The Berbers are back in town!

The revolt against the rule of strongman Muammar el-Gadhafi has had an interesting and, I think, welcome side effect: the revival of the ancient Berber language:

In a packed classroom on a cool evening near the front line in Libya’s civil war, 15-year-old Mira is teaching children to spell out the names of animals in the ancient Berber script, an act that once could have landed her in one of Muammar Gaddafi’s jails.
The indigenous people of north Africa, known to others as Berbers and among themselves as Amazigh, were brutally suppressed under Gaddafi, who considered the teaching of their language and culture to be a form of imperialism in his Arab country.

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