Langues & Cultures
Volume 7, Numéro 1, Pages 168-185
2026-04-15
Revitalizing Zenet Through School In Timimoun
Authors : Bouhania Bachir .
Abstract
In Timimoun, a south Algerian administrative department, two official language varieties are available for use to the Zenet speech community, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Tamazight. MSA is taught at school, used by the mass media and all official correspondences. Tamazight, however, is still confronting several challenges at the formal and informal/societal levels, particularly that it is not the local Berber variety. The actual paper attempts at providing an up-to-date overview of the sociolinguistic changes underway in Timimoun since Tamazight got its official language status by the Algerian central authorities during the 1990s. Its implementation at school and diffusion by local and national radio broadcasts gave a remarkable impetus to its spread and recognition. Yet, assessing the evolution of Zenet (Taznatit) both in public institutions and at the societal level necessitated the use of objective figures like statistics and percentages; hence, the research design is quantitative while the methodology is mostly statistical. Data were supplied by formal (National Academy of Education) and informal (Illiteracy Eradication Program) schools, and the Office for National Statistics. A striking fact is that the Academy of National Education increased the number of public schools teaching Tamazight. Informal institutions like Iqraa’, which aims at the complete eradication of illiteracy in Algeria, teach Tamazight exponentially. As a conclusion based on the results of the research and data, one can infer that Zenet is an endangered Tamazight language variety not formally and officially, but socially and social psychologically.
Keywords
Adrar ; Algeria ; Endangered language ; ethnolinguistic vitality ; Timimoun ; Zenet
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