Learn a spoken-only language

[Ayrossi]

Hello,

I just started my journey into learning Tamazight which is a language spoken in a few cities in Morocco.

The issue is the following:

There are no study books for that language, literally 0.
There are a lot of different dialects with huge differences.
There is a Tamazight alphabet but even most of the locals can't read or write it.

It's essentially a spoken language, nobody really writes it. They tend to just write in arabic ( which I can read ).

How would someone approach learning such a language?
My goal is to be able to understand it completely and in a second phase to be able to speak it.

My tools:

A native speaker with who I can have conversations every single day.
Tamazight music ( I don't understand anything ).
A few ( 5-10 ) movies.

What's the fastest way to approach language learning in this case?
Moving there is not an option, obviously, otherwise it would be easier.

In other words, what's the fastest way to learn to understand a language?

Thanks in advance!

[Deinonysus]

https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu is generally a good place to look for obscure language resources. It looks like there is a Tamazight textbook available from the peace corps (free to download).

https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/language ... zight.html

[Xmmm]

This guy learned how to speak Arabic in a year without learning to read or write.



p.s. The video has a lot of blah-blah-blah in the beginning. You won't miss much if you fast forward to where the tutoring sessions start. But the video is cool because his progress is traced throughout the year and we see how he does at the end.

[Ayrossi]

https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu is generally a good place to look for obscure language resources. It looks like there is a Tamazight textbook available from the peace corps (free to download).

https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/language ... zight.html

Thanks a lot!
Unfortunately it is not exactly the same dialect and there are some considerable differences.

This guy learned how to speak Arabic in a year without learning to read or write.



p.s. The video has a lot of blah-blah-blah in the beginning. You won't miss much if you fast forward to where the tutoring sessions start. But the video is cool because his progress is traced throughout the year and we see how he does at the end.

Thanks! I will look at it

[nooj]

Berber languages actually do have resources to learn them. A pitiful amount compared to European languages of a comparable size, but they do exist. Depending on which variety you're talking about. So the first question is, which variety specifically do you want to learn? Choose one.

Tamazight, the cover all term for several Moroccan Berber languages (Central Atlas Tamazight, Tarifit and Tashelhit), is not only spoken in a few cities, it is spoken all over the place in Morocco, including much of the Moroccan rural heartland. Something like 30% of Morocco has a Berber language for a mother language. In fact Berber languages can be heard pretty much anywhere in Morocco due to the massive immigration from rural towns to cities. e.g. Marrakesh.

Incidentally, due to the vagaries of the economic situation, it is often Berber speakers who make up a significant proportion of the immigrants to Europe, not only Arab speakers. Nowdays of course most Berber speakers are bilingual in Arabic, but this was not necessarily the case 40 or 50 years ago when the first Moroccan immigrants from the Rif started coming to Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy etc: some only spoke Tarifit.

[Ayrossi]

That is completely true.

It's even spoken in Algeria and other places for sure.
I had to be more clear about that part.

Most of the online resources are for Tashelhit.
The tamazight I wanna learn is the dialect spoken in Nador.
When I started I found some videos on learning Tamazight on youtube and I started studying some vocabulary.

Proudly I went to that person I know and showed off my freshly learnt vocabulary. She didn't even know most of the words I studied despite being a native Tamazight speaker

[rdearman]

Ayrossi pointed out they speak Arabic, French & Dutch. So recommendations for resources in languages other than English are possible.

[nooj]

Unfortunately you don't read Catalan or Spanish, but I urge you to use Google Translate or any other means, because these are invaluable resources.

First and foremost, Tiġri n tutlayt tamaziġt: tarayt tamezwarut, an introductory textbook for Tarifit. It was created for and by the local government of Melilla, autonomous city of Spain located on the North African coast. Thus the Melillan dialect is bit different from the dialect of Nador that you want to learn, but it is a matter of using the help of your native speaker to modify what is in the textbook. The book is completely available online here and is written in Spanish.

Next, there is a comparative study of the grammar of Catalan and Tarifit, written in Catalan. It is part of a series of comparative grammar studies, funded by the government of Catalonia, of the languages of immigrants who come to Catalonia.

LAMUELA, Xavier (2002): El berber. Estudi comparatiu entre la gramàtica del català i la del berber o amazig. Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya

Next, there is an introductory grammar of Tarifit also written in Catalan:

Tilmatine, M., El Molghy, A., Castellanos, C., y Banhakeia, H. (1995). La llengua rifenya. Tutlayt
Tarifit. Barcelona: Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona.

Much of the content is freely available on Google Books here.

[Ayrossi]

Thanks those resources are really useful.

I will definitely use them, especially that first one.
That's a good point to start with, let's try to work through that book to kickstart my journey.