de Mauritanie",
Bull. IFAN, 2, 315-325.
* Faidherbe, Louis L. 1877.
Le Zenaga des tribus Senegalaises. Paris.
* Kossmann, Maarten. 2001. ‘L'origine du vocalisme en zénaga de Mauritanie', pp. 83-95 of Ibriszimow, Dymitr & Rainer Vossen (eds.). 2001.
Etudes berbères. Actes du « 1. Bayreuth-Frankfurter Kolloquium zur Berberologie » (Frankfurter Afrikanistische Blätter, 13.), Köln : Rüdiger Köppe.
* Kossmann, Maarten. 2001. 'The Origin of the Glottal Stop in Zenaga and its Reflexes in the other Berber Languages'.
Afrika und Übersee 84, pp. 61-100.
* Masqueray, Emile. 1879. 'Comparaison d'un vocabulaire des Zenaga avec les vocabulaires correspondants des dialectes Chawia et des Beni Mzab'.
Archives des missions scientifiques et litteraires 3/5: 473-533.
* Nicholas, F. (1953).
La langue berbère de Mauritanie, Dakar, mémoire de l'IFAN, n° 33.
* Taine-Cheikh, Catherine. 1999. 'Le zénaga de Mauritanie à la lumière du berbère commun', pp. 299-324 of Lamberti, Marcello & Livia Tonelli (éds.). 1999.
Afroasiatica Tergestina. Papers from the 9th Italian Meeting of Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) Linguistics, Trieste, April 23-24, 1998 - Contributi presentati al 9° Incontro di Lingustica Afroasiatica (Camito-Semitica), Trieste, 23-24 Aprile 1998. Padova: UNIPRESS. ISBN 88-8098-107-2.
* Taine-Cheikh, Catherine. 2002. 'Morphologie et morphogenèse des diminutifs en zénaga (berbère de Mauritanie)' pp. 427-454 of Nait-Zerrad, Kamal (éd.). 2002.
Articles de linguistique berbère. Mémorial Werner Vycichl. Paris : L'Harmattan.
* Taine-Cheikh, Catherine. 2003. 'L'adjectif et la conjugation suffixale en berbère', pp. 661-674 of Lentin, Jérôme & Antoine Lonnet (eds.), Mélanges David Cohen. Études sur le langage, les langues, les dialectes, les littératures, offertes par ses élèves, ses collègues, ses amis. Paris : Maisonneuve & Larose.
* Taine-Cheikh, Catherine. 2004. ‘Les verbes à finale laryngale en zénaga', pp. 171-190 of Nait-Zerrad, Kamal, Rainer Vossen & Dymitr Ibriszimow (eds.). 2004.
Nouvelles études berbères. Le verbe et autres articles. Actes du "2. Bayreuth-Frankfurter Kolloquium zur Berberologie". Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. ISBN 3-89645-387-4
