Numidian language
East Numidian, also known as Old Berber, was the language of the Maesulians of the eastern part of ancient Numidia during the Pre-Roman era, in what is now Algeria.
The language is scarcely attested and can be confidently identified only as Afro-Asiatic; however, the Maesulians were ethnically Berber, and it is supposed that East Numidian was, therefore, a Berber language. The Berber branch of Afro-Asiatic is sometimes called Numidian-Berber, as it is not certain whether East Numidian would fall within the modern Berber languages or form a sister branch to them. Indeed, it is widely supposed that it forms a group of its own, as there is no trace of the noun-case system shared by the modern Berber languages. However, Proto-Berber is theorised to have no grammatical case either.
References
- ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Numidian". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- Aikhenvald & Militarev, 1991. 'Livijsko-guanchskie jazyki', Jazyki Azii i Afriki, vol. 4, pp. 148–266.
