page_title: Shilha language
section_title: Number of speakers
hierarchical_section_title: Shilha language / Number of speakers
caption_attribution_description: English: Percent of Tashlhit speakers in Morocco by census 2004 Based on data found Here
context_page_description: Shilha is a Berber language native to Shilha people. It is spoken by more than eight million people in southwestern Morocco. The endonym is Tašlḥiyt /taʃlʜijt/, and in recent English publications the language is often rendered Tashelhiyt or Tashelhit. In Moroccan Arabic the language is called Šəlḥa, from which the alternative English name Shilha is derived. In French sources the language is called tachelhit, chelha or chleuh.
  Shilha is spoken in an area covering c. 100,000 square kilometres, comprising the western part of the High Atlas mountains and the regions to the south up to the Draa River, including the Anti-Atlas and the alluvial basin of the Sous River. The largest urban centres in the area are the coastal city of Agadir and the towns of Guelmim, Taroudant, Oulad Teima, Tiznit and Ouarzazate.
  In the north and to the south, Shilha borders on Arabic-speaking areas. In the northeast, roughly along the line Marrakesh-Zagora, there is a dialect continuum with Central Atlas Tamazight. Within the Shilha area, there are several Arabic-speaking enclaves, notably the town of Taroudannt and its surroundings.
context_section_description: Completely reliable data on the number of Berberophones in Morocco do not exist. Ethnologue, in its 17th-20th editions (2014-2017) cited the numbers yielded by the Moroccan census of 2004, according to which there were around 4 million speakers of Tashelhiyt, accounting for 13 percent of the total population. In its 21st edition (2018), Ethnologue quotes a number of around 7 million speakers for the year 2016 (source not mentioned), or 20 percent of the population. Assuming that Ethnologue’s 2016 figure is correct, it appears that the 2004 census seriously underreported the number of speakers, as it is highly unlikely that the proportion of Tashelhiyt speakers in Morocco has actually risen by 7 percentage points between 2004 and 2016.
  Some authors mention a much higher number of Shilha speakers. Stroomer (2001a) estimated that there are "some 6 to 8 million" speakers, and he subsequently (2008) raised the number to "some 8 to 9 million". Stroomer does not refer to any published sources supporting his estimates, which are certainly too high.
  Although many speakers of Shilha, especially men, are bilingual in Moroccan Arabic, there are as yet no indications that the survival of Shilha as a living language will be seriously threatened in the immediate future. Because of the rapid growth of the Moroccan population over the past decades (from 12 million in 1961 to over 33 million in 2014), it is safe to say that Shilha is now spoken by more people than ever before in history.
caption: Percentage of Shilha speakers per region according to 2004 census[14]
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