Northern Berber languages
| Northern Berber | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution | Northwest Africa |
| Linguistic classification | Afro-Asiatic
|
| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | kaby1244 (Kabyle–Atlas Berber)zena1250 (Zenatic) |
The Northern Berber languages are a dialect continuum spoken across the Maghreb, constituting a subgroup of the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic family. Their continuity has been broken by the spread of Arabic, and to a lesser extent by the Zenati group within Northern Berber. The Zenati idioms share certain innovations not found in the surrounding languages; notably a softening of k to sh and an absence of a- in certain words, such as "hand" (afus vs. fus.)