The Northern Berber languages form a dialect continuum across the Maghreb that constitute a branch of the Berber language subgroup of the Afroasiatic family. Their continuity has been broken by the spread of Arabic, and to a lesser extent by the Zenati group of Northern Berber, which shares certain innovations not found in the surrounding languages, notably a softening of k to sh and an absence of a- in certain words, such as "hand" (afus vs.