Constitution in Tamazight: “Latin characters not appropriate”, experts say

A host of experts well versed in the linguistics field have been baffled at the drafting of the Constitution, amended and adopted in February 2016, and which has been made available since Wednesday in the Tamazight version both in paper and in digital formats.

Indeed, this has been made possible through a translation, available in Latin characters, provided by the High Commissionership of the Amazighity (HCA).

And therefore on 45 pages, “Tamendawt” or (Constitution in Amazigh), this translated document contains 218 articles, spread over 4 titles and 11 chapters of the fundamental text of the State adopted in February by the two Houses of Parliament is now posted online in the websites of the HCA and the APS news agency.

To recall, in the wake of the promotion of Tamazight, APS launched in May 2015, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, a general information multimedia web site devoted to the Amazigh language, available in three characters (Arabic, Tifinagh and Latin).

These experts asserted that it would have been preferable to translate this Constitution in Arabic as it is closest to Amazigh rather than in Latin characters. They also consider that it is a politically ill-considered position and pointed to the urgent need of establishing the projected Academy of the Amazigh language to end all controversy.

The amended national Constitution stipulates in Article 4 that Tamazight is also a national and official language and the state works for  its promotion and development in all its linguistic varieties in use in the country and is foreseeing, in the framework of the promotion of this language, the creation of an Algerian Academy of the Amazigh language to be duly monitored for a good efficiency by the President of the Republic.

The latter will build on the work of experts and will be in charge of creating the adequate conditions for upgrading Tamazight.

These experts should be guided in their work through the clear-sighted declarations of the President of the Republic Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who, in a message on the occasion of the latest celebration of the Day of Knowledge (Youm El Ilm), had stated that “Amazigh, promoted in 2002 and institutionalized as national language, thanks to the recent constitutional revision, as an official national language, will find as a fundamental component of our national identity, its natural place together with Islam and Arabity as tributaries of the common heritage shared by the Algerian people, adding that the promotion of Tamazight as an official national language is part of the process of strengthening national unity and consolidating social cohesion”.