Siwi

Name
"Siwi" is an Arabic nisba adjective from Sīwah, the Arabic name of the main oasis where Siwi is spoken; the word is also used in Siwi. The Siwi name of the oasis and of its inhabitants is Isiwan, and žlan n Isiwan means "speech of Siwa/the Siwis". Notwithstanding certain reports online, Siwis do not call their language tasiwit, although speakers of other Berber languages have been known to use the term.

Location
Siwi is the main language of the oases of Siwa and Gara, in western Egypt. Emigration, mainly in search of work, has led to the presence of Siwis elsewhere in Egypt and in parts of Libya.

Speakers
The number of Siwi speakers may be estimated as about 15,000. The population of Siwa and Gara, according to the Egyptian census of 2006 (link), was 17,675; of these, most are Siwi speakers. No estimate of the number of Arabic-speaking immigrants in town is available, but the western villages of Maraqi and Bahayeddin are mainly Arabic-speaking; excluding those villages would reduce the count to 15,886. The Ethnologue's (2005) estimate of 5,000 speakers in 1995 was undoubtedly too low.

Dialects
No published data indicates dialectal variation within Siwi.

Classification

 * Afro-Asiatic
 * Berber

Validity of classification
There is no doubt that Siwi is a Berber language, although it has undergone Arabic influence to a degree unusually heavy even for Berber. The earliest reported written observation of its similarity to other Berber languages was by the Egyptian geographer al-Maqrīzī (1364-1442), who remarked of Siwa in al-Mawā`ið̣ wal-i`tibār fī ðikr al-xiṭaṭ wal-'āθār (2002:238) that "its language is called Siwi, and is close to the language of (the large Berber tribe) Zanāta".

Links
Ongoing research on Siwi:
 * Christfried Naumann
 * Lameen Souag

Older wordlists:
 * Hornemann 1803

Works on the language

 * Basset, René. 1890. Le Dialecte de Syouah. Paris: Publications de l'Ecole des Lettres d'Alger.
 * Laoust, Emile. 1932. Siwa I: son parler. Paris: Ernest Leroux.
 * Leguil, Alphonse. 1986. “Notes sur le parler berbère de Siwa.” Bulletin des études africaines de l'Inalco, vol. VI, no. 11, pp. 5-42; no. 12, pp. 97-124.
 * Vycichl, Werner. 1998. A Sketch of Siwi Berber. In Vycichl 2005. Berberstudien & A Sketch of Siwi Berber. Berber Studies Vol. 10. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
 * Walker, W. Seymour. 1921. The Siwi Language. London.

Other languages

 * Arabic سيوية
 * French siwi (fr)