The Amazigh language, known as Tamazight, became an official language in 2011.
Many are bilingual in Nafusi (an Amazigh language) and Arabic; most are Sunni Muslims.
Amazigh discontent over the policy of Arabization, however, has prompted the government to restore Amazigh language and literature studies at a number of universities.
The campaign in favour of the Amazigh language dovetailed naturally with the broader struggle for civil liberties, gaining fresh impetus in the 1980s with the Berber cultural movement.
Punic was influenced throughout its history by the Amazigh language and continued to be used by North African peasants until the 6th century ce.
The Tifinagh letters of the Amazigh language can be seen in inscriptions and graffiti all over the Nafusa region in defiance of the regime.
The first book to appear in the Amazigh language since 17 February is a children's alphabet book published by the newly established National Foundation for Amazigh Culture in Yefren.
The Moors and the Tuareg speak and write Arabic, although the Tuareg have also retained their traditional Amazigh language and their distinctive writing system, tifinagh, which is derived from ancient Libyan.
An early milestone in Hausa studies was the 1934 publication of a dictionary compiled by the Rev. G.P. Bargery; it had about 40,000 entries and demonstrated the remarkable number of loanwords from Arabic, Kanuri (a Nilo-Saharan language), and Tamajaq (the Amazigh language spoken by the Tuareg).
Some conjugational paradigms of today's languages (and also of extinct ones such as Egyptian and Semitic Akkadian) derive from this suffix conjugation, including practically all paradigms in Egyptian, the Akkadian stative, the West Semitic perfective, and the qualitative in Kabyle (an Amazigh language).
