Moderator:eskandar
Gaile Irene wrote:Hi, Hannahanneke!
Thanks for your insight about learning Arabic in Morocco. I am glad that the program there provides better instruction for you than what you could receive in Belgium. How does what you are learning compare with what you expected - or what you really want to learn?
Are you speaking French most of the time when you aren't in school? I have met North Africans who would not speak Arabic, but only French or Berber. Do you think the Berber angle influences why the Moroccan dialect is frowned upon, as you state? Or is it because the dialect is not the classical or standard form of Arabic?
Are you just looking for examples, or something more substantive? Two examples of 'Berber' words commonly used in Moroccan Arabic that come to mind are 'mazyan' and 'bzaf'.Hannahanneke wrote:(If anyone knows of Berber influence on vocabulary or French/Spanish influence on grammar, please let me know!)
eskandar wrote:Are you just looking for examples, or something more substantive? Two examples of 'Berber' words commonly used in Moroccan Arabic that come to mind are 'mazyan' and 'bzaf'.Hannahanneke wrote:(If anyone knows of Berber influence on vocabulary or French/Spanish influence on grammar, please let me know!)
I agree very much with your observations and opinions on the politics and situation of language in Morocco. I would add that a lot of this mentality stems from the colonial policies of France and Spain in Morocco, when Berber peoples were treated as lesser than Arabs, who in turn were treated as lesser than Europeans. The anti-colonial response had a strong element of Arab nationalism which also marginalized Berbers and Berber identity in Morocco. These policies extend across the Arab world; in Egypt, for example, British colonial policy discriminated against Nubian (black) Egyptians as well as darker-skinned Egyptian Arabs, and that mindset was taken up by some later Egyptian dictators (Sadat and Mubarak) to promote Egyptian national chauvinism against Maghrebis.
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