Nafusi (also spelled Nefusi, Berber name: Maziɣ or Tanfusit) is the Berber language of the Nafusa Mountains (Drar n infusen), a large area in northwestern Libya. This variety of the Berber language is spoken by the Ibadite communities around Jadu, Nalut (Lalut), and Yafran. According to the Ethnologue, it has some 184,000 speakers in Libya^[1] (controversially including Zuara Berber.) The dialect of Yefren in the east differs somewhat from that of Nalut and Jadu in the west.^[2] A number of Old Nafusi phrases appear in Ibadite manuscripts as early as the 12th century,^[3] representing some of the earliest manuscript records of Berber.

The Ethnologue includes nearby Zuara Berber, Matmata Berber, and Djerbi under the rubric "Nafusi", which corresponds neither to local nor to academic usage of the term.

The dialect of Jadu is described in some detail in Beguinot (1931).^[4] Motylinski (1898) describes the dialect of Jadu and Nalut as spoken by a student from Yefren.^[5]

Nafusi shares several innovations with the Zenati languages, but, unlike them, maintains prefix vowels before open syllables; for example, ufəs "hand" < *afus, rather than Zenati fus; it appears especially closely related to Sokni and Siwi to its east.^[6]

References[link]

External links[link]

Nafusi language at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)

A people is a plurality of persons considered as a whole, as in an ethnic group or nation. Collectively, for example, Jews are known as "the Jewish people", European Gypsies comprise the bulk of "the Romani people", and Palestinian Arabs have started to be called "the Palestinian people".

In politics[link]

Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix

Various republics govern, or claim to govern, in the name of the people. Both the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire used the Latin term Senatus Populusque Romanus, (the Senate and People of Rome). This term was fixed to Roman legionary standards, and even after the Roman Emperors achieved a state of total personal autarchy, they continued to wield their power in the name of the Senate and People of Rome. A People's Republic is typically a Marxist or socialist one-party state that claims to govern on behalf of the people. Populism is another umbrella term for various political tendencies that claim to represent the people, usually with an implication that they serve the common people instead of the elite.

In law[link]

In criminal law, in certain jurisdictions, criminal prosecutions are brought in the name of the People. Several U.S. states, including California, Illinois, and New York, use this style.^[1] Citations outside the jurisdictions in question usually substitute the name of the state for the words "the People" in the case captions.^[2] Four states — Massachusetts, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky — refer to themselves as the Commonwealth in case captions and legal process.^[3] Other states, such as Indiana, typically refer to themselves as the State in case captions and legal process. Outside the United States, criminal trials in the Ireland and the Philippines are prosecuted in the name of the people of their respective states.

The political theory underlying this format is that criminal prosecutions are brought in the name of the sovereign; thus, in these U.S. states, the "people" are judged to be the sovereign, even as in the United Kingdom and other dependencies of the British Crown, criminal prosecutions are typically brought in the name of the Crown. "The people" identifies the entire body of the citizens of a jurisdiction invested with political power or gathered for political purposes.^[4]

See also[link]

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Footnotes[link]

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