{"id":13404,"date":"2015-06-29T11:41:09","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T15:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=13404"},"modified":"2015-06-29T11:41:09","modified_gmt":"2015-06-29T15:41:09","slug":"morocco-in-open-confrontation-with-the-arabic-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/morocco-in-open-confrontation-with-the-arabic-languages\/","title":{"rendered":"MOROCCO IN \u2018OPEN CONFRONTATION WITH THE ARABIC LANGUAGE(S)\u2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"<section class=\"container hfeed\">\n<header id=\"masthead\">\n<nav id=\"nav-primary\" class=\"menu\">\n<section class=\"row clearfloat\">\n<div class=\"menu-latest-container\"><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/nav>\n<\/header>\n<section class=\"wrapper\">\n<section id=\"main\">\n<section class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"eightcol\">\n<article id=\"post-21260\" class=\"post-21260 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-morocco odd\">\n<p class=\"postmetadata\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span class=\"byline\">BY <span class=\"author vcard\"><a class=\"url fn n\" title=\"View all posts by mlynxqualey\" href=\"http:\/\/arablit.org\/author\/mlynxqualey\/\" rel=\"author\">MLYNXQUALEY<\/a><\/span><\/span> <em>on<\/em> <a title=\"6:41 am\" href=\"http:\/\/arablit.org\/2015\/06\/25\/darija\/\" rel=\"bookmark\"><time class=\"entry-date\" datetime=\"2015-06-25T06:41:14+00:00\">JUNE 25, 2015<\/time><\/a> \u2022 <span class=\"commentcount\">( <a class=\"comments_link\" href=\"http:\/\/arablit.org\/2015\/06\/25\/darija\/#comments\">2<\/a> )<\/span><\/p>\n<section class=\"entry\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Morocco\u2019s \u201cNational Coalition for Arabic\u201d is reportedly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moroccoworldnews.com\/2015\/06\/161292\/national-coalition-for-arabic-condemns-2m-for-mocking-the-arabic-language\/\">up in arms over a Ramadan sitcom<\/a> it says \u201cmocks the Arabic language\u201d; a government minister says speaking formal Arabic <a href=\"http:\/\/riadzany.blogspot.com\/2015\/06\/moroccan-minister-dislikes-speaking.html\">causes her \u201ca fever\u201d<\/a>; a recent\u00a0report suggests <a href=\"http:\/\/www.middle-east-online.com\/english\/?id=71904\">teaching Darija, or Moroccan Arabic, in early primary<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/arablit.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/06\/keep-calm-and-love-darija-2.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-21262 aligncenter lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/arablit.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/06\/keep-calm-and-love-darija-2.png?w=627&h=732\" alt=\"keep-calm-and-love-darija-2\" width=\"492\" height=\"574\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 492px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 492\/574;\" \/><\/a>An ordinary summer\u00a0in the struggle\u00a0over language in Morocco.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Darija* (the language that\u2019s doing the mocking) and Standard Arabic\u00a0(the language being mocked) are just two of the players\u00a0in a landscape that also includes French, English, and Tamazight. French and Standard Arabic seem to be associated more with older generations, with English and\u00a0Darija, or \u201cMoroccan colloquial,\u201d for\u00a0the young. The language war is also, it seems, a culture war, with the blog<a href=\"http:\/\/riadzany.blogspot.com\/2015\/06\/moroccan-minister-dislikes-speaking.html\">\u201cThe View from Fez,\u201d quoting a \u201ccritic\u201d<\/a> who suggests \u201cif we speak Standard Arabic we will end up like the Saudis!\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">For\u00a0poets and novelists, these are certainly not small decisions. Most prominent and award-winning Moroccan writers who work in an Arabic continue to write in the standard literary form. Globally celebrated Bensalem Himmich and Mohammed Bennis write in standard Arabic, as does International Prize for Arabic Fiction winner Mohammed Achaari. The prominent Moroccan authors who don\u2019t write in standard Arabic generally write in French. Fewer write in English, \u00a0Dutch, or Tamazight.\u00a0And while\u00a0there are novels and poetry collections in Darija, there are perhaps no\u00a0authors\u00a0who write solely in the langauge.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But as Alexander Elinson wrote in \u201cDarija and Changing Writing Practices in Morocco,\u201d the landscape is nonetheless shifting:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Beginning in the 1970s, but really taking off inthe early to mid-2000s, writing in darija has gained support as serving the practical, political, and artistic needs of a dynamic and multilingual society.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The first-ever prize for literature written in Darija was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moroccoworldnews.com\/2011\/10\/11233\/the-cultural-and-literary-scene-in-morocco-from-the-caravan-of-books-to-the-literary-cafe\/\">reportedly offered in 2006<\/a>, followed by others. Since then, the debate has been <a href=\"https:\/\/globalvoicesonline.org\/2007\/07\/07\/morocco-summer-heat-and-the-heat-of-debates\/\">growing hotter<\/a> (or more feverish, perhaps).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Elinson quotes the highly regarded Moroccan literary critic, academic, and novelist Abdelfatteh Kilito as saying that colloquial Egyptian alienates him from a novel, but, for Moroccan literature, \u201ccolloquial Arabic . . . as a bearer of [a certain] history and geography, would allow one to recognize a Moroccan work, in Arabic or French, ancient or modern!\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Yet for himself, Kilito wrote in 2013 (trans. Kristin Gee Hickman), reading in Darija is difficult:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I speak colloquial Arabic, I read classical Arabic. My education has, indeed, accustomed me to only reading texts written in French and classical Arabic. There are certainly poems, stories, proverbs in colloquial, but they remain, for me, fundamentally, connected to orality. When I happen to read them, I have a bizarre experience: because of my lack of habit, I start deciphering them as if they were written in a foreign language. As easy as it is to speak in colloquial, reading it is equally laborious and full of obstacles.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Education usually still trumps in determining an author\u2019s\u00a0language of choice.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">There is also yet\u00a0no standardized orthography for Darija, and critics of its use have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.middle-east-online.com\/english\/?id=71904\">pointed to regionalizations, and the multiplicity\u00a0of words for carrot<\/a>, for instance. But a growing number of authors have staged novels in the language, with more or less success, including Youssouf Amine Elalamy, Murad \u2018Alami, Driss Mesnauoi, and \u2018Aziz Regragi. Graphic novels, such as <em>Fatima\u2019s Memories<\/em> by Safia Ouarezki and Mahmoud Benameur, also create new and fertile ground for Darija.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Many proponents of a literature in Darija, such as celebrated novelist Fouad Laroui, write most of their work in French or another European language. Yet it seems Darija is growing in strength, and unlike in other places where the lament is that \u201cArabic is dying,\u201d here a new sort of literary production is being born.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>More:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Elinson\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.academia.edu\/8689722\/Darija_and_Changing_Writing_Practices_in_Morocco\">\u201cDarija and Changing Writing Practices in Morocco\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Martin Rose\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.opendemocracy.net\/arab-awakening\/martin-rose\/bliss-was-it-in-that-dawn-to-be-next-door-7\">Bavures and shibboleths\u2014language in Morocco<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>*The decision to capitalize Darija is to recognize\u00a0it as a language.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"wpcnt\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"jp-post-flair\" class=\"sharedaddy sd-like-enabled sd-sharing-enabled\"><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BY MLYNXQUALEY on JUNE 25, 2015 \u2022 ( 2 ) Morocco\u2019s \u201cNational Coalition for Arabic\u201d is reportedly up in arms over a Ramadan sitcom it says \u201cmocks the Arabic language\u201d; a government minister says&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,62,498],"tags":[1674],"class_list":["post-13404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arab-culture","category-arabic","category-language","category-maghreb","tag-darija"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13404"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13406,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13404\/revisions\/13406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}