Discussion about the genealogy of the Author's family.
CORPAFROAS is a project funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (France), for 2006-2010. It is the first corpus of spoken Afroasiatic languages that presents sound-indexed data, with elaborate annotations. It is also unique in that it is freely accessible, and is accompanied by software, tools, and publications that will make it easier for field linguists to contribute to CORPAFROAS, or compile their own corpus, without having to go through the complex preparatory theoretical and technical procedures that we have worked on.
Conversation in good modern Zaar, wil some Hausa and English codeswitching.
Berber languages (Northern) spoken by 3 million speakers in Kabylie (Algeria), probably 2 more in Algiers and in various European and American countries (France, Canada). Some male speakers above 75, and a number of women above 50 are monolingual, others are bilingual Kabyle-French, Kabyle-Algerian Arabic, or trilingual. Speakers under 40 were taught in standard Arabic only at school, in Arabic and French if between 40 and 60, and in French if above 60. Some speakers were also taught Arabic at Coranic School.
Free conversation between 2 friends.
Recording session done by the author in the speaker's house.
Learnt at an early age (2 years old) in family context (grandparents, aunts etc.), in Kabylie. (Mother is French, father bilingual French-Kabyle). Used for communication in everyday life outside of the home for the whole of childhood (until 11 years old). Not used on a regular basis since. Only when in family contexts during stays in Algeria. Currently : Full competence in understanding, except for very specialized lexical domains, and formulaic language of elders. Lower competence in expression. Is addressed extensively in Kabyle by native speakers, just like other native speakers.
Mother tongue. Not used in the session.
Collector and annotator with the help of M.S. Davan, language assistant.
Can communicate in Algerian Arabic: has lived in an arabophone zone (Algiers, Constantine) for a few years.
Can communicate in French.