Riffian (Tarifit) Alphabet & Letters

Riffian, called Tarifit by its speakers and often simply Tamaziɣt, is the Berber (Amazigh) language of the Rif, the mountains and coast of northern Morocco around Al Hoceima, Nador and Driouch, and of the Spanish city of Melilla. It has no single official spelling. In Morocco the state teaches Standard Moroccan Tamazight in Tifinagh, while Riffian speakers themselves, above all the large community in Europe, write their language mostly in Latin letters, from careful dictionary spelling to quick phone messages.

The alphabet here follows the Riffian Latin exemplar set in CLDR: 31 letters, A a to Ẓ ẓ, in its listed order. Seven are not in the English alphabet: ḍ ɛ ɣ ḥ ṣ ṭ ẓ. Each sorts right after its plain partner (ḍ after d, ɛ after e, ɣ after g), and dictionaries keep them apart. There is no o and no v: like its relatives, Riffian has three full vowels, a, i and u, plus a short neutral vowel written e. P turns up only in a few borrowed words.

What the special Riffian letters sound like

Some ordinary letters have a value different from English: c is always the sound of English sh; x is a rough sound in the back of the throat like the ch of Scottish loch; q is a k made deeper in the throat; and j is the soft sound of French j.

ɣ is a voiced sound at the back of the mouth, close to the French r and to Arabic ghayn, as in Tamaziɣt and Imaziɣen, the Amazigh people. ɛ writes the throaty sound of Arabic ʿayn, and ḥ a breathy h pushed from the throat; both are frequent in words Riffian shares with Arabic. The dot below marks an emphatic consonant, said with the back of the tongue pulled toward the throat so the whole syllable sounds darker: ḍ ṭ ṣ ẓ. They are separate sounds, not decoration, and a plain d or t in their place spells a different word or no word at all.

How Tarifit sounds: th, l that turns to r

Riffian softens many of its stops: a single t is usually said like the th of thin and a d like the th of this. The careful spelling does not mark this, but everyday writing often does, which is why you will see Tharifith and Thamazight alongside Tarifit and Tamaziɣt. Both are the same words.

The best-known Riffian sound change is that an old l has become r in many words. Where other Berber languages say aɣyul for donkey, Riffian says aɣyur, and the famous wedding refrain Ralla buya begins with the word other Moroccans say as lalla, lady. Many speakers also drop an r at the end of a syllable and lengthen the vowel before it, and in many varieties a double ll is heard as a long dj. These changes are what make Riffian sound so different to speakers of Tachelhit or Central Atlas Tamazight, although the grammar is shared.

The hyphen ties small pronoun and direction words to the word before them in careful writing, as in the pan-Berber greeting Azul fell-awen, and quotations take the guillemets « … » learned at school in Morocco, or the English “ … ”.

Tifinagh, the symbol ⵣ and the Rif flag emoji

Since 2003 Morocco has taught Tamazight in Neo-Tifinagh, and road signs, schoolbooks and public buildings in the Rif now carry it next to Arabic. Written in Tifinagh, Tarifit is ⵜⴰⵔⵉⴼⵉⵜ and azul (hello) is ⴰⵣⵓⵍ. The full Tifinagh alphabet is in the Standard Moroccan Tamazight collection; Riffian is also sometimes written in Arabic letters.

A Tifinagh letter people often copy is ⵣ, yaz, the z of Amaziɣ, the word for a Berber person, often explained as "free man". It stands red in the middle of the Amazigh flag, on blue, green and yellow stripes, and it turns up in Riffian bios and comments. People also search for a Rif flag emoji, meaning either the Amazigh flag or the flag of the Republic of the Rif of the 1920s, but Unicode has neither. The usual stand-ins are ⵣ with the hearts 💙💚💛, or the Moroccan flag 🇲🇦.

How to type Riffian letters on a keyboard and phone

The easiest way is a Tamazight (Latin) or Berber Latin keyboard layout, which puts ḍ ɛ ɣ ḥ ṣ ṭ ẓ on their own keys or behind a dead key; such layouts exist for computers and phones. Without one, copy the letters from this page.

In Microsoft Word, type the code and press Alt+X: 1E0D ḍ, 025B ɛ, 0263 ɣ, 1E25 ḥ, 1E63 ṣ, 1E6D ṭ, 1E93 ẓ; for the capitals 1E0C Ḍ, 0190 Ɛ, 0194 Ɣ, 1E24 Ḥ, 1E62 Ṣ, 1E6C Ṭ, 1E92 Ẓ. On a Mac, the ABC Extended input source gives the dot below with Option+X followed by the letter; ɛ and ɣ come from the Character Viewer (Control+Command+Space, search "open e" or "gamma"). In HTML use numeric references such as ḍ for ḍ, ɛ for ɛ and ɣ for ɣ.

In quick messages many Riffian speakers write gh for ɣ, 3 or ε for ɛ, 7 for ḥ and th for the soft t. That is readable, but watch the look-alikes when you want the real letters: ɛ and ɣ are Latin letters, not the Greek ε (epsilon) and γ (gamma), and search and spell-checkers treat them as different characters.

Where Riffian is spoken

Riffian is spoken in northern Morocco 🇲🇦, where CLDR estimates about 1.8 million speakers, and by a large community in the Netherlands 🇳🇱, about 210,000 by the same estimate; other counts run higher. Many Moroccan families in the Netherlands and in Belgium 🇧🇪 have their roots in the Rif, and Riffian is a home language of Melilla in Spain 🇪🇸, so prices in Riffian conversations may be in euros, €, or in Moroccan dirhams, written DH.

Tamazight became an official language of Morocco in the 2011 constitution. Riffian's closest relatives with their own collections are Central Atlas Tamazight, Tachelhit, Standard Moroccan Tamazight and Kabyle in Algeria; the Morocco and Netherlands collections have the flags, food and other emoji of those countries.