TACHELHIT LANGUAGE

What's the tachelhit?, the tachelhit is one of the language part of the Berber Morrocan. Spoken in south-west part of Morocco, it covers a rather vast geographical surface: Western part of the High-Atlas to the plain of Souss, Anti-Atlas at the zone prée-saharian in the south of this line: Tata, Aqqa and localities of Jbel Bani. This area is regarded today as one of most important in Morocco from the point of view of the number of the Berber speakers. The tachelhit is primarily oral like all the other Moroccan Berber languages. The tamazight of central Morocco and the Riffian one of the north of the country are the two languages which, with the tachelhit, constitute the Berber Morrocan. The chleuh presents some variations of one area to the other, but the various speakers understand themselves. In the same way, the grammatical structure and the vocabulary, close to the other Berber languages, permit a common comprehension.

Phonetic characteristics:

* Three vowels: /a/, /i/, /u/ (= or);

*Consonant system characterized by three essential elements: tension, emphase and liabalization.

Evolution of Tachelhite today

The tachelhit presents some variations of phonetic nature and lexical from one area to another, but, in spite of these local variations, the speakers of various tachelhit understand each one perfectly. The linguistic variation is an inevitable reality into Berber which does not know an instituted standard yet. Since few years, the tachelhit has known a process of homogenisation and linguistic unification thanks to the modern medium as radio, TV, cassette, newspaper, theatre, cinema. The cities and the great urban centres of the tachelhit zone as Agadir, Inezgane, Tiznit, Tata, Ouarzazate, Marrakesh, Essauira also contribute to this unification. Indeed, these cities constitute places of meeting and linguistic exchanges where speakers from differents in areas and differents mediums meets. It is thus the tachelhit common to several speeches and several areas, the tachelhit which one listens to each day with the radio and on TV and which one can read in certain newspapers. Example of regional variation: the word akal “ground” achal.