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.Delheure 1987:1 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.Delheure 1987:2
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.Delheure 1988:20, 24; Delheure 1987:273 According to Delheure (1987:355), at Wargrən fəhhəmən d awəḥdi tawsint, "the Ouarglis understand Temacine very well."
The principal grammatical study is Biarnay (1908);S. Biarnay, 1908, Étude sur le dialecte berbère de Ouargla, Paris: Ernest Leroux a less detailed sketch is provided in Basset (1893).René Basset, 1893, . Paris: Ernest Leroux. Its lexicon is fairly extensively documented in Delheure's (1987) dictionary.Jean Delheure, 1987, Agerraw n iwalen teggargarent-tarumit / Dictionnaire ouargli-français, Paris: SELAF The bilingual texts in Biarnay and Basset are more recently supplemented by the texts on daily life in Delheure (1988)Jean Delheure, 1988, Vivre et mourir à Ouargla. Tameddurt t-Tmettant Wargren. Paris: SELAF and the folk tale collection in Delheure (1989);Jean Delheure, 1989, Contes et légendes berbères de Ouargla : Tinfusin, Paris: Boîte à Documents the latter, unlike other work on Ouargli, includes texts from N'Goussa as well.
References
Bibliography René Basset, Étude sur la zénatia du Mzab, de Ouargla et de l'Oued-Rir''', Paris, Leroux, 1893 Samuel Biarnay, Étude sur le dialecte berbère de Ouargla, Alger, Leroux, 1908 Jean Delheure, Dictionnaire Ouargli-Français (Index Ricapitulatif Français-Ouargli), Paris, SELAF, 1987 - Jean Delheure, "Id akkaz ini id ahaji. Devinettes et énigmes de Ouargla (Sud Algérien)", Études et Documents Berbères 3 (1987), pp. 76–83 - Jean Delheure, Vivre et mourir à Ouargla / Tameddurt t-tmettant wargren, Paris, SELAF, 1988 - Jean Delheure, "Baghdidis et l'Ogre. Saynète dans le parler de Ouargla", Études et Documents Berbères 4 (1988), pp. 103–115 - Jean Delheure, Contes et légendes berbères de Ouargla, Paris, La Boîte à Documents, 1989 - Jean Delheure, "Izlan d id aghanni. Poésie et chants de Ouargla", Études et Documents Berbères 5 (1989), pp. 85–104 - Alain Romey, histoire, mémoire et sociétés, L'exemple de N'goussa: oasis berbérophone du Sahara (Ouargla)'', Paris-Alger, L'Harmattan-Awal, 1992