Hassaniya
Hassaniya is a
dialect of
Arabic derived from the Arabic spoken by the
Beni Hassan tribe, who extended their authority over most of the Mauritanian
Sahara between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Hassaniya is not closely related to other North African variants of Arabic, probably because the Arab invaders of this southwestern portion of the Sahara remained relatively isolated from the
Berber tribes of the northern Sahara. The primary differences among the numerous dialects of Hassaniya are phonetic.