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Tamazight Tifinagh
Image from: IRCAM.
Tamazight Tifinagh (Berber Alphabet)
Among the earliest Tifinagh inscriptions found in
North Africa are those found inscribed and painted on rocks in prehistoric art (see
our galleries at: Wadi Takdhalt and
Matkhandoush).
Although the dating of the script was based on the earliest inscriptions
found in some coastal areas, there is no serious attempt to catalogue
and date the entire script collection found in cave art across the Sahara, and
therefore as the dating of many of these rock engravings and paintings themselves
is also questionable, the age of Tifinagh is not conclusive and may not
be known for some time. Hopefully the new government of new Libya will devote
some of its time and funds to Libya's neglected, unique prehistoric heritage
and help bring many of its secrets to light.
Most foreign estimates however suggest the script to be around
3000 years old; primarily based on the fact that the Phoenicians arrived in North
Africa around that time, and hence the widely accepted conclusion that the name Tifinagh itself
was derived from the word Phoniq.
Many of these, if not most, of the inscriptions found are yet to be deciphered.
Many Berberists reject all these theories, while most had no alternative but
to go along.
The Italian-Libyan Archaeological Mission in
the Acacus has located more than one hundred Tifinagh and Tifinagh-related sites
in Libya. A copy of the collected data, the first archive of Tifinagh rock inscriptions
in Fezzan, will be available for registered users in the Mission's website (http://www.acacus.it/).
Copies were also given to the British Library in London and to the Libyan Department
of Archaeology. [The British Library: EAP265:
The tifinagh rock inscriptions in the Tadrart Acacus mountains (SW Libya):
an unknown endangered heritage: http://eap.bl.uk/database/overview_project.a4d?projID=EAP265;r=9514]
There are a number of versions of the Berber alphabet Tifinagh,
also known as the Libyan Alphabet or the Libyco-Berber script, which
slightly differ in some letters. For example, the letters 's' and 'b' were confused,
while some of the original letters were changed, like the two separate vertical
strokes for letter 'L', which now are joined in a way similar to English N, and
the 'f' became like a horizontal 'z'. These changes presumably were made to facilitate
writing as to not confuse between 'double n' and letter 'L'; but has anyone the
right to alter an ancient script for the sake of convenience? The new Tifinagh system
contains 55 letters, 22 of which were new additions.
After lengthy discussions
whether to use Berber, Latin or Arabic script, the IRCAM
of Morocco has opted to use Tamazight Tifinagh. In June 2004 Tifinagh was
registered in the ISO's register of the languages of the world, after the ISO
(International Organization of
Standardization) recognised Berber Tifinagh. This
means that the coding of Tifinagh will enable
it, from 2005, to be integrated into the software products of the major companies.
However, Professor of Tamazight Salem
Chaker says
the IRCAM's imposed decision is like putting the carriage before the horse. In
an interview with Aid Chemakh and Masin Ferkal, Chaker points out that the
decision to use Tifinagh is "a hasty and badly founded decision", and
that the goal of the IRCAM "can only be an attempt by the dominant
spheres and their auxiliaries to take over the Amazigh field by driving this
transitional period of Amazigh writing and teaching into a sure dead end . .
. The
creation of the IRCAM, as well as the adoption of the Tifinagh script are part
of a strategy which aims at reducing the Amazigh social and political factor
to nothing or close to nothing." Chaker argues that the political
decision to impose Tifinagh was made without conducting any serious or academic
work on the subject of Tifinagh to bring it up to date, and given the fact
that it has not been in
effective use for nearly a millennium, Tifinagh can only "play an identity
or emblematic role and cannot be used as a basis for a functional writing system
that can easily be disseminated . . . The version currently in use
. . . is purely and simply aberrant since it is actually a phonetic notation
of Kabyl based on Tifinagh characters. This was developed in 1970 in the Berber
Academy circles by amateurs full of goodwill, but nonetheless without any linguistic
training. The result is that the alphabet which is currently presented to us
as the Amazigh alphabet is not an authentic one. It was strongly altered in order
to transcribe the phonetic characteristics of Kabyl. It cannot thus be an Amazigh-wide
alphabet." Read the full interview at: http://www.tamazgha.fr/Professor-Chaker-Speaks-Out-on-the-Tifinagh-Script-Issue,427.html
However, you can read the response of the IRCAM to this and
similar criticism at the following link, in which the head of the IRCAM answers
questions relating to the constitutionalisation of Tamazight and the use of Tifinagh: http://www.ircam.ma/ar/index.php?soc=artip&pg=1&rd=44 :
بوكوس: دسترة الأمازيغية حدث تاريخي وكتابتها بحرف «تيفيناغ» حظي بتوافق وطن
In Barry Fell’s two books, America BC & Saga
America, one learns about the Berber Tifinagh inscriptions found in
America (California, New Mexico, Texas, Iowa and Nevada) and in Polynesia. The
findings were dismissed by the scientific community; but if they
were to be confirmed, or even followed, then they may shed some light
on the subject of across-the-Atlantic journeys before the time of
Columbus. See also the Occasional publications of the Epigraphic
Society for an index of Fell’s work at http://www.equinox-project.com/.
Some of the languages of ancient America and Polynesia were also compared to
Berber and Egyptian by a number of linguists and were found similar in
many ways.
The above table was taken from the Royal Institute of
Tamazight Culture's website,
and can be found at http://www.ircam.ma/ar/index.php
From Magazine Amezyan, www.amezyan.com.
Libyan Tifinagh:
The Tuareg Berber Alphabet and its Arabic Translation,
located in the Third
Wing
of Ghadames Museum, Libya.
The first column
on the right is the Arabic translation of the second column,
the third of the fourth, and so on. The English translation
is as follows: starting from top right and going
down (of the second column from the right): A, B,
T, J, KH, D, then from the top of the fourth column
from the right: R, Z, GH, N, S, SH, then from the
sixth column from the right: D' (emphatic D), F,
Q, L, M, Z' (emphatic heavy D, similar to Z), then from
the top of first column on the left: H, Y, O (or
W), G, Dg (as in judge), K, and emphatic T (heavy
open form of English /th/, as in English "ta" (short
for 'thank you')).
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Tamazight Tifinagh Fonts:
To be able to write with Tifinagh you need to download and install the fonts
from IRCAM. Instructions for different computer systems are found at: http://www.ircam.ma/ .
But in case the instructions are not clear, please follow the following instructions
for Windows Vista and Windows 7:
(1): the fonts:
- Download
Tifinagh fonts (the zipped file originally was downloaded from the IRCAM website
at: http://www.ircam.ma/ar/index.php?soc=telec).
- Unzip the downloaded file to a folder in your computer.
- Double click on the yellow folder (Polices_PI)
- Copy all the font files (ending with extension .ttf) (do not copy the .pdf
guide)
- Then go to: C:\WINDOWS\Fonts
- Paste the font files in C:\WINDOWS\Fonts
(2): the software:
- Download
PCUnicodeVista.zip (all fonts and keyboards with Windows installation procedures:
automatic installation) (once you are in the above page, go down to:
"Pilotes des claviers Unicode pour Windows Vista:", and choose the 33 or the
55 system.)
- Unzip the downloaded file to a folder in your computer (example, desktop)
- Inside the unzipped folder (PCUnicodeVista) you will see another zipped folder: t-ircamb.zip
- Unzip t-ircam.zip to the same folder (just right-click, then <extract here>)
- Inside the unzipped folder (t-ircamb) you will see setup.exe
- Double click setup.exe
- Allow the permissions required by Windows, then click <close> at
the end of the installation.
- Now just go to your word processor, then choose the Tifinagh font as you
normally would any other installed font.
After installation is complete, you can write in Tamazight (using Latin alphabet),
with normal keyboard, or write in English or any other language, then select
the text, go to the fonts
menu,
and choose one of the Tifinagh fonts available to display the text in Tifinagh.
For example, the result of copying some of the above instructions in English
(as they are) produced the following text (the text is in English but written
in Tifinagh letters):
Please note that using the above
method for writing will produce some errors, because the program translates
sounds made of double letters, like "gh" (in Tamazight), into two distinct
letters "g" and"
h".
Therefore you need Tamazight Keyboard.
Tamazight Tifinagh Keyboard:
(1)
Download the keyboard software:
The following zipped files come from Paul Anderson's website
at: http://www.akufi.org/.
Each download includes pdf guides and layouts. The first and the third links
(below) are Latin-mapped keyboard layouts, while the second one is Arabic-mapped
layout.
- Download
standardised Berber keyboard Tamazight_FQ, version 1.3 (for Libya, Tifinagh, Latin-mapped, QWERTY)
- Download
standardised Berber keyboard Tamazight_FQ, version 1.3 (for Libya, Tifinagh,
Arabic-mapped, QWERTY)
- Download
standardised Berber keyboard for Tamazight_F, version 1.36 (for North Africa
and France, Tifinagh, AZERTY)
(2)
Download the keyboard layout:
Download the complete Tamazight Keyboard Layouts (version 1.22)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Tifinagh Books:
Tifinagh letters according to Tawalt.com.
The following PDF books were produced by Tawalt.com to document
the structure and grammar of Berber language, as well as introduce Berber Tifinagh
script. The books are written in Arabic, to teach Tamazight Tifinagh.
One of the books is titled "Tifinagh In Four Steps",
which teaches how to read and write in Tamazight; while another includes children
activities to practice and learn Tifinagh, as in the following image, in which
children are encouraged to identify the Berber words in the square:
Children were encouraged to locate Tifinagh words in a number
of exercises as this one.
Download Tifinagh Books & Articles:
Download
the Berber copy of the Declaration of the Libyan National Tamazight Congress
(ALT) in Tifinagh:
http://www.temehu.com/imazighen/berberdownloads/libyan-national-amazigh-congress-declaration.pdf
The following pdf files were originally downloaded from www.tawalt.com, and
are here made available to download and use for personal purposes only.
Tifinagh
- Tifinagh
Tifinagh
- Tira
Tifinagh
- Tira 2
Tifinagh
- Tamusni Turari
Tifinagh
- Turari
Tifinagh
- Eghma
Tifinagh
- Eghma 2
Tifinagh
- Amawal N Imudar
Tifinagh
- Tamusni
Tifinagh
- Tamusni 2
Links & Resources Relating To Tifinagh:
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