The Status of Berber (Past and Present) and Its Contact with Arabic

This chapter deals with the status of Berber (Amazigh for natives) (I am using the term “Berber” interchangeably with the word “Amazigh”. The natives prefer the latter because it has positive overtones (Amazigh means free man; Tamazight, free woman; Imazighen, free people), whereas the term Berber is considered derogatory because it stems from the Roman term “Barbari” (Barbarian) referring to the people that the Romans had conquered. However, the term “Berber” is so commonly used by researchers today that it has become neutral. The status of Berber has changed from a spoken non-recognized language to a written official language in 2011 in Morocco and in 2014 in Algeria thanks to the militancy of the Amazigh cultural movement and the political will to integrate Amazigh into development. Berber has been in contact with Arabic since the seventh century, and the impact of Arabic on it is mirrored in the quantity of borrowings and loanwords that have entered Berber. Reciprocally, Berber has also influenced mainly Colloquial Arabic at the lexical and the morphological levels. The teaching of Berber, which has been officially launched in both countries since 2003 and which has been steadily growing, will contribute to language change, to the standardization and codification of the language, and will consolidate its new status as an official language.