Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Tamashek is the name given to the macrolanguage comprised of the four closely related languages spoken by the various Tuareg peoples.  More particularly, it is the name for the macrolanguage specified by the ISO-639-2 and ISO-639-3 standard code tmh. You could say without reservation that Tamashek is the language of the Tuareg people.  However, you could also very […]

There is no single word used by all the Tuaregs to refer to their language. Instead each of the four major linguistic groups of Tuaregs have their own word for the language of all the Tuareg people. Tamajaq is the word used by the Tawallammat speaking Tuaregs to refer to the language of all the Tuareg.

First, foremost, and most simply Tamajaq is a word! As a word, it is subject to various uses by various people to refer to various subjects. The two primary ways in which the word Tamajaq is used are: Tamajaq is a word in the English language used by linguists to name the language referred to by the code ttq in the ISO 639-3 language