My whole region speaks Arabic and thinks we're Arabs. A personal DNA test and a 1904 census proved how confusing our identity is
So I’m from Tlemcen (Wilaya). Right now, my region is 100% Arabophone. Everyone here thinks we're Arab, and so does the rest of the country. We're not talking about tiny hamlets either; these are villages with 20k+ people today.
I recently came across this French census from 1904 (in a book called "ÉTUDE SUR LE DIALECTE BERBÈRE DE BENI-SNOUS") that lists the local tribes and literally classifies them by language as either "Arabe" or "Berbère". According to that document, my tribe is "Arabe".
But here's the thing... I recently took a DNA test. The results? 70% North African, 0% Arab.
It honestly blew my mind. It really shows how those colonial classifications were just based on whatever language people happened to be speaking at the time, not actual genetics.
The story of how we lost our original language (Chel7a) is kinda sad, but mostly just quiet. It’s not like we were forced to speak Arabic. The language just kinda faded out naturally. Our elders died without passing it on, and the last locals who could actually speak it fluently passed away in the early 2000s, making even the tribes (Now villages) who were categorized as Berber in the census, Arab speaking now.
We still have a ton of places around here with Amazigh names, but the tongue itself is totally gone.
What's really interesting is that since my tribe was already classified as "Arabe" back in 1904, it means we had already fully adopted the language by then. This honestly makes the argument that Algeria was just Arabized by force in the 1960s and 70s through Houari Boumediene's Arabization program complete nonsense. For us, the shift happened way before that.
In today's political climate, this creates a really weird identity paradox. If I meet another Algerian—even someone from a Tamazight-speaking region—I’m automatically just "an Arab" to them. It’s genuinely confusing! Like, Brazilians and Angolans speak Portuguese, but nobody actually thinks they're ethnically Portuguese. Why is it so hard to apply that exact same logic to us?
My DNA proves I am native to this land. Yet, according to some extremist Amazigh separatists, I am just an "Arab" who doesn't belong here. As someone who tries to stay moderate and open-minded toward everyone, I'm definitely not posting this to start any regionalism drama. It’s just crazy to me how an entire region's true ethnic history can get completely overwritten, and then used against them, just because a language/dialect quietly faded away more than a century ago.