Languages and Communities in Late Antique and Early Medieval North Africa

Abstract The linguistic situation in western North Africa in the late antique and early medieval period was complex. In addition to autochthonous Amazigh (or ‘Berber’) languages, long-term histories of colonialism, imperialism, and overseas settlement had established Punic, Latin, and in some places Greek as important regional idioms. Between the fifth and eighth centuries, Vandal, Byzantine, Amazigh, and Arab conquests further reconfigured local linguistic landscapes, though language change in later Roman and post-imperial North Africa played out slowly over the course of centuries. Regional language use was fundamentally pragmatic. It could be a product of multiple factors, including region, class, occupation, and, with time, religion. Particularly important, however, was the association of certain languages with practical power, social advancement, and the control of wealth and property. Such an association was not the inevitable result of conquest, even when members of a new ruling class spoke a language other than that of the majority of their subjects. Nor were the associations of languages with power felt uniformly across the expansive landscape of western North Africa. Rather, such associations were always negotiations, worked out between multiple actors, including ordinary Africans as well as rulers and elites.