Zenaga language


Zenaga is a Berber language on the verge of extinction currently spoken in Mauritania and northern Senegal by a few hundred people.
Zenaga Berber is spoken as a mother tongue from the town of Mederdra in southwestern Mauritania to the Atlantic coast and in northern Senegal. The language is recognized by the Mauritanian government.
It shares its basic linguistic structure with other Berber idioms in Morocco and Algeria, but specific features are quite different. In fact, Zenaga 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 /x/ > /k/ as well as a difficult-to-explain profusion of glottal stops.
The name "Zenaga" comes from that of a much larger ancient Berber tribe, the Iznagen, who are known in Arabic as the Sanhaja.
Adrian Room's African Placenames gives Zenaga derivations for some place-names in Mauritania.

Demographics

Zenaga is a language descended from the Sanhaja confederation who ruled over much of North Africa during the early Middle Ages. Zenaga was once spoken throughout Mauritania and beyond but fell into decline when its speakers were defeated by the invading Muslim Maqil Arabs in the Char Bouba war of the 17th century. After this war, they were forbidden to bear arms and variously became either specialists in Islamic religious scholarship or servants to more powerful tribes. It was among the former, more prestigious group that Zenaga survived longest.
In 1940, Zenaga was spoken by about 13,000 people belonging to four nomadic tribes distributed in an area roughly bounded by Saint-Louis, Podor, Boutilimit and Nouakchott :
These tribes, according to Dubié, traditionally specialised in Islamic religious scholarship and led a nomadic lifestyle, specialising in sheep and cows. Even then, many speakers were shifting to Hassaniya Arabic, the main Arabic variety spoken in Mauritania, and all were bilingual. Zenaga was used only within the tribe, and it was considered impolite to speak it when non-speakers were present; some speakers deliberately avoided using Zenaga with their children, hoping to give them a head start in Hassaniya. However, many speakers regarded Zenaga as a symbol of their independence and their religious fervour; Dubie cites a Hassaniya proverb: "A Moor who speaks Zenaga is certainly not a Zenagui "
Half a century later, the number of speakers is reportedly around 2,000. While Zenaga appears to be nearing extinction, Hassaniya Arabic contains a substantial number of Zenaga loanwords.

Dialects

There are significant dialect differences within Zenaga, notably between the Id-ab-lahsen and Tendgha dialects.