South Oran and Figuig Berber
South Oran Berber, or Figuig Berber, is a cluster of the Zenati languages, which belong to the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic family. It is spoken in a number of oases of southwestern Algeria and across the border in Morocco.
These areas include most of the ksour between Mecheria and Béni Abbès: Tiout, Ain Sfisifa, Boussemghoun, Moghrar, Chellala, Asla, Fendi, Mougheul, Lahmar, Boukais, Sfissifa, Ouakda, Barrbi near Taghit, Igli, Mazzer in Algeria, Iche, Ain Chair and the seven ksour of Figuig in Morocco.
Of these towns, the only one whose dialect has been studied in any detail is Figuig. A cursory study of the northern dialects, including texts and vocabulary, is Basset, while a sketch grammar of its southernmost member, Igli, is provided by Kossmann.
Like many other Berber varieties, the Figuig Berber dialects use bipartite verbal negation. The preverbal negator is ul ; the postverbal negator is ša / šay / iš, with both the latter two appearing as allomorphs in Tiout. The numerals 1 and 2 are Berber, while higher numerals are Arabic borrowings throughout.
