Siwi language

Siwi
Siwan, Siwa Berber
Jlan n Isiwan
Native to	Egypt, Libya[1]
Region	Siwa Oasis, Qara Oasis, Al Jaghbub Oasis
Ethnicity	Siwi
Native speakers	21,000 (2013–2023)[1]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Berber Eastern Siwi
Language codes
ISO 639-3	siz
Glottolog	siwi1239
ELP	Siwi
Siwi is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (2010)[2]

Siwi (also known as Siwan^[3] or Siwa Berber;^[4] native name: Jlan n isiwan) is the easternmost Berber language, spoken in the western Egyptian desert by an estimated 15,000^[5][6] to 20,000^[1] people in the oases of Siwa and Gara, near the Libyan border.

Siwi is the normal language of daily communication among the Egyptian Berbers of Siwa and Gara, but because it is not taught at local schools, used in the media nor recognised by the Egyptian government, its long-term survival may be threatened by contacts with outsiders and by the use of Egyptian Arabic in mixed marriages;^[7] nearly all Siwis today learn to speak Egyptian Arabic as a second language from an early age.^[8]

Siwi has been heavily influenced by Arabic, notably Egyptian and Bedouin,^[9] but also earlier stages of Arabic.^[10]

Siwi is the only Berber language indigenous to Egypt and is natively spoken further east than any other Berber variety of North Africa. Within Berber, it stands out for a number of unusual linguistic features, including the collapse of gender distinctions in the plural, the absence of dedicated negative forms of the verb, the use of full finite agreement on the verb in subject relativisation, the use of la for sentential negation and the borrowing from Arabic of a productive comparative form for adjectives. Siwi also shows a typological feature that is strikingly rare, not only regionally but also worldwide: addressee agreement on demonstratives.