Ouargli language

Ouargli, or Teggargrent (also Twargrit, Təggəngusit), is a Zenati Berber language. It is spoken in the oases of Ouargla (Wargrən) and N'Goussa (Ingusa) in Algeria.

As of 1987, Ouargli had no more than 10,000 speakers. Ethnologue estimated only 5,000 speakers as of 1995.

There are some differences between the dialects of Ouargla (Təggargrənt) and N'Goussa (Təggəngusit), notably in the position of pronominal clitics; within Ouargla, there are minor differences between the three tribes At-Brahim, At-Sisin and At-Waggin.

Speakers from Ouargla regard the varieties of Ouargla, N'Goussa, Tugurt/Temacine and Tumzabt/Mozabite, and possibly other Zenati varieties, as dialects of a single language they call Twargrit. According to Delheure (1987:355), at Wargrən fəhhəmən d awəḥdi tawsint, "the Ouarglis understand Temacine very well."

The principal grammatical study is Biarnay (1908); a less detailed sketch is provided in Basset (1893). Its lexicon is fairly extensively documented in Delheure's (1987) dictionary. The bilingual texts in Biarnay and Basset are more recently supplemented by the texts on daily life in Delheure (1988) and the folk tale collection in Delheure (1989); the latter, unlike other work on Ouargli, includes texts from N'Goussa as well.