Amazigh Alphabet (Tifinagh)

Standard Moroccan Tamazight (Tamaziɣt, in Tifinagh ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ) is the common written form of Morocco's Amazigh (Berber) languages. It was built by the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture, IRCAM, founded in 2001, from the three big regional languages: Tachelhit in the southwest, Central Atlas Tamazight in the middle of the country and Riffian in the north. Children learn it at school, and it is the Tamazight of road signs, ministries, television news and official documents.

In 2003 Morocco chose Tifinagh as its script, in the modern form often called Neo-Tifinagh, rather than Latin or Arabic letters. IRCAM fixed one standard alphabet of 33 letters. CLDR lists 31 of them as single characters, and the symbol grid above shows them in the official order. The other two, ⴳⵯ (gʷ) and ⴽⵯ (kʷ), are written as ⴳ or ⴽ followed by the small mark ⵯ, so ⵯ is included here too; without it you cannot spell a word as common as ⴰⵙⴳⴳⵯⴰⵙ (asggʷas, year).

Consonant names begin with ya: ⴱ is yab, ⵎ yam, ⵣ yaz. Vowel names are ⴰ ya, ⵉ yi, ⵓ yu and ⴻ yey. Unicode uses these names, so the code chart calls ⵣ TIFINAGH LETTER YAZ. The Tifinagh block of Unicode also holds Tuareg and historical letters such as ⵞ, ⵒ and the word separator ⵰; the Moroccan standard does not use them, so they are not in this collection.

What each Tifinagh letter sounds like

The vowels are ⴰ a, ⵉ i and ⵓ u. A fourth vowel letter, ⴻ (yey), writes a short neutral e like the a in English about; it belongs to the alphabet, but standard spelling writes it only in a few places and leaves it out of most words. ⵡ (w) and ⵢ (y) are the semivowels.

Most consonants match their Latin spelling: ⴱ b, ⴷ d, ⴼ f, ⴳ g, ⵀ h, ⴽ k, ⵍ l, ⵎ m, ⵏ n, ⵔ r, ⵙ s, ⵜ t, ⵣ z. A few need a word: ⵛ (yash) is sh, written c in Latin spelling; ⵊ (yazh) is the soft j of French jour; ⵅ (yakh) is the rough ch of Scottish loch, written x; ⵇ (yaq) is a k made far back in the throat; ⵖ (yagh) is the voiced throaty ɣ, close to a French r, the last consonant of ⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖ (Amaziɣ). ⵃ (ḥ) is a breathy h from the throat and ⵄ (ɛ) the Arabic ʿayn; both appear mostly in words shared with Arabic.

Five letters write the emphatic consonants, said with the back of the tongue pulled toward the throat so the whole syllable sounds darker: ⴹ ḍ, ⵕ ṛ, ⵚ ṣ, ⵟ ṭ and ⵥ ẓ. Each one comes straight after its plain partner in the alphabet (ⴷ ⴹ, ⵔ ⵕ, ⵙ ⵚ, ⵜ ⵟ, ⵣ ⵥ), and in Latin transcription they carry a dot below. ⴳⵯ and ⴽⵯ are g and k said with rounded lips.

How Tifinagh spelling works

Tifinagh is written left to right, one letter per sound. It has no capital and small letters and no accents, so the alphabet is the same on a road sign and in a school exercise book. A long consonant is written by doubling the letter, like the mm of ⵜⴰⵏⵎⵎⵉⵔⵜ (tanmmirt, thank you), and length can tell two words apart.

One spelling serves speakers from all three regions, who read it aloud in their own way. Where Riffian and Middle Atlas speech soften t or k, the standard still writes the hard letter, so ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ is spelled alike whether it is said tamaziɣt or thamazighth. That is also why the feminine ending stays visible: ⴰⵔⴳⴰⵣ argaz, man, and ⵜⴰⵎⵖⴰⵔⵜ tamɣart, woman, with t at both ends.

Tifinagh texts take their punctuation from Latin writing: the full stop, comma, question and exclamation marks of any keyboard. Quotations often use the guillemets « … », as in French and Arabic writing in Morocco.

How to type the Amazigh alphabet: Tifinagh keyboard and codes

On Windows, add a Tifinagh keyboard layout (Tifinagh (Basic) or Tifinagh (Extended)) in the language settings; the Ebrima font that ships with Windows displays every letter. On Android, Gboard offers Tamazight in Tifinagh. Without a keyboard, copy the letters from the grid above.

In Microsoft Word, type the code and press Alt+X: 2D30 ⴰ, 2D31 ⴱ, 2D33 ⴳ, 2D37 ⴷ, 2D39 ⴹ, 2D3B ⴻ, 2D3C ⴼ, 2D3D ⴽ, 2D40 ⵀ, 2D43 ⵃ, 2D44 ⵄ, 2D45 ⵅ, 2D47 ⵇ, 2D49 ⵉ, 2D4A ⵊ, 2D4D ⵍ, 2D4E ⵎ, 2D4F ⵏ, 2D53 ⵓ, 2D54 ⵔ, 2D55 ⵕ, 2D56 ⵖ, 2D59 ⵙ, 2D5A ⵚ, 2D5B ⵛ, 2D5C ⵜ, 2D5F ⵟ, 2D61 ⵡ, 2D62 ⵢ, 2D63 ⵣ, 2D65 ⵥ, and 2D6F for ⵯ. On a Mac, open the Character Viewer with Control+Command+Space and search for "Tifinagh". In HTML use numeric references such as ⵣ for ⵣ.

Several letters look like characters from other scripts: ⵔ like a Latin O, ⵏ like a vertical bar, ⵙ like a circled dot, ⵀ like Φ. Search engines and screen readers treat these as different characters, so a word built from look-alikes will not be found. If a letter shows up as an empty box, the device lacks a Tifinagh font, not the text.

ⵣ, the Amazigh flag and Yennayer

The best-known letter is ⵣ, yaz, the z of Amaziɣ, the Amazigh people's own name for themselves, often explained as "free man". It stands in red in the middle of the Amazigh flag, adopted by the World Amazigh Congress in 1997, on stripes of blue, green and yellow, usually read as sea, mountains and desert. Unicode has no Amazigh flag emoji, so people paste ⵣ with the hearts 💙💚💛 instead, or simply ⵣ next to 🇲🇦.

A popular day for ⵣ online is Yennayer (ⵢⵏⵏⴰⵢⵔ), the Amazigh New Year in mid-January, which Morocco celebrated as a public holiday for the first time in 2024. The greeting is ⴰⵙⴳⴳⵯⴰⵙ ⴰⵎⴳⴳⴰⵣ (asggʷas ameggaz), happy new year. The Amazigh calendar counts its years from 950 BC by convention, so January 2026 opened the year 2976.

Where Standard Moroccan Tamazight is used

Standard Moroccan Tamazight belongs to Morocco 🇲🇦, where CLDR lists an approximate literate, functional population of 8.2 million for Standard Moroccan Tamazight—people able to read and write it and comfortable enough to use it with computers. Tamazight became an official language beside Arabic in the 2011 constitution, and an organic law of 2019 set out its use in schools, courts and public life. Public buildings show their names in Arabic and Tifinagh, often with French, and ⵜⴰⴳⵍⴷⵉⵜ ⵏ ⵍⵎⵖⵔⵉⴱ (Tagldit n Lmɣrib) is the Kingdom of Morocco. Prices are in dirhams, which have no Unicode sign and are written DH or MAD.

Its spoken sources have their own collections: Tachelhit, in Tifinagh and in Latin letters, Central Atlas Tamazight and Riffian. Kabyle in Algeria is a close relative written mostly in Latin letters, and Tamashek, the Tuareg language, kept an older Tifinagh in use for centuries. Moroccan Arabic, Arabic and French are the other languages of the same streets, and the Morocco collection has the country's flag, food and landmark emoji.