Native to Libya ISO 639-3 jbn | Native speakers 140,000 (2006) Glottolog nafu1238 | |
Language family Afro-Asiatic
Berber
Eastern?
Nafusi | ||
Nafusi (also spelled Nefusi, Berber name: Maziɣ or Tanfusit) is a Berber language spoken in the Nafusa Mountains (Drar n infusen), a large area in northwestern Libya. Its primary speakers are the Ibadite communities around Jadu, Nalut (Lalut) and Yafran.
The dialect of Yefren in the east differs somewhat from that of Nalut and Jadu in the west. A number of Old Nafusi phrases appear in Ibadite manuscripts as early as the 12th century, representing some of the earliest manuscript records of Berber.
The Ethnologue entry includes nearby Zuara Berber, Matmata Berber, and Djerbi under the rubric "Nafusi", which corresponds neither to local nor to academic usage of the term.
The dialect of Jadu is described in some detail in Beguinot (1931). Motylinski (1898) describes the dialect of Jadu and Nalut as spoken by a student from Yefren.
Nafusi shares several innovations with the Zenati languages, but, unlike them, maintains prefix vowels before open syllables; for example, ufəs "hand" < *afus, rather than Zenati fus; it appears especially closely related to Sokni and Siwi to its east.