Arab-Berber
Arab-Berber
Ethnolinguistic group of the Maghreb
Arab-Berbers (Arabic: العرب والبربر al-ʿarab wa-l-barbar) are a population of the Maghreb,[citation needed] a vast region of North Africa in the western part of the Arab world along the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Arab-Berbers are people of mixed Arab and Berber origin,[citation needed] most of whom speak a variant of Maghrebi Arabic as their native language, some also speak various Berber languages. Many Arab-Berbers identify[citation needed] primarily as Arab and secondarily as Berber.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
The Arab-Berber identity came into being[citation needed] as a direct result of the Arab conquest of North Africa, and the intermarriage between the Arabs who immigrated to those regions and local mainly Roman Africans and other Berber people;[citation needed] in addition, Banu Hilal and Sulaym Arab tribes originating in the Arabian Peninsula invaded the region and intermarried with the local rural mainly Berber populations, and were a major factor in the linguistic, cultural and ethnic Arabization of the Maghreb.[7][8]
Arab-Berbers form the core and vast majority of the populations[citation needed] of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia, and about one-third of the population of Mauritania.[9][10]
Arab-Berbers primarily speak variants of Maghrebi Arabic[citation needed] which form a dialect continuum of more-or-less mutually intelligible varieties known as (Darija or Derja (Arabic: دارجة). which means "everyday/colloquial language".[11] Maghrebi Arabic preserves a significant Berber, Latin[12][13][14] and possibly Neo-Punic[15][16] substratum which makes them both quite distinct and largely mutually unintelligible to other varieties of Arabic spoken outside Maghreb. Moreover, they also have many loanwords from French,[17] Turkish,[17] Italian[17] and the languages of Spain.[17] Modern Standard Arabic is used as the lingua franca.