Executive Summary
Morocco, like other post-colonial nation-states, faced various national problems. The question of a national language was one of the most important issues in Morocco because of the country’s social and linguistic diversity. Thus, crafting of a multi-sector language policy after the independence was a difficult task. Therefore, Istiqlal, a prominent political party within the Moroccan post-independent government, had designed, along with King Hassan II, a language policy –Arabisation– that promoted Arabic as the national language of the country. One of the main objectives of this language policy was the establishment of a monolingual nation (Marley 2000). In that context, this memo examines the influence of the Istiqlal Party
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Being Classical Arabic (CA) the language of Islam, it enjoys an important religious and literary tradition. Furthermore, CA is a written language that is learned and venerated by Moroccan Arabic and Berber speakers. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is often considered as the intermediate variety, as it is codified and standardised. It is the language of administration, education and official media. The main distinction between CA and MSA resides in phonology and syntax (Ennaji and Sadiqi 48). The following examples illustrate this distinction: The word “school” is pronounced in CA as madrasatun while in Modern Standard Arabic it is madarsa; Horse is in CA farasun, while in MSA is faras. MSA lexicon also includes some French terms, such as dynamique (French) dinamikiya (MSA) (Ennaji …show more content…
Tamazight has, as mentioned above, three macro-dialects: Tarifit in the north, Tashelhit in the south and Tamazight of the Middle Atlas Amazighs. For the sake of clarity, Berbers are the indigenous population of North Africa in general, and Morocco in particular (Zouhir 40). The term Berbers refers to the people, as well as to the indigenous languages of the Maghreb region (North Africa or the “Islamic West”). However, Berbers prefer to call themselves Imazighen, singular Amazigh, which is derived from joezaagh and means a “free man” (Chafik, van Leeuwen
Morocco Transcript. Hopes on the Horizon: Africa in the 1990's. 1995-2005. PBS Online. 10 Oct. 2004. <http://www.pbs.org/hopes/morocco/transcript.html>.
Rifa'a al-Tahtawi was one of the first Arab authors to introduce the ideas of the Enlightenment to the Arab audience via his native Egypt. Tahtawi’s own introduction to these ideas came when he was selected as part of one of Muhammad Ali’s university missions to France (we are of course referring to the governor of Egypt during the Ottoman Empire and not the boxer). Tahtawi was in France between 1826 and 1831, and out of this trip came his famous translation of La Marseillaise. Tahtawi’s translation is remarkable in that it highlights a very conscious and for the most part successful effort to avoid losing meaning through translation, and this is especially impressive when one considers
Do you remember hearing about stories of flying carpets? These stories are traced back to the Arab culture, and most Moroccans now share this culture. Like Morocco’s famous rugs woven with different colors, old and new customs intertwine to make one culture. In this paper, you will explore Morocco’s geography, history, economy, and culture.
When he was young, he was “noticeably better” in English than his classmates, but instead of slacking off in school, Majed decided to learn Arabic (Fitaihi 1). As Brandt describes, competition is often one of the most potent drives in sponsorship (Brandt 48). For Majed, competition against his classmates and himself in learning Arabic and drove him to learn as much as he could. He came to realize that language is literacy which extends beyond the knowledge of syntax and grammar. “Understanding two different languages…” Majed expressed “you need to understand the culture that goes along with it… I think you develop a broad way of looking at the world.” He attributes his outlook on interacting with others to his exposure to different cultures and languages. His own sponsorship and drive which developed from his interest in learning Arabic and challenging himself to excel was a driving force for his growth in cultural literacy. Similar to Dora Lopez in “Sponsors of Literacy” Majed experienced the struggle to learn the language of his heritage while feeling disconnected from that world. Majed’s own motivation for learning Arabic was to understand the culture of his family and the country where he was living in a more authentic way, his own gains from this self-sponsorship, although not the same economically as Lopez, paid off when he could
“There’s no one here yet and the floor’s completely engulfed, we’re on the floor and we can’t breathe.” Those were the words of people who died on September 11TH. For many years, Arab and Arab-Americans are one of the most stereotyped in America. Many of these stereotypes have been created by events that have happened throughout history. Stereotypes are an image of a particular type of person or thing. Events in history, such as the September 11th terrorist attacks, the Patriot act, and the Iranian hostage crisis, have perpetuated a negative image for Arabs in America.
Classic Arabic considered to be the high variety and other dialects are low variety. I learned classical Arabic from pre-school until I graduated from undergraduate school. Children learn classical Arabic from an early age and they are asseste according to their proficiency in it. Memorizing versus from the holy Kuraan and parts of Prophet Muhammad’s hadeeth which are in classical Arabic is required in Saudi schools. I learned from an early age that Classical Arabic is...
Morocco's Istiqlal (Independence) Party promotes the spread of Arab culture and reforms based on Islamic teachings. The Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires (Socialist Union of Popular Forces) backs broad socialist reforms. The conservative Mouvement Populaire (Popular Movement) generally supports the king's policies. Other political parties in Morocco ...
The only way to communicate with my grandparents was to learn how to speak Arabic, so when I was growing up my first language was Arabic. As I got older, I spoke with others in Arabic as well, but sometimes I wouldn’t understand them and later on my mom explained that every area in the Middle East has different dialects. The dialect determines where you come from. I find it interesting that Arabic is one language, but yet there are so many ways to say water. I learned Lebanese as a child and trying to have a conversation with an Egyptian person is very difficult. Dialects are one aspect of language which allows people to have an identity, to explore and discover new ways of saying the same thing, but in a different word and having
1. INTRODUCTION. Hasawi is a variety of Arabic whose roots refer to the family of Central Semitic Languages such as Hebrew and Aramaic. The Hasawi dialect is spoken in the eastern part of Saudi Arabia, exactly in Al-Ahsa (Al-Hasaa) province. Therefore, the dialect of Al-Ahsa, or Hasawi (HD), is also known as the Eastern Arabian dialect. In fact, it is considered the dominant dialect in the area although there are other local dialects found in the same area, such as Badawi which is spoken by some Bedouins tribes. In 2009, the number of Hasawi speakers was estimated as 200,000 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ('Arabic, Gulf Spoken, Ethnologu', 2009).
Birth and death in the Arab culture has being one of the most interesting topics that is being discussed more frequently. When people talk or hear about the Arab culture they tend to think about different things about them like they are being considered as terrorist, they oppress their women and many things like that. But we tend to forget that this people, the Arabs are also human beings that they have normal day-to-day activities like people in the other part of the so-called westernized world.
In the story ‘The Veil’ by Marjane Satrapi, the writer expresses how she experienced culture shock due to the veils that were introduced in 1980s due to the Islamic revolution (Satrapi). They were hot to live with and the students said that they made them resemble dark monsters. Acculturation is very important in language acquisition meaning that when speakers of a language fails to acculturate with the set social norms of the second language, they will be lost and will form a language of their own like slang because they try to modif...
Arabic is a language that is an example of a language that is spoken with rules and regulations that govern it, these rules come from the holy Quran. When Arabic goes through grammatical alteration, the language loses its richness, and no longer sounds the tough language that makes it special worldwide. Currently, with all the westernization occurring in the Arab world, many have diverted from the standard Arabic. Families have changed their first language to English; from my point of view, ...
To fuel a global economy, efforts are made to establish a standardized language that will make communication as simple as possible for all foreign endeavors. It could be said that creoles undermine this philosophy, individualizing and personalizing languages rather than uniting them. As authors Pieter Muysken and Norval Smith, (1995) state “It is clear in fact that creole languages develop as the result of ‘linguistic violence’ and, as we shall see, frequently social violence too” (P. 4). Social and linguistic violence are key factors in the development of creoles as societal and governmental persecution have shaped the languages of regions in the world. In the U.S. and other countries in the world that speak English as a primary language, great efforts have been taken to establish standardized English as the primary or secondary language of use. Words such as slang, dialects, and language mixtures have all been attributed to non-standard usages of a language. Yet, Even in Hawaii, a U.S. state, Hawaiian English and Pidgin English have become official languages. Kerry Chan, (2015) from CNN explains “The results from the U.S. Census Bureau revealed a number of Pidgin and Hawaiin Pidgin speakers. Both languages were added to the census list that included over 100 languages, representative of the islands diversity” (pp. 3). From these results, it can be seen that cultural diversity is an important aspect of society on this island. Why then, should any language hold precedence over another when there is a clear example of how developments in language can prosper while having multiple or even a hundred officially spoken languages? From this example, it seems that the development and success of creoles is not only accepted, but also
To commence this discussion, it is first essential to establish an understanding surrounding the role of language in relation to national identity. Theoretically, the more power language has in this relation, the more powerful language planning may be when creating a national identity. However, the role language plays in this respect is somewhat problematic to define and has proven to be a debatable topic among nationalists, sociologists and sociolinguists. For instance, May demonstrates that ‘sociological commentators, unlike sociolinguists, have generally been loath to apportion a prominent role to language in the explanation of minority ethnic and national identity claims’ (2001: 8). Consequently emulating distaste from sociologists to credit language with significant power in a national identity. In a similar sense, de Vries notes that, in relation to a language community, ‘social scientists have generally ignored the systemic properties of language’ (1991: 39), thus, concurrently suggesting with May, a disagreement from the social sciences over the role of language in terms of identity and national identity. Similarly, circa the French revolution, the concept