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<h1 itemprop="name">The Berber Language: Officially Recognized, Unofficially, Marginalized?</h1>
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<a href="http://www.al-fanarmedia.org/author/ulindsey/" title="Posts by Ursula Lindsey" class="url fn" rel="author">Ursula Lindsey</a> /
27 Jul 2015</span>
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<a style="display:block" href="http://www.al-fanarmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/berber-people.jpg" title="Berber people in the Sahara (credit: Flickr)" rel="prettyPhoto"><img src="http://www.al-fanarmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/berber-people.jpg" class="attachment-15428 wp-post-image" alt="berber-people" height="576" width="1024"><img style="position:absolute;bottom:10px;left:10px;width:30px !important;opacity:.75;padding:5px;background:black;" src="http://www.al-fanarmedia.org/wp-content/themes/alfanar/images/enlarge.png"></a> <p class="f_caption">Berber people in the Sahara (credit: Flickr)</p>
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<p>Ten years after Tamazight—the language of the Amazigh, the country’s
Berber population— began being taught in schools here, and four after
it was constitutionally recognized as an official language, it remains
unclear how it will be incorporated into education.</p>
<p>The recognition of Tamazight has been very meaningful, a redefinition
of Moroccan identity, says Paul Silverstein, an anthropologist at Reed
College who has studied the issue.</p>
<p>Tamazight is the standardized version of the Amazigh languages. An
estimated 25 to 30 million speakers of Tamazight and of other Berber
dialects are spread throughout the North African countries, from the
Atlantic Ocean to Egypt. (See related story “<a href="http://bit.ly/1JJXt0v" target="_blank">In Algeria, the Berber Language Can’t Get an Educational Foothold</a>.”)</p>
<p>In Morocco, a host of questions surround the place of the Berber
language in schools: “What language is being taught? For whom? For what
purpose? Is it purely a gesture?”, asks Mr Silverstein.</p>
<p>Amazigh languages (there are three main regional variants) are spoken
by an estimated 35 to 40 percent of Morocco’s population. But North
African political discourse, whether nationalist or Islamist, has long
been hostile to the Amazigh language, perceived as a threat to national
cohesion. For decades, giving children Amazigh names was forbidden in
Morocco. Not recognizing the language spoken in the country’s poor rural
interior was an effective means of discrimination that shut the Berbers
out from participating politically, socially and economically from
Moroccan society.</p>
<p>In 1994, King Hassan II came out in favor of teaching Tamazight in
schools, partly due to a larger political opening and partly in response
to the pressure of Amazigh-rights activists. In 2003, his son, now King
Mohamed VI, put the initiative in practice. In the new constitution he
helped create in 2011, Tamazight was recognized as one of Morocco’s
official languages. Tamazight writing now adorns the facades of most
public buildings.</p>
<p>But “there isn’t a real language policy yet,” says Abdeslem Khalafi, a
researcher at the Royal Institute for Amazigh Culture (Institut Royale
de la Culture Amazigh du Maroc, IRCAM). “There’s hesitation. Mentalities
aren’t ready to integrate Tamazight and give it a chance. There’s a
change in discourse, but not yet in practice.”</p>
<p>The king created the institute in 2003, and its researchers came up
with a standardized written alphabet for a language that has many
dialects and has been transmitted orally for millennia. Mr. Khalafi
worked on the development of the new alphabet and new textbooks to teach
the language. Creating a new alphabet was controversial in and of
itself. Tamazight has historically more often been written in Arabic or
the Roman alphabet. Tamazight is now only taught to about 12 percent of
Moroccan students. Because of this, thousands of children whose first
language is Tamazight flunk out of school, he says.</p>
<p>Khalafi and his colleagues at the Royal Institute believe that
students should begin their education in their native languages—the
Moroccan dialect of Arabic or whatever Amazigh dialect they speak—and
then learn the standardized version. They are calling for six hours a
week of Tamazight throughout primary and secondary education.</p>
<div id="attachment_15435" style="width:235px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="http://www.al-fanarmedia.org/2015/07/the-berber-language-officially-recognized-unofficially-marginalized/berber-girl-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-15435"><img class="size-medium wp-image-15435" src="http://www.al-fanarmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/berber-girl1-225x300.jpg" alt="berber-girl" height="300" width="225"></a><p class="wp-caption-text">A Berber girl in Morocco (credit: Justin Clemens, Flickr)</p></div>
<p>Opponents of the addition of Tamazight to the curriculum argue that
it muddles an already complicated linguistic landscape, and that
students are better served by learning languages that can benefit them
in the global economy.</p>
<p>“It’s not the language of instruction that is an obstacle for
students,” replies Mr. Khalafi, “but the [poor] training of teachers.
Integrating Tamazight is a gain even for the other languages,” he
argues, because studies have shown that “a child who is welcomed to
school in his native language learns other languages more easily.”</p>
<p>Five thousand Tamazight teachers who trained at the Royal Institute
are in the field today. Fatima Ibrahimi, who teaches Tamazight in a
school in the capital city of Rabat, is one of them. Ms. Ibrahimi was
trained as an Arabic teacher, but as a native speaker of Tamazight, she
volunteered to be re-trained to teach that language.</p>
<p>Arabic, French and other foreign languages may be openings on the
region and the rest of the world and carry professional advantages, says
the teacher. But to teach those languages alone is a “materialist way
of thinking,” she says. She believes Moroccans should learn Tamazight
because it is part of their heritage. Pointing to an Arabic-speaking
friend who sat with her during an interview, Ms. Ibrahimi said: “We’re
both Moroccan. Why is his language taught in school and not mine?”</p>
<p>For many speakers of Tamazight, teaching their language is a question
of social justice. His mother and grandmother only spoke Tamazight,
says Mr. Khalafi. “It was their only opening on the world. Their whole
life they couldn’t watch TV, listen to the radio, or make themselves
understood if they went to a hospital.” Today there are some media in
the Amazigh language. But courts, hospitals and other parts of the
public administration still operate exclusively in Arabic.</p>
<p>When Mr. Khalafi was a university student, he had to argue with his
advisor to be allowed to do research on Amazigh folk tales. University
departments of Amazigh language and culture exist at the universities of
Fez, Oujda, Rabat and Agadir, each with several thousand graduates.</p>
<p>Abdellah Bounfour is a researcher at the Centre de Recherche Berbere
(Berber Research Center), which is part of the historic Institute
National des Langues et Civilizations Orientales (National Institute of
Oriental Languages and Civilizations) in Paris. The center is the oldest
and one of the very few to focus on Berber culture, linguistics and
language; it cooperates with IRCAM and the programs at Moroccan
universities.</p>
<p>Mr. Bounfour suggests it would have been better to focus on
introducing Tamazight at the university level first. The introduction of
Tamazight has largely failed, he wrote in an e-mail, due to general
problems with Morocco’s underperforming education, the poor training of
teachers, and the creation of standardized Tamazight that doesn’t
correspond to any spoken language. “Teaching a language is a political,
not a pedagogical decision,” says Mr. Bounfour.</p>
<p>One of Mr. Bounfour’s colleagues, Salem Chaker, has written that “the
Berber language presents an inarguable scientific interest: it
constitutes a veritable ‘laboratory situation’: a ‘stateless’ language,
marginalized for the last two thousand years, in close and permanent
contact with other languages, extremely rich in dialect but also
homogenous over an enormous geographic area, presenting many original
features.”</p>
<p>The decision to include Tamazight in the curriculum is important
symbolically, says Mr. Silverstein, as “a recognition that being Berber
is not something you should hide.”</p>
<p>But “there’s a gap between the symbolic value of Tamazight and the
pragmatic way in which Tamazight will be actually, functionally
important for people,” says Mr. Silverstein. Even Amazigh activists and
intellectuals do not generally work and write in the language. According
to the Royal Institute, only 250 books have been written in Tamazight.</p>
<p>Mr. Silverstein doubts that the new education policy will stem the
ongoing decline in Tamazight-speakers. The language competes with
English, French, and Arabic, and when young people think about what they
will need in the future, Tamazight often takes second place, he says.</p>
<p>Berber identity is more recognized than ever before in the country’s
history, but this recognition is unlikely to stem the language’s
decline.</p>
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