Zenati Languages

The Zenati languages, named after the medieval Zenata tribe, are a branch of the Northern Berber language family of North Africa, first proposed in Destaing (1915, 1920–23). They are distributed across the central Maghreb, from northeastern Morocco to just west of Algiers, and the northern Sahara, from southwestern Algeria around Bechar to Zuwara in Libya; in much of this range, they are limited to discontinuous pockets in a predominantly Arabic-speaking landscape. The largest languages are Riffian in NE Morocco and Shawiya in eastern Algeria, each with over a million speakers.