Tamazight – ALA-LC transliteration system
Tamazight virtual keyboard
The Tamazight virtual keyboard allows you to enter characters with a click of your mouse. There’s no need to change your keyboard layout anymore. The transliteration of each supported character is displayed on the right side of the character. You can then directly transliterate your text from one script to the other according to the selected transliteration system.
Language overview
Central Morocco Tamazight (tamaziɣt, ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ), also known as Braber, or simply Tamazight, is a Berber language spoken in central Morocco where it counts about 3 million speakers. Tamazight is written in Tifinagh alphabet (of which a version has been standardized by the Royal institute of the Amazigh culture in 2003), and can be translitterated in both Latin alphabet and Arabic script. Tamazight is the official language of Morocco, alongside Arabic.
Transliteration system: ALA-LC
ALA-LC is a set of standards for the romanization, or representation of texts in other writing systems using the Latin alphabet. This label includes the initials of the American Library Association (ALA) and the Library of Congress (LC). This system is used to represent bibliographic names by North American libraries and the British Library, as well as in publications throughout the English-speaking world.
This transliteration system follows, with minimal exceptions, the romanization method used by the Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe (IRCAM) for texts published in the Central Atlas Tamazight and Standard Tamazight languages of Morocco, using neo-Tifinagh script. Characters needed to support the Tachelhit and Tarifit languages have also been included, thus the scope of this tool should be adequate to cover all living Moroccan Tamazight languages that use the neo-Tifinagh script.
Books
Grammaire du berbère
by Fatima Sadiqi, editors L’Harmattan (2000)
[
Amazon.com]
Grammaire berbère : Rifain, tamazight, chleuh, kabyle
by Michel Quitout, editors L’Harmattan (1997)
[ Amazon.com]
Tamazight links
- Tifinagh fonts
- How to count in Tamazight
- Tifinagh alphabet
- ALA-LC romanization system for Moroccan Tamazight (.pdf)
Other supported languages
The other supported languages are: Abkhaz, Adyghe, Altai, Armenian (eastern, classical), Armenian (western), Azerbaijani (Azeri), Bashkir, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Carrier, Cherokee, Chuvash, Erzya, Georgian, Greek, Ingush, Inuktitut, Japanese, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Moldovan, Old Church Slavonic, Ossetian, Russian, Serbian, Tigrinya, Udmurt, Ukrainian, Vai, and Yakut.