Numidian language
East Numidian | |
---|---|
Old Berber | |
Native to | ancient Numidia and ancient Africa |
Region | Limited to the islands |
Ethnicity | Maesulians |
Era | fl. ca. 200 BCE |
Afro-Asiatic
|
|
Libyco-Berber script (Proto-Tifinagh) | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | nxm |
Linguist list
|
nxm |
Glottolog | numi1241 [1] |
East Numidian, also known as Old Berber, was the language of the Maesulians of the eastern part of ancient Numidia during the Pre-Roman era, in what is now Algeria.[citation needed]
The language is scarcely attested and can be confidently identified only as Afro-Asiatic; however, the Maesulians were ethnically Berber, and it is supposed that East Numidian was, therefore, a Berber language. The Berber branch of Afro-Asiatic is sometimes called Numidian-Berber, as it is not certain whether East Numidian would fall within the modern Berber languages or form a sister branch to them. Indeed, it is widely supposed that it forms a group of its own, as there is no trace of the noun-case system shared by the modern Berber languages. However, Proto-Berber is theorised to have no grammatical case either.
References
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Aikhenvald & Militarev, 1991. 'Livijsko-guanchskie jazyki', Jazyki Azii i Afriki, vol. 4, pp. 148–266.