Matmata Berber

 ( Berber Languages ) 

Matmata Berber is a Zenati languages Berber languages dialect spoken around the town of Matmâta in southern Tunisia, and in the villages of Taoujjout, Tamezret and Zrawa. According to Ben Mamou's lexicon, Tamezret (Tunisie) et son dialecte berbère its speakers call it Tmaziɣṯ or Eddwi nna, meaning "our speech", while it is called Shelha or Jbali (جبالي) in local Tunisian Arabic dialects. The total population speaking this variety was estimated at 3,726 in 1975.

Documentation of Matmata Berber is limited. A collection of fairy tales in this variety was published by Stumme in 1900.Hans Stumme, 1900, Märchen der Berbern von Tamzratt im Süd-Tünisien, Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs Buchhandlung. Basset (1950)André Basset, 1950, "Les parlers berbères". Initiation à la Tunisie. Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, pp. 220-226. provides a few dialect maps of Tunisian Berber including this region, showing lexical variation, while Penchoen (1968) offers a general discussion of Tunisian Berber and the effects of schooling. Collins (1981) discusses its verbal morphology along with that of other Tunisian Berber varieties. The only general grammatical sketch and vocabulary available is the website put together by Larbi Ben Mamou, a native speaker of the language.

Ethnologue treats it as part of the Nafusi language spoken in northwestern Libya, although the two belong to different subgroups of Berber according to Kossmann (1999).A separate language code in Ethnologue 13, duh, was retired and reassigned to a Bhil language in India.