Language and script

Tamazight on television and online

Where the language can be heard today

Since 2010 there has been a state channel of its own. The larger part of language practice nevertheless happens on YouTube and in group chats.

A language lives by being heard. For Tamazight a great deal has grown up for this in two decades: a television channel of its own, radio programmes and a lively online landscape.

Television

Tamazight TV (in Morocco a channel of the state broadcaster SNRT) has been on air since 2010 and serves the three large forms of the country: Tarifit, Central Atlas Tamazight and Tachelhit. The programming ranges from news through talk shows and series to documentaries. Alongside it, Al Aoula, the first Moroccan channel, runs individual programs in Amazigh. In Algeria there is a corresponding offering with TV4, above all in Kabyle.

Radio

Moroccan radio has been broadcasting Amazigh programs for a long time, historically in separate slots for the three forms. For many older people in the diaspora that was for decades the only regular connection to the spoken language: today the same thing runs via streams.

The internet

The practically most important part. On YouTube there are music channels, comedy, sermons, wedding videos, language lessons; on TikTok and Instagram short formats that are often bilingual. That is exactly where you hear how the Tamazight of the Rif is really spoken today: with Arabic and European bits mixed in, not in the smoothed form of a textbook.

What to watch out for

Almost everything you find is in one particular form. A channel from Agadir gives you Tachelhit, one from Nador the Tamazight of the Rif. For the ear both are valuable, for repeating aloud only one of them. So when you search, pay attention to the place it comes from, not just to the word "Tamazight".

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