Arab-Berber

Arab-Berbers (Arabic: العرب والبربر al-ʿarab wa-l-barbar) are a population of the Maghreb,^{[citation needed]} a vast region of North Africa in the western part of the Arab world along the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Arab-Berbers are people of mixed Arab and Berber origin,^{[citation needed]} most of whom speak a variant of Maghrebi Arabic as their native language, some also speak various Berber languages. Many Arab-Berbers identify^{[citation needed]} primarily as Arab and secondarily as Berber.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

The Arab-Berber identity came into being^{[citation needed]} as a direct result of the Arab conquest of North Africa, and the intermarriage between the Arabs who immigrated to those regions and local mainly Roman Africans and other Berber people;^{[citation needed]} in addition, Banu Hilal and Sulaym Arab tribes originating in the Arabian Peninsula invaded the region and intermarried with the local rural mainly Berber populations, and were a major factor in the linguistic, cultural and ethnic Arabization of the Maghreb.^[7][8]

Arab-Berbers form the core and vast majority of the populations^{[citation needed]} of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia, and about one-third of the population of Mauritania.^[9][10]

Arab-Berbers primarily speak variants of Maghrebi Arabic^{[citation needed]} which form a dialect continuum of more-or-less mutually intelligible varieties known as (Darija or Derja (Arabic: دارجة). which means "everyday/colloquial language".^[11] Maghrebi Arabic preserves a significant Berber, Latin^[12][13][14] and possibly Neo-Punic^[15][16] substratum which makes them both quite distinct and largely mutually unintelligible to other varieties of Arabic spoken outside Maghreb. Moreover, they also have many loanwords from French,^[17] Turkish,^[17] Italian^[17] and the languages of Spain.^[17] Modern Standard Arabic is used as the lingua franca.