Tawellemmet language

Tawellemmet
Tawəlləmmət ⵜⵓⵍⵎⵓⵜ تَاوَلَّمَّتْ‎
Native to	Mali, Niger[1]
Region	Sahara
Ethnicity	Tuareg
Native speakers	1.3 million (2021–2022)[1]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Berber Tuareg Southern Tawellemmet
Writing system	Arabic alphabet Latin Tifinagh
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ttq
Glottolog	tawa1286
Location of Tawellemmet

Tawellemmet (Tawəlləmmət) is the largest of the Tuareg languages in the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic family. It is usually one of two languages classed within a language called Tamajaq, the other language being Aïr Tamajeq. Tawellemmet is the language of the Iwellemmeden Tuareg. It is spoken in Mali, Niger and parts of northern Nigeria by approximately 1.3 million people with the largest number of speakers in Niger at 829,000 people.^[2]

• Vowels may also be lengthened as /iː, eː, aː, oː, uː/.^[3]

• /a/ in lax form can be heard as [æ].

• Consonants may also occur as geminated.^[4]

Tawellemmet, as well as other Tuareg languages, has traditionally and recently been written in three orthographies, with one or the other being the dominant orthography in specific contexts. These are Arabic script, Latin script, and Tifinagh (Traditional Tamajeq Tifinagh) script.^[5][6]

Tifinagh has been the ancient and traditional script for writing of Tuareg. However, as Tuareg peoples have been a largely oral society, Tifinagh has only been used primarily for games and puzzles, short graffiti and brief messages.^[7]

Arabic alphabet has come to be adopted with the spread of Islam among Tuareg people from the 7th century onward. Tuareg people, being an integral part of the Trans-Saharan trade, played the most significant role in spreading Islam to indigenous African communities further south, in the Sahel and Sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, Tuareg merchant, scholars, and clerics played a significant role in the teaching of the Arabic alphabet and its eventual adoption as part of what's today known as Ajami convention of writing, for writing of languages such as Songhay, Fula, and Hausa.

Latin has been used for writing of Tawellemmet and other Tuareg languages a lot more recently. Latin-derived scripts have been developed and adopted since the 19th century with the arrival of European Christian missionaries, colonial administrators, and linguists.

The Latin script for Tawellemmet is an "Alphabet". Tuareg languages, including Tawellemmet, are the only languages that use Tifinagh in its original traditional form. The Traditional Tifinagh script is an "Abjad", meaning that vowels are not written or shown in any way, neither are geminated consonants. Only in the final position do letters a (ⴰ), w (ⵓ), y (ⵢ) serve as vowels in some contexts. Elsewhere, for example among the Imazighen (Berbers), the modified neo-Tifinagh, which is a full alphabet, is used. The Arabic script is an "Impure Abjad", meaning that some vowels are written using diacritics and some using actual letters, consonant letters serving as vowels depending on the context.^[8]

Below is a sample text, translation of the Holy Bible, specifically the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1, verses 1 to 4 into Tawellemmet.^[9]

• Languages of Africa