The Tuareg dialect of Ghat in 1850
Abstract
During a short stay in Ghat in 1850, the British explorer James Richardson arranged for Muhammad Sharif to translate a list of words and phrases into the Tuareg variety spoken by the Uraghen tribe of the area, variably termed Tamahaq or Tamajeq by its speakers at the time. This article provides a transcription, retranscription, retranslation, and analysis of this previously unpublished material. The results provide data relevant to sociolinguistic variation in Ghat, proving the importance of variation even within a single idiolect, including for reflexes of the key Tuareg shibboleth *z > h vs. > z, ž. These phrases also reveal some morphological archaisms not otherwise attested in Tuareg, most notably traces of a person marking system matching the Ghadamsi “future”.