Morocco: Integration of Amazigh language requires objective evaluation of its current situation

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Integration of Amazigh language requires objective evaluation of its
current situation, Moroccan official

Morocco TIMES  5/5/2006 | 7:03 pm GMT

The Director of the Regional Academy of Education and Training of
Souss-Massed-Draa, Mubarak Hanoun, said that the integration of the
Amazigh language in the national education system requires an objective
evaluation of its current situation and means of promoting it in the
future. The adoption of such an approach must necessarily come as part of
a strategy of development of languages, based on the principle of cultural
and linguistic democracy and the opening of a debate on the policies of
linguistic planning in Morocco, Hanoun underlined, on Friday in Agadir,
during a study day on teaching the Amazigh language.

Hanoun emphasised the need for the institutionalisation of the linguistic
legitimacy and encouraged the complementarity of Arabic and Amazigh,
banishing the logic of negative competition. He recalled that there are
still several difficulties that hinder the process of integrating the
Amazigh language in the national education system, as a component of the
Moroccan identity. Nevertheless, over three years many important steps
have been done to solve them.

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