Re : GZ'W :: adolescent :: jeune fille/fils
c'est un enfant en Darija Marocain BEZ'/BEZ'A, pl BEZ'AWZ'
child
Azul fell-ak a Yidir,
Even in the darija of Algeria some people use [bezz']. In the darija I know (that of Algiers), I think that the word has a pejorative connotation :
Bezz' (pl. bz'uz' ?) : child (in negative meaning : an insignificant creature) :
Eg.
Bezz' kima huwa iqul-li hakda ? === An (insignificant) child like him would tell me that ?
It's probably a substratum from the Amazigh language that once existed in the area of Algiers (?) before Arabic supplanted the area.
Contrary to some languages where substratum words have generally negative meanings, in North Africa, words of the Amazigh substratum used in Arabic may have different meanings (negative and positive).
In the French used in Algeria (and even in metropolitan French), words from Arabic have generally a meaning of derision and even racism : "fatma" (Muslim woman, from the Arabic name "Fatima"), "fellah" (farmer), "smala" (large family), etc. That's the case even in modern Hebrew in which the few Arabic words used in that language have a negative meaning, and through the reading of South African novels written in English, you would notice that many African words used by English-speakers in SA had a racist connotation.
However, I think that this happens only when there is a violent shock between two communities speaking different languages, and one of the communities feels superior to the other one. As for Arabic and Amazigh, I think that it's not really the case. Arabization took a long time to spread in North Africa, and those Arabized North Africans were Berbers themselves, so there was not really a despise towards Amazigh words in popular Arabic, and those words which remained in that Arabic were rather loanwords and not words used as nicknames and / or insults.
On the other hand, there still are many communities in North Africa which have been recently arabized and whose Arabic is still heavily influenced by the Amazigh language, either in pronunciation or in vocabulary. Generally, those communities who keep using a lot of Amazigh words in their Arabic are people who don't really master Arabic, they still don't know the names of many things in Arabic, and that's why they keep calling them in their old language, Amazigh. But with time, the Amazigh words disappear little by little until their language becomes almost completely Arabized, and even in these cases, there are some fields of activity in which the subtratum of Amazigh words remains strong (for example the activities of farming and some local and specific traditions). These words survive because popular Arabic doesn't have equivalents for them, and even if they existed, the Arabized Amazigh didn't learn them, in other words, the Arabic equivalents of these words didn't have enough time to penetrate the Amazigh vocabulary that deep.
I can give you some examples of these areas in which Amazigh words survived in Algerian Arabic :
Traditions :
Twiza (which comes from "Tawiza" or "tiwizi", from the verb "awes" : to help, to participate) : a work of voluntary participation.
Tawsa (also from "awes", to help) : the amount of money given to a bride or a bridegroom in the feast of marriage.
Traditional food :
Berkukes : a kind of couscous with bigger balls.
Keskas : couscous pan (couscoussier)
Nature :
Tirz'ez' : (from arz'az', wasp, onomatopoeic origin), this word means "hornet". In Algerian Arabic, "waps" is "buzelzel".
Tata : chameleon.
Tighighec, tiffaf : names of plants.
Some words of the abstract :
Tamara : misery (in Tuareg and Kabyle this word means force, extreme necessity).
Ar timlilit ma yebgha R'ebbi
Rzut ghef udeg-nnegh === Visit our website :
Tiddukla Tadelsant Imedyazen
