According to Ben Mamou's lexicon,[2] its speakers call it Tmaziɣṯ or Eddwi nna, meaning "our speech", while it is called Shelha or Jbali (جبالي) in local Tunisian Arabic dialects.

[4] Basset (1950)[5] provides a few dialect maps of Tunisian Berber including this region, showing lexical variation, while Penchoen (1968) [6] offers a general discussion of Tunisian Berber and the effects of schooling.

Collins (1981) [7][8] discusses its verbal morphology along with that of other Tunisian Berber varieties.

The only general grammatical sketch and vocabulary available is the website put together by Larbi Ben Mamou, a native speaker of the language.

[2] Ethnologue treats it as part of the Nafusi language spoken in northwestern Libya, although the two belong to different subgroups of Berber according to Kossmann (1999).