History
The use of a Latin script for Berber has its roots in French colonialist expeditions to North Africa. Berber texts written with Latin letters began to appear in print in the 19th century when French, Italian, and Spanish colonial expeditionaries and military officers began surveying North Africa. The French attempted to use Romanization schemes for North African Arabic dialects and for Berber. The attempts for Arabic were unsuccessful, but Berber was more susceptible, having little established literature to stand in the way.
In the colonial era a French-based system was used. Though it has now fallen partly out of favor, it is still used for transcription of names into French. More recently the French institute of languages, INALCO, has proposed its own writing standard which now is the primary system used in mainly Kabyle-Berber writings in Kabylie, Algeria.
Other, slightly different, varieties of Latin-based standards have been used since the beginning of the 20th century by Berber linguists in North Africa, France, and recently at the University of Barcelona, Spain.
Read more about this topic: Berber Latin Alphabet
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