Tamazight of Djerba, Chelha of Djerba, or Djerbi (in Berber: eddwi jjerbi or Tadjerbit) is a Berber language of the Eastern Maghreb, spoken on the island of Djerba, in Tunisia. It is a component of what is regularly denominated Tunisian “Chelha” or "Shilha" in the south of the country.
The Tamazight of Djerba belongs to the group of Zenet languages of the East, to which also belong the other Berber dialects of Tunisia as well as that of the city of Zuwarah in Libya.
Geographical distribution
At the end of the 19th century, Tamazight (or Berber) was apparently well established and spoken through the island. It was then possible to connect the dialect of Djerba to other Berber-speaking areas of Maghreb, and many orientalists like Adolphe de Calassanti Motilynski or René Basset (father of André Basset) were able to collect data, in particular tales and legends in vernacular. However, in the same time began the first significant statutory decline of Berber, in Djerba and more generally across the whole Maghreb. Different factors explain such a process, as the French sociolinguist Francis Manzano has pointed out. The reflection involves both French and Arabic. It also goes beyond Tunisia by suggesting a reflection on a North African scale.
On the one hand, French had reached rural populations more and more from the end of the 19th century, and the beginning of the 20th. This concerned men from Djerba,in contact with the bases of spoken French of the protectorate, in particular through commercial activities, an important activity of many Djerbians who emigrate through Tunisia and France, like “Kabyles” (Algeria) and “Chleuhs” (Morocco) migrants. At the same time, colonial education (although with shortcomings), combined with new administrative necessities, affected more and more efficiently the young people of the island. Conscription (increasingly important, with the two world wars that were to follow), also favored the growing learning of French by men. This language therefore began to play the role of a new koine as the colonial Maghreb depended heavily on metropolitan France and the whole French colonial empire.
In the 19th century, the influence of dialectal Arabic was limited to geographic sectors of contact between rural Berber areas and more urban areas, with an Arabic-speaking growing population. It is, paradoxically, colonization in Algeria (or the French protectorates in Morocco and Tunisia) which allowed the Arabic language to benefit from new channels of diffusion and penetration within the Berber continuum. In addition, Arab was an estimated written language (notably in religious and administrative matters), and this favored its dissemination. The anti-colonial struggle indeed required the use of a written language opposable to French, something impossible for Berber in this period. Of course, the fact that Arabic is closely associated with Islam was a factor of progress, as it made Arabic the main language of the identity response among regional elites. All these facts, accumulated and amplified, could therefore only weaken the Berber language and prepare the current sociolinguistic landscape. From this complex process resulted that Tamazight of Djerba was variably spoken during the 20th century in seven main localities of the south and east of the island: El May, Cedriane (or Sedriyan), Mahboubine, Sedouikech, Ajim (or Adjim) and Guellala, with strong decline during the second part of the century, in most of these villages (see below the study of Francis Manzano). The main exception was Guellala where some studies and reviews mentioned regularly a clear reservoir
Recent information on Berber dialects in Tunisia and the current situation are imprecise. But we are better informed about the state and the realities of the Berber-speaking communities of the island during the first half of the 20th century, through the generalist works of René Stablo and those of the French dialectologist André Basset. At the end of the sixties, linguists and sociolinguists took up observations on the language practices of Berber of Tunisia and Djerba, while linguistics and sociolinguistics were actively spreading in Tunisia and more generally in Maghrib. The whole documentation highlights a declining language, little (or not at all) correlated with a positive collective consciousness of identity. It is, in most cases, a minority language, often stigmatized, and unprotected by the institutions or the general culture of the State.
Linguistic characteristics
Geodiachronical aspects
Francis Manzano, on the basis of personal surveys and various previous works, carried out an analysis of the sociolinguistic landscape of the island at the beginning of the 1990s.