Teggargrent: listening to the language of the ksar

Spoken by fewer people each generation, the Berber language of Ouargla carries words for wells, palms and winds that exist nowhere else.

Teggargrent belongs to the Zenati family of Berber languages, cousins of the speech of the Mzab and Gourara. In the ksar it was the language of home, market and garden.

We are building an open word list, beginning with the vocabulary of the palm grove — the names of date varieties, tools and stages of the harvest.

Readers are invited to send recordings. A single grandmother’s voice can hold a hundred words no dictionary has yet written down.

“When a word is lost, a way of seeing the oasis is lost with it.”