The letter ‘yaz’ in the Tifinagh alphabet, used as a symbol for Amazigh identity. Picture by ECV-OnTheRoad. Source Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Based on my name, and once you know that I am Algerian, you may think that the language I want to talk about is Arabic since Algeria, like its neighbours, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco, is known as an Arab country. However, even though I write and speak in Arabic, it is not my mother tongue.

I learned Arabic in primary school in my village in one of the mountains of Tizi-Ouzou, after I reached the age of six. I learned the letters, words and sentence structures in Arabic, and after that, I learned French and then English. But I did not study the language I speak in my daily life in school; this I learned from my mother.

Language recognition

I did not enter school at the legal age of six but had to wait another year, until I was seven, to join the school benches. It happened that the year in which I was supposed to enter school was 1994, which was known as the “strike of the school bag” in the Kabylie region of Algeria, especially in the states of Tizi-Ouzou, Bouira, and Bejaia.

The strike, which lasted from September 1994 to May 1995, was to demand the recognition of the Amazigh language, and culture, as a component of Algerian society.

The strike stirred up the stagnant waters, although it was harsh, depriving a large number of children of a year of education. The High Commission for Amazighity was established in 1995, and the teaching of Tamazight, the Amazigh language in Algerian schools began gradually. Amazigh language was also included for the first time since independence in the 1996 Constitution as a basic component of Algerian identity in addition to Islam and Arabism, which continued until the recognition of Tamazight as an official language in 2016.

An unknown language

This ancient language, spoken in its various forms by the inhabitants of vast areas in North Africa such as Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and some Sahel countries, and which has a presence even in the Canary Islands, remains unknown to many.

Entrance to the city of Kidal, in Mali. With Kidal written in the Tifinagh alphabet. Picture by Alicroche. Source: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Although its letters — Tifinagh — are carved on the rocks of the desert, which have preserved them for thousands of years, the Amazigh language remained more oral.

Even its speakers, over the centuries, wrote in other languages. Lucius Apuleius wrote his novel “The Golden Ass” in Latin; it is one of the oldest novels and the only Latin novel that has survived in its entirety. Ibn Muti Al-Zawawi, who is considered one of the first grammarians who wrote through poetic composition, completed his book Al-Durar Al-Alfiyah in Arabic in 595 AH (around 1198 CE), the first grammatical treatise in one thousand verses. 

Mouloud Mammeri wrote the novel “The Forgotten Hill” in 1952 in French. Prominent Egyptian writer and critic Taha Hussein wrote about the novel: “How much I admire this book, which I do not deny anything about except that it was not written in Arabic! It should have been written in Arabic, but this is a flaw for which the writer is not to be blamed, but rather colonialism is to be blamed, and colonialism is to be blamed for many flaws and sins!”

A long history

In Algeria, the teaching of the Amazigh language dates back to 1880 during the colonial period at the Higher School of Arts in Algiers. Its presence in the media (radio) dates back to 1948, with a radio channel that the colonial authorities used to address its speakers, mainly in Kabyle, which is one of the variants of the Amazigh language in Algeria.

After Algeria gained independence from French colonialism in 1962, the channel continued under the name Channel 2, with the inclusion of other variants such as Chaoui, Mozabite, and Tuareg.

The Tifinagh alphabet. Image by ⵣⵉⵔⵉ ⴰⵎⵖⵏⴰⵙ. Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0).

Algerian broadcast television had few singing and cultural programs in this language, to the point that, in my village, women would call each other to turn on the television so as not to miss the opportunity to watch a clip of a song by iconic Kabyle singers like Idir or Ait Menguellet on the few occasions they were broadcast on official television.

Amazigh language news bulletins were also included on state television starting in the 1990s, before the launch of a television channel dedicated to Amazigh language, Channel 4, in 2009.

Struggle of peoples

The survival of the Amazigh language, despite its antiquity and development to the point where it is now included in computer systems and Google Translate, has often been far from official circles.

The first television channel in Amazigh language was Berber TV, which was launched in 2000 in France. It was broadcast by volunteers, and donations were collected in the Kabylie region. It was preceded by publications in Amazigh language in the seventies, especially among the community in France, where there is a large number of those who left the mountains and villages of the Kabylie region in search of work.

These are not the only experiences that Amazigh language speakers have gone through to preserve their language. Teaching in Amazigh language was happening before the government included it in the curricula of school departments, by associations and volunteers, both inside and outside Algeria, where there are communities speaking this language. Literary production, including writing novels, stories and plays, was fueled by struggle. 

The director Abdel Rahman Bouguermouh, as I once heard, sold his car to produce the first film in the Amazigh language, The Forgotten Hill, in 1990. A popular committee was formed to collect donations to fund the film, as seen in the film's end credits. The film's script had been waiting since 1968 to come to light in the early 1990s. It was screened in Algeria in 1994 and in France in 1996.

Even I do not find myself talking about this language without talking about the struggle associated with it.

More than just a language

Merely recognizing the existence of the language and culture of a certain group may seem like a given, but this is not the case for Amazigh language in Algeria. Many have often sought to abolish it, and it took many years and sacrifices to be recognized as an official language and a component of Algerian society.

In 2017, former Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika declared Yennayer the Amazigh New Year's Day, which falls on January 12, a paid holiday in Algeria. Yennayer is the traditional celebration in which Algerians participate, whether they speak the Amazigh language or not.

As for those for whom the Amazigh language is their mother tongue, including me, we continue to speak it, not just as a language, but as part of ourselves, telling our stories with all spontaneity and honesty, and expressing our emotions, pains and hopes.