Documenting
Berber oral literature in written form is a relatively recent, but fast growing
practice. Transcribing Berber folk stories, fairy tales, poetry and other forms
of oral literature in a phonetic transcription and/or a Roman alphabet has been
common practice at least since the first half of the 19th century, although
the 18th century did witness some interest in Berber studies as well (Bougchiche
1997: 26). These texts are always accompanied by notes in French or Spanish
depending on the language of the editor/compiler. The French presence in Algeria
from 1830 to 1962 and in Morocco from 1912 to 1956, and that of the Spaniards
in Morocco between 1912 and 1956 were reason enough for different parties, like
the military, to investigate the modes of life of the indigenous population,
mostly Berber. Among the well-known works in this regard, one can cite Biarnay
(1917), Basset (1920), and the manuscripts of Jean Podeur
collected around 1950 (Podeur 1995).
Although most of the manuscripts found in Berber are transcribed in the Roman
alphabet, the Arabic script has also had its share. An Arabic-Berber dictionary
was compiled in the 12th century by Ibn Tunart, and religious texts in Tashelhit
Berber were written in the Arabic script (van den Boogert
1995). These were mostly translations of religious documents. This script was
also used in the compilation of Arabic-Berber dictionaries in the 17th and 18th
centuries (van den Boogert 1998)
The original North-African alphabet, commonly referred to as the Libyan alphabet
or the Tifinagh alphabet has been used in a variety of documents, and dates
back to the pre-Roman era of North Africa. The Tifinagh texts are in the majority
of an emblematic nature. They were used as epitaphs on graves of the noble citizens,
or were inscribed in caves, and on rocks.
Despite the existence of a large body of literature on Berber, texts written
in Berber remain scarce. Even nowadays, with the introduction of Berber in schools
in Algeria, and the decision of the highest authorities to do likewise in Morocco,
written documents in Berber are the exception rather than the norm. One of the
major hindrances in this respect is the absence of an official standard form
for writing.
The re-edition by M.Lafkioui and
D.Merolla of the collection of texts previously published by Gustave Mercier
in two little booklets (1896, 1900)
has the merit of contributing to the circulation of Berber texts. The texts
are in the Chaoui variety of Berber spoken around the town of Batna, and northeast
of Biskra, in the village of T'koukt in Algeria. The variety spoken in this
region has received very little attention. These texts are now made easily accessible
for students of Berber languages and cultures, and for interested readers in
general. The majority of the texts were related by narrators to Mercier in the
village of T'koukt.
The book opens with an acknowledgement, followed by two maps to locate the language
group, the table of contents (a practice not very common in the French tradition
where it is left to the end), a presentation of the texts (pp.11-14), a linguistic
overview of the Chaoui texts by Mena Lafkioui (pp.15-31), an overview of the
narration of the texts by the co-editor Daniela Merolla (pp.32-43), and four
black and white photographs taken in the Chaoui region by Merolla and M.Chiovoloni.
The narrated texts take up pages 46 through 159, and are followed by a bibliography
(pp. 161-163).
A few remarks on the editor's notes and the nature of the texts themselves are
in order. The contribution of Lafkioui is a sketch of the phonological and syntactic
characteristics of the Chaoui variety, from a cross-dialectal perspective. Her
account is illustrated with examples from the texts in the collection, and also
refers to previous studies on this dialect.
The contribution by Merolla introduces the texts in the collection, and provides
an evaluation of the quality of the texts. Her statement regarding the loss
of the oral attributes of a narrative once it is converted into writing is very
true. However, I completely disagree with her assessment that the stories edited
by Mercier as a whole are a very good example of the narrative art in Chaoui
(p.42).
The texts
The book contains 21 texts of very different lengths, ranging from 7 lines (text
11) to around 180 (text 19). Texts 1, 6, and 8 to 14 are all between 7 and 14
lines long, and text 7 is 22 lines long. In her introduction to the book, Merolla
explains that nine of these texts out of 16 in the 1896 collection are of "an
anecdotal or comic nature" (p. 32), and that the low narrative quality
in most of them can be explained by the purpose of their collection: they were
originally meant as support for language study.
Of the fairy tales in the collection, the last one: "The Story of the Partridge
and Serdeslas the Magician" stands out as a set of "interwoven and
unfinished themes, and abruptly inserted new characters in the narration."
(p.41)." This is not the only text with a poor narrative structure. Another
story I did not enjoy reading is "The story of the Ogre and the Pretty
Woman." Although this one has a theme continuation, it lacks any dramatic
complication, denouement, or climax, which is common in the fairy tales I personally
know from the Berber world, or the ones collected by native speakers (El
Ayoubi 2000; Bezzazi 1993). In this story, A man decides
to rescue a woman held captive in a cave by an ogre. He goes to the cave, asks
the woman about the entrance which the ogre takes, waits for him, and shoots
him between the eyes: no fight, no challenge, nothing. The protagonist spends
the night in the cave with the woman. They both leave in the morning, he meets
his friends who return with him to the cave, they want to kill him, he ends
up killing them, and gets married to the woman. The plot sounds familiar, but
the events are narrated in a very monotonous tone.
In addition to the low narrative quality of some of the texts, no less than
6 stories were translations of or adaptations from earlier publications. Text
10 is from Hanoteau (1858), texts 11 and 12 are from Basset
(1890), text 13 is a translation of a fable from La Fontaine, text 9 was published
in Ben Sedira (1887), and text 14 is an 'imitation' of a text from Hanoteau
(1858). Texts 20 and 21 were communicated to Mercier by Père Bouillon
des Missions d'Afrique in Arris, near T'koukt.
The paucity of data in the Chaoui variety should be reason enough for interested
researchers to proceed to the collection of narratives from this area. In particular
a native speaker of the variety in question would be well placed for such a
task. Also, women should be approached for narrative material. A very successful
case in point is the collection of fairy tales by Mohamed El
Ayoubi (2000). One speaker of the Ayt Weryaghel variety, Fatima n Mubeh'rur,
aged 89, provided enough material for El Ayoubi's collection (15 stories where
7 are between 6 and 10 pages long and 8 between 12 and 24 pages, in small type
face). Another example of a native speaker who collected a very rich corpus
of oral stories is Abdelkader Bezzazi (1993). His three-volume
dissertation has unfortunately not been published, but a translation of part
of the corpus into Dutch was (Bezzazi and Kossmann 1997).
Reading the Mercier texts would give the uninformed reader a wrong idea about
the oral tradition in Chaoui, both about the quality of the texts and their
lengths. Hopefully the Berber Studies series will see the publication of a more
representative corpus of the Chaoui variety.
The Language notes
The editors occasionally point out variations at the level of syntax, morphology,
and phonology. Despite the usefulness of these notes, they are far from being
consistent and clear. It is not obvious to me what the notes imply when I read
that a certain form is a variant of another existing form: is this variation
attested within the same 'Chaoui' variety or does it have to do with Berber
in general? There is no indication in the introduction as to what the frame
of reference might be. If the notes refer to internal facts of the Chaoui variety,
then one is entitled to know how the editors have managed to establish these.
There is indeed reference to native speakers who were consulted in the process
of reediting the texts, but their task was limited to checking the meaning of
certain words. I would be surprised if the editors went to lengths to establish
the variation within the dialect in question.
At times the authors chose to indicate that a linguistic form is the phonetic
realization of a corresponding one. For example, di lweqt-din is the
'de-assimilated' correspondent of [diluqeddin] "since then"
(p. 46) and the assimilated correspondent of [inna-as] is [innas]
"he said (to him)" (p.46)." Although some interested readers
might appreciate these types of notes, others would remain wondering why the
authors say nothing about the meaning of the preposition 'di' in Chaoui.
Compared to other varieties of Berber (e.g. in most Tarifit varieities spoken
in the Northern part of Morocco, the same preposition means 'in' or 'at'). In
the opinion of the present reviewer, remarks having to do with the pronunciation
tempo should be left out. A systematic description of different rates of speech
would overload the text and still remain incomplete. Among other things, the
rate of speech depends on the speaker and the type of text being delivered.
Providing alternative ways of pronunciation for some forms would give the impression
that the forms not commented on can only be pronounced in the way they are transcribed.
Comments on variation are also abundant at the level of syntax. Here also, it
is not clear what the editors are referring to when they say, for example, that
/h a yec/ is a 'syntagmatic' variant of /a h-yec/ where the personal
pronoun /h/ would be placed before the aorist indicator /a/ (p.46).
Again, in Tarifit the unmarked choice would be /a t-yec/ (note that /t/
corresponds to /h/ in Chaoui). It does seem that the authors refer to
other Berber varieties when they make their notes (208 in total). However, it
can be confusing when the reference is not clear. The reader might easily assume
that the variation in question is attested ins one and the same variety, viz.
Chaoui. A close look at all the texts in the book under review reveals that
it is not the case.
Fortunately, the editors do point out that some of the notes were authored by
the original editor, Mercier. One example commenting on internal variation is
from Mercier 1896 (p. 106): waha ni<edda
and waha i<eddan. I suspect that this note refers to the variation
within Chaoui, partly because of the limited knowledge of other Berber varieties
by Mercier. Other notes on Chaoui by Mercier also reported by the editors, like
the deletion of the 'indefinite pronoun' is common practice in Chaoui (p.46).
The attempt of the editors to reserve the oral character of the texts (p.11)
has proved not to be an easy task. For example, they proceed to 'correcting'
the original texts by inserting the preposition I in a few cases (text
16, p.114, footnote 157; text 18, p.124, footnote 171, text 18, p.128, footnote
178). The editors might be right in correcting a mistake in Mercier's texts,
but they might also be forcing the text into a form it did not have originally.
It is common for native speakers also to make mistakes when speaking or narrating.
Just how much adaptation or correction can be allowed remains an open question.
The editors should have warned the reader about this issue in the introductory
sections.
Similarly, it is not difficult to find counter-examples to observations like
'the addition of a prevocalic 'h' makes the pronunciation of certain words easier
("adoucir la prononciation")', like the sequence of three vowels
in u a as-illef "and he would set him free" (p.46) knowing
that Berber in general inserts a glide to avoid a vowel hiatus, for example:
a arumi 'you Christian' becomes ayarumi, inna awal
'he said a word' becomes inna yawal, etc. This also undermines the attempt
of the transcribers to 'preserve the oral' character of the texts, announced
in the introduction (p.11).
Another point about the transcription. An additional level of morphemic transcription
would have been very useful to the language student. The gloss translation provided
by the editors indicates the meaning of utterances, but gives no indication
as to what the isolated morphemes mean. It would be a tedious practice, but
nonetheless more useful than the numerous notes by the editors. The reader would
have more freedom to draw conclusions and make generalisations. The translation,
which is now on the opposite page, is a running translation attempting to capture
the meaning of entire sentences rather than specifying the meaning of individual
morphemes. The advantage of this type of translation is that the reader can
read through the Chaoui text without being inconvenienced by the interlinear
translation.
Notwithstanding the critical points made above, the collection of texts in this
book remains a welcome addition to a growing database of Berber texts. It gives
an idea of the socio-cultural context of the Chaoui community. One can only
thank the editors for the effort they put into this work, and hope their expertise
will prompt them to bring out more texts in Berber.
References
Aspinion, Robert (1953). Apprenons
le berbère: Initiation aux dialects chleuhs. Rabat: Editions Félix
Moncho. El Ayoubi, Mohamed. (2000). Les merveilles du Rif: Contes berbères.
Utrecht: Houtsma Stichting. Basset, H. (1920). Essai sur la littérature des berbères.
Alger: J.Carbonnel. Basset, R. (1890). Loqmân berbère. Paris: Leroux. Ben Sedira, B. (1887). Cours de langue kabyle. Alger: Jourdan Bezzazi, Abdelkader (1993). Etude d'un corpus de contes oraux au Maroc
oriental. Thèse de Doctorat d'Etat en linguistique. Univeristé
Mohamed 1er, Oujda, Maroc. Bezzazi, Abdelkader and Maarten Kossmann (1997). Berber sprookjes
uit Noord-Marokko. Amsterdam: Bulaaq. Biarnay S. (1917). Étude sur les dialects berbères du
Rif: Lexique, textes et notes de phonétique. Paris: Ernest Leroux,
Éditeur. Boogert, N. van den (1995). Catalogue des manuscrits arabes et berbères
du Fond Roux (Aix-en-Provence). Travaux et documents de l'Iremam
18. Aix-enProvence: IREMAM. Boogert, N. van den (1998). "La révélation des
énigmes" : lexiques arabo-berbères des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles.
Travaux et documents de l'Iremam 19. Aix-en-Provence : Institut de recherches
et d'études sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman (IREMAM). Bougchiche, Lamara. (1997). Langues et literatures berbères
des origins à nos jours: Bibliographie internationale et systématique.
Collection Sources berbères anciennes et modernes 1. Paris: Ibis
Press. Hanoteau, A. (1858). Essai de Grammaire kabyle. Alger: Jourdan. Mercier, G. (1896). Les Chaouias de L'Aurès. Paris: Leroux. Mercier, G. (1900). Cinq textes berbères en dialecte chaouia.
Paris: Imprimerie Nationale. Podeur, Jean. (1995). Textes berbères des Aït Souab (Anti-Atlas,
Maroc). Edités et annotés par Nico van den Boogert,
Michelle Scheltus, Harry Stroomer. Aix-en-Provence: Edisud/La
Boîte à Documents.
About
the reviewer:
Abderrahman El Aissati holds
a Ph.D. from the University of Nijmegen. His research concerns language contact
and bilingualism in general, and the language situation of Moroccan languages
in particular. He holds an assistant professor position at Tilburg Univeristy.
.
