Tachelhit Tifinagh Alphabet

Tachelhit, called Taclḥit or Tashelhiyt by its speakers (in Tifinagh ⵜⴰⵛⵍⵃⵉⵜ), and Shilha or Chleuh in older English and French books, is the Amazigh language of the Souss valley, the Anti-Atlas and the western High Atlas, the country around Agadir, Taroudant, Tiznit and Tafraout. It is written in three scripts: Latin (which has its own collection under Tachelhit (Latin)), Arabic, and Tifinagh, the script on this page, taught in Moroccan schools and seen on road signs, town halls and shop fronts across the Souss.

The Tifinagh used for Tachelhit is the standard alphabet that the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM) set for all of Morocco's Amazigh languages in 2003, the same one used for Standard Moroccan Tamazight, Central Atlas Tamazight and Riffian. CLDR lists its 31 letters for Tachelhit, and the symbol grid above shows them in their usual order, followed by the small mark ⵯ. The standard counts 33 letters in all, because ⴳⵯ (gʷ) and ⴽⵯ (kʷ), the g and k said with rounded lips, are letters of their own; ⵯ is included here because Tachelhit uses these rounded sounds constantly, as in ⴰⵙⴳⴳⵯⴰⵙ (asggʷas, year).

Tifinagh is written left to right, has no capital and small forms and no accents: each sound has its own letter. Every letter's name begins with ya, so ⴱ is yab, ⴳ yag, ⵎ yam and ⵣ yaz, and Unicode uses these names too (TIFINAGH LETTER YAZ). The vowels are ⴰ (a), ⵉ (i) and ⵓ (u). The fourth vowel letter ⴻ (yey) writes a short neutral e; it is part of the alphabet, but Tachelhit spelling rarely needs it.

What each Tifinagh letter sounds like in Tachelhit

Many letters are simple: ⴱ b, ⴷ d, ⴼ f, ⴳ g, ⵀ h, ⴽ k, ⵍ l, ⵎ m, ⵏ n, ⵔ r, ⵙ s, ⵜ t, ⵡ w, ⵢ y, ⵣ z. A few need explaining. ⵛ (yash) is the sound of English sh, written c in Latin spelling, as in the name ⵜⴰⵛⵍⵃⵉⵜ itself; 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 deep in the throat; ⵖ (yagh) is the voiced throaty sound written ɣ, close to a French r, as in Tamaziɣt (ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ).

Two letters write the throat sounds shared with Arabic: ⵃ (yaḥ), the breathy h in Taclḥit, and ⵄ (yaɛ), the Arabic ʿayn, common in words Tachelhit has taken from Arabic. Five letters write the emphatic consonants, said with the back of the tongue drawn toward the throat so the whole syllable sounds darker: ⴹ ḍ, ⵕ ṛ, ⵚ ṣ, ⵟ ṭ and ⵥ ẓ. In the alphabet each one sits right after its plain partner (ⴷ ⴹ, ⵔ ⵕ, ⵙ ⵚ, ⵜ ⵟ, ⵣ ⵥ), and in Latin spelling they are the letters with a dot below.

Doubled consonants are written by doubling the letter, and the difference matters: long and short consonants tell words apart. ⵯ goes straight after ⴳ or ⴽ for the rounded sounds, as in ⴰⴳⵯⵍⵍⵉⴷ (agʷllid, king).

Tachelhit words without vowels

Tachelhit is famous among linguists for one thing above all: it allows whole words, even long ones, in which there is no vowel at all. Any consonant can carry a syllable, so Tachelhit words can be strings of consonants with no a, i or u between them, and speakers say them as naturally as any other word. Tifinagh suits this well: you write the consonants you hear, one letter each, and nothing more.

Tachelhit also keeps its t, d, k and g as clear stops, where Riffian and Kabyle soften many of them between vowels, so a Tachelhit word usually sounds close to its standard spelling. That makes the Tifinagh textbooks of the Moroccan standard, which write ⴰⵔⴳⴰⵣ (argaz, man) and ⴰⵙⴳⴳⵯⴰⵙ (asggʷas, year), easy to read aloud in the Souss.

Long before Tifinagh came back into use, Tachelhit had the richest written tradition of any Amazigh language, in Arabic script: religious poems, law and medicine copied by hand in the Souss for centuries, among them the verses of the scholar Mhammad Awzal in the early 1700s. Many people still write Tachelhit in Arabic letters, and online most often in Latin letters.

How to type Tachelhit letters on a keyboard and phone

The easiest way is a Tifinagh keyboard. Windows includes Tifinagh layouts that you add under the Tamazight (Tifinagh) language in the language settings, and its Ebrima font displays every letter; on phones, keyboards such as Gboard offer Tamazight in Tifinagh. Without one, copy the letters from this page.

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 the mark ⵯ. On a Mac, open the Character Viewer (Control+Command+Space) and search for "Tifinagh". In HTML write numeric references such as ⵣ for ⵣ.

Watch the look-alikes. Several Tifinagh letters resemble other characters: ⵔ looks like a Latin O, ⵏ like a vertical bar, ⵀ like a Φ and ⵙ like a Θ. They are different characters, so a word typed with the look-alikes will not be found by search. The Tifinagh block also holds Tuareg and historical letters such as ⵞ, ⵒ and the word separator ⵰, which the Moroccan standard does not use. Tifinagh texts take their punctuation from Latin writing, and quotations most often use the guillemets « … ».

ⵣ, the Amazigh flag and the Souss

The best-known Tifinagh letter is ⵣ, yaz, the z of Amaziɣ (ⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖ), the word for an Amazigh person, often explained as "free man". It stands in red in the middle of the Amazigh flag, on stripes of blue, green and yellow, and it is the symbol Tachelhit speakers paste into names, bios and comments. When people search for a Chleuh or Shilha flag they usually mean this Amazigh flag. Unicode has no emoji for it, so people build one from ⵣ and the hearts 💙💚💛.

The Souss has its own emoji shorthand. 🏔️ stands for the High Atlas, whose highest peak, Toubkal, rises above the Tachelhit-speaking valleys; ⛰️ for the Anti-Atlas with its villages and fortified granaries; and 🌳 for the argan tree, which grows wild almost only in this corner of Morocco and whose oil is pressed by women's cooperatives across the region. There is no argan emoji, so a plain tree has to do.

Where Tachelhit is spoken

Tachelhit is spoken in Morocco 🇲🇦, where CLDR estimates about 3.3 million speakers; other surveys count more, since many Moroccans speak it at home alongside Arabic. Its heartland is the Souss-Massa region around Agadir, with the Anti-Atlas, the western High Atlas and the hills south of Marrakesh, and Soussi families have long run shops and businesses in Casablanca and other cities, and in France. Morocco's dirham has no sign of its own and is written DH or MAD.

Tamazight became an official language of Morocco, alongside Arabic, in the 2011 constitution, and Yennayer, the Amazigh New Year in mid-January, has been a public holiday there since 2024. Close relatives with their own collections are Tachelhit in Latin letters, Standard Moroccan Tamazight, Central Atlas Tamazight, Riffian (in Tifinagh and in Latin letters) and Kabyle; Moroccan Arabic is the other everyday language of the country, and the Morocco collection has the flag, food and other emoji of the whole country.