 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source .(May 2016) |
| |||||
| Decades: | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| See also: | |||||
Events in the year 2016 in Algeria.
| | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source .(May 2016) |
| |||||
| Decades: | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| See also: | |||||
Events in the year 2016 in Algeria.
Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to the northeast by Tunisia; to the east by Libya; to the southeast by Niger; to the southwest by Mali, Mauritania, and Western Sahara; to the west by Morocco; and to the north by the Mediterranean Sea. The capital and largest city is Algiers, located in the far north on the Mediterranean coast.
The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight, are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related but mostly mutually unintelligible languages spoken by Berber communities, who are indigenous to North Africa. The languages are primarily spoken and not typically written. Historically, they have been written with the ancient Libyco-Berber script, which now exists in the form of Tifinagh. Today, they may also be written in the Berber Latin alphabet or the Arabic script, with Latin being the most pervasive.
Tifinagh is a script used to write the Berber languages. Tifinagh is descended from the ancient Libyco-Berber alphabet. The traditional Tifinagh, sometimes called Tuareg Tifinagh, is still favored by the Tuareg Berbers of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria, northeastern Mali, northern Niger, and northern Burkina Faso for writing the Tuareg Berber language. Neo-Tifinagh is an alphabet developed by the Berber Academy to be a system of writing for the Amazigh language; it has been since modified for use across North Africa.
Berbers, or the Berber peoples, also called by their endonym Amazigh or Imazighen, are a diverse grouping of distinct ethnic groups indigenous to North Africa who predate the arrival of Arabs in the Arab migrations to the Maghreb. Their main connections are identified by their usage of Berber languages, most of them mutually unintelligible, which are part of the Afroasiatic language family. They are indigenous to the Maghreb region of North Africa, where they live in scattered communities across parts of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and to a lesser extent Tunisia, Mauritania, northern Mali and northern Niger. Smaller Berber communities are also found in Burkina Faso and Egypt's Siwa Oasis.
Demographic features of the population of Algeria include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects.
Kabylia or Kabylie is a mountainous coastal region in northern Algeria and the homeland of the Kabyle people. It is part of the Tell Atlas mountain range and is located at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea.
Judeo-Berber or Judeo-Amazigh is any of several hybrid Berber varieties traditionally spoken as a second language in Berber Jewish communities of central and southern Morocco, and perhaps earlier in Algeria. Judeo-Berber is a contact language; the first language of speakers was Judeo-Arabic. Speakers immigrated to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. While mutually comprehensible with the Tamazight spoken by most inhabitants of the area, these varieties are distinguished by the use of Hebrew loanwords and the pronunciation of š as s.
Kabyle or Kabylian is a Berber language (tamazight) spoken by the Kabyle people in the north and northeast of Algeria. It is spoken primarily in Kabylia, east of the capital Algiers and in Algiers itself, but also by various groups near Blida, such as the Beni Salah and Beni Bou Yaqob.
Arabic, particularly the Algerian Arabic dialect, is the most widely spoken language in Algeria, but a number of regional and foreign languages are also spoken. The official languages of Algeria are Arabic and Berber, as specified in its constitution since 1963 for the former and since 2016 for the latter. Berber has been recognized as a "national language" by constitutional amendment since 8 May 2002. In February 2016, a constitutional resolution was passed making Berber an official language alongside Arabic. Arabic is spoken by about 81% of Algerians, while Berber languages are spoken by 27%. French, though it has no official status, is still used in media and education due to Algeria's colonial history. Kabyle, with 3 million speakers, is the most spoken Berber language in the country, is taught and partially co-official in parts of Kabylie.
The Zenati languages are a branch of the Northern Berber language family of North Africa. They were named after the medieval Zenata Berber tribal confederation. They were first proposed in the works of French linguist Edmond Destaing (1915) (1920–23). Zenata dialects are distributed across the central Berber world (Maghreb), from northeastern Morocco to just west of Algiers, and the northern Sahara, from southwestern Algeria around Bechar to Zuwara in Libya. The most widely spoken Zenati languages are Tmazight of the Rif in northern Morocco and Tashawit Berber in northeastern Algeria, each of which have over 3 million speakers.
Berberism is a Berber political-cultural movement of ethnic nationalism, started mainly in Kabylia (Algeria) and in Morocco later spreading to the rest of the Berber communities in the Maghreb region of North Africa. The Berberist movement in Algeria and Morocco is in opposition to cultural Arabization, the pan-Arabist political ideology and Islamism.
The Mozabite people or Banu Mzab are a Berber ethnic group inhabiting the M'zab natural region in the northern Sahara in Algeria, numbering about 150,000 to 300,000 people. They speak primarily the Mozabite language, one of the Zenati languages in the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic family. Mozabites are primarily Ibadi Muslims, but there was a small population of Jews as well.
The Berber Spring was a period of political protest and civil activism in 1980, claiming recognition of the Berber identity and language in Algeria, with events mainly taking place in Kabylia and Algiers.
The Kabyle people are a Berber ethnic group indigenous to Kabylia in the north of Algeria, spread across the Atlas Mountains, 160 kilometres (100 mi) east of Algiers. They represent the largest Berber population of Algeria and the second largest in North Africa.
Education in Algeria is free and compulsory for Algerians from the ages of 6 to 15. However, only half of Algerian students are enrolled in secondary schools. As of 2015, Algeria has 92 post-secondary institutions, which includes 48 universities.
The Black Spring was a series of protests and political demonstrations by Kabyle activists in the Kabylie region of Algeria in 2001, which were met by repressive and violent police measures and became a potent symbol of Kabyle discontent with the national government. The protests took place against a backdrop of long-standing cultural marginalization of the Highlander Kabyle, a homogeneous Berber linguistic group in Algeria despite the most rigid government-sponsored Arabization measures of the 1960s through the 1980s having been lifted. The name "Black Spring" alludes to the events known as the Berber Spring of the 1980s, in which mainly Kabyle civil society activists challenged the ban on Berber culture then in place, demanding cultural rights and democracy.
Ethnic groups in Algeria include Arabs and Berbers, who represent 99% of the population, of which 75–85% are Arab and about 15–25% are Berber. Algeria also has a minority population of Europeans that represents less than 1% of the population. The minority European population is predominantly of French, Spanish, and Italian descent.
North African Americans are Americans with origins in the region of North Africa. This group includes Americans of Algerian, Egyptian, Libyan, Moroccan, and Tunisian descent.
Berber Americans, American Berbers or Amazigh Americans, are Americans of Berber descent. Although a part of the population of the Maghreb is of Berber descent, only 1,327 people declared Berber ancestry in the 2000 US census. People of Berber origin in United States have created several associations with goal of maintaining and strengthening their language and culture, such as the Amazigh Cultural Association in America (ACAA), The United Amazigh Algerian (UAAA), The Amazigh American Association of Washington, D.C., and the Boston Amazigh Community.
The Algerian Academy of the Amazigh Language is the pre-eminent Algerian council for matters pertaining to the Amazigh language. The academy was officially established on December 27, 2017, by the former president of Algeria Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
  | This year in Africa article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. Contents |
