The Amazigh-Catalan dictionary is here to stay
Amazigh flag. .
Salem Zenia, Amazigh journalist and co-writer of the online dictionary. Faber Residency.
Amazigh festivity in Catalonia. Casa Amaziga. .
The Catalan PEN has recently launched an online Amazigh-Catalan-Amazigh dictionary with the help of the Catalan Administrative Office of Linguistic Policies.
Carles Murcia and Salem Zenia are the authors of the new online dictionary, which was originally published in 2016 and is now available online.
Salem Zenia is a PEN poet, a journalist and an Amazigh activist who has lived in Barcelona as a refugee since 2007.
Zenia was hosted by the Catalan PEN within the Refugee Writer Program, which is part of the International Cities of Refugee Network (ICORN).
Ester Franquesa, the Catalan director of Linguistic policies, states that the dictionary “is a tool to improve the integration of the Berber community in Catalonia. Besides, it offers native Catalans the chance to learn the Berber language as well”.
According to a survey performed in 2013, Amazigh is the third most spoken language in Catalonia, with more than 42.000 native speakers.
Among these speakers, there are a couple of outstanding writers in Catalan language: this is the case of Najat el Hachmi, author of novels like “The last Patriarch” (translated into many European languages), and Saïd el Kadaoui, psychologist and writer of the novel “NO”.
The above mentioned online dictionary has Amazigh words written both in Latin alphabet and in Amazigh alphabet, and it also includes plenty of useful references to words that are part of the Tunisian and Lybian Amazigh dialects.
As Catalan PEN’s president Carme Arenas sees it, this dicctionary “offers the Berber language the opportunity to become normitivised”, especially because it has up to 20.000 entries and a detailed grammar treaty.
Most of the Catalan Amazigh community originally comes from Morocco and Algeria, countries where their identity is menaced by the Arab majority and governments.
Aziz Baha, president of the institution Casa Amaziga (Amazigh Home) claims that “Arabization in the Amazigh countries continues when the Amazighs settle in Catalonia, where they are automatically identified as Arab Muslims”.
This dictionnary might be a step towards a better understanding of the Amazigh identity and its adaptation to the Catalan society.
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