Tamashek or Tamasheq is a variety of Tuareg, a Berber macro-language widely spoken by nomadic tribes across North Africa in Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso.

[4]: 2 Tamashek is spoken mostly in Mali, especially in its central region including Timbuktu, Kidal, and Gao.

[1] The livelihood of the Tuareg people has been under threat in the last century, due to climate change and a series of political conflicts, notably the Arab-Tuareg rebellion of 1990–1995 in Mali which resulted in ethnic cleansing of the Tuareg in the form of reprisal killings and exile.

[4]: 23 The table places the two laryngeal consonants, and /h/ and /ʔ/, according to the IPA chart (the source did not specify their manners of articulation).

The glottal stop /ʔ/ is already largely absent in local Arabic dialects, is thus only found in unassimilated Islamic vocabulary.

According to the rule called "default accentuation", the accent falls on the antepenult or on the leftmost syllable of verbs.

[4]: 83–84 Tamasheq's two main morphological processes are ablaut and affixation, with the former permeating the language.

[4]: 243  For example, the verb 'to ripe' is əŋŋá, and it is inflected into participles such as i-ŋŋá-n (MaSg) or t-əŋŋá-t (FeSg).

: 502, 503 Gender and number are mainly marked using affixation, though in many cases they use ablaut or a combination of both.

Most nouns, regardless of gender, have vocalic prefixes, varying between -æ-/-ə, -a-, or -e- for the singular, and invariable i- in the plural.

[4]: 162, 164 Feminine nouns are additionally marked by the Fe[minine] prefix t-.

Most noun-noun compounds necessitate a possessor preposition ə̀n in between the two morphemes, which can be analytically structured as [X [ə̀n Y]] 'X of Y.'

For example, ɣás is an "extremely common" phrase-final particle that means 'only': i-t̩t̩ás,3M.SG.SBJ-sleep.RES,ɣásonlyi-t̩t̩ás, ɣás3M.SG.SBJ-sleep.RES, only'He just sleeps.

'[4]: 617–618 Another example, though less common, is a clause-final particle yá, which emphasizes on the truth of a statement: ə̀jle-ɣgo.PFV.POS-1SG.SBJyɑ́EMPHə̀jle-ɣ yɑ́go.PFV.POS-1SG.SBJ EMPH'(Yes) I did go!

Its allomorphic variation depends on postvocalic versus postconsonantal position (e.g. -\ə̀d if , -\dd after a, and -\hə̀dd after high V).

'[4]: 597 On the other hand, the centrifugal clitic (-\ín) indicates direction away from the deictic center, and is best translated to 'away' or 'there' in English.

'[4]: 600 Pronominal object clitics are attached at the end of a simple transitive verb, or a preverbal particle if relevant.

Pronominal clitics show wide allomorphic variation mainly depending on point of view and plurality.

The table below shows first person object clitics found in Kal Ansar dialects (T-ka).

[4]: 603 As seen in the table, the T-ka first-person singular object clitic attached to a preverbal particle is -\hi.

'[4]: 610 Tamashek's simple main clauses have the word order of VSO: [verb(-\clitics) (subject) (object)...].

[4]: 589  For example: àdFUTi-jə́l3M.SG.SBJ-go.SH.IPFVàd i-jə́lFUT 3M.SG.SBJ-go.SH.IPFV'will go away'[4]: 590 The clause-internal negative particle is wæ̀r, though it is heard as [wər] if it is directly before {ə u i}.

'[4]: 587 In Tamashek, a NP starts with the head noun, followed by an adnominal complement such as a demonstrative, a possessor, or a relative clause.