The
Zenati languages, named after the medieval
Zenata tribe, are a branch of the
Northern Berber language family of
North Africa, first proposed in the works of French linguist (1915) (1920–23). They are distributed across the central
Maghreb, from northeastern
Morocco to just west of
Algiers, and the northern
Sahara, from southwestern
Algeria around
Bechar to
Zuwara in
Libya; in much of this range, they are limited to discontinuous pockets in a predominantly
Arabic-speaking landscape. The largest languages are
Riffian in NE Morocco and
Shawiya in eastern Algeria, each with over a million speakers.