#arabisation

Although many Moroccans try really hard to deny it, Amazighs are a fundamental and much greater part of Morocco than Arabs ever were and will ever be. They are such a huge part of NA and people's history and identity that you can't possibly ignore it (even though many have tried). And I really want to connect with this part of my heritage, but... at the same time, I feel like I don't have any right to. Arabs have hurt Amazighs and continue to do so. Their language is mocked. Their traditions and contributions to Moroccan history and identity are downplayed when not erased. The most common words used to refer to them are slurs (to the point that many do not even know that they are slurs).

A kerfuffle issued over the West Pakistan government thinking out loud about substituting the Arabic script for the current one.

No doubt, the inspiration came from Kemal Ataturk, who latinised the writing, rendering access to the corpus of Arabic literature null.

This particular piece of social engineering is much admired by secularists, but the corresponding change in East Pakistan is regarded with horror.

But what would have been the tradeoffs? Our children’s children would have lost access to Tagore’s poetry - and gained ingress into the stupendous body of Arabic and Persian literature, from the poetry of Abul Ala al-Mari to that of Sheikh Saa’di.

True, these people never won the Nobel Prize, but they were no mean scribblers.

Besides, in a country where most of us couldn’t read a line in our own language and script, Arabisation would have affected a minuscule portion of the population, who, in all likelihood, would have taken up the cultivation of the prestigious English literature with greater gusto. A bilingual Becket perhaps?

— Jennifer Lee Hall, Debating Darija: Language Ideology and the Written Representation of Moroccan Arabic in Morocco (PhD dissertation), 2015, pp. 76-9.

(the "during recordings" is misplaced—Hall means that Ismail was not to use the word "tomobil" while recording dubs, not that he communicated this to her during said recordings)

this is really interesting to me. the presence of French (and, to a lesser extent, Spanish) borrowings is a distinctive feature of Moroccan Darija, especially that of the northern cities, and one that most speakers of other varieties of Arabic would know to associate with Morocco. I've heard people associate it more with Moroccan Darija than with e.g. Algerian or Tunisian, even (tho' this is an association, not something that I've sought to substantiate empirically).

Tajine Qui Parle only lists طُموبيلة "Tomobila" and طُموبيل "Tomobil" for "voiture" ("car"); wiktionary indicates that سيارة "car" is used in Standard, Kuwaiti Gulf, and Moroccan Arabic (with expected differences in pronounciation), and also gives a couple different possible spellings for طمبيل "Tomobil" (which it lists as a word only in "Moroccan Arabic"); it gives سيارة ("siyyaara") as a Moroccan Arabic word, but notes that it is "uncommon."

the idea that a word of Standard Arabic origin is automatically "more Moroccan" than a word of French origin, despite that fact that as far as I can tell "Tomobil" is more distinctively Moroccan, is on its surface kind of bizarre, but it makes sense when you consider the recent colonial underpinnings of French borrowings into Moroccan Arabic. the post-colonial process of Arabisation is a process of nationalisation, of creating a national myth around (the repression of Amazigh identity and communist movements in favour of) a desired "Islamic" "Arab-ness"—which is, however, like Frenchness, a language and culture that was introduced or imposed on North Africa and is not "original" to it (not that any culture is completely "original" and free from shifting or borrowings!—rather that the "originality" of Arabic to Morocco seems to be a myth that is being drawn on here).

given that shows dubbed in Moroccan Arabic are to teach the public "good" spoken Darija, they can be analysed in terms of how the ethos of Arabisation connects education with nation: "generaliz[ing] the Arabic language" in order to both "democratiz[e] access to education and affirm[] the Arab identity of the Kingdom" (Youssef Sourgo, Morocco World News). and Arabisation also, of course, paradoxically relies on looking outside Morocco in order to institute Morocco's "Moroccanization":

After its independence, Morocco could not yet aspire to a successful arabization with the lack of professors of Arabic in the kingdom. To remedy this problem, Morocco hired professors from other countries, such as Egypt, Syria and Sudan. (ibid.)

it seems pertinent that, in a discussion about Arabisation, I once heard someone state that the removal of French from buildings and other public spaces was "good," and then also share with me a personal, familial myth that their family, like "all Arabs," had "come from the Middle East" (I think these are direct quotes from a conversation that took place in English?)

it should also be mentioned that words of Standard Arabic origin may be preferred even if the alternative is not (so far as I can tell) a European borrowing: Hall recounts one Moroccan woman noting approvingly that a dubbed Mexican show depicted a married woman who '“properly” referred to her mother-in-law as ‘ḥma:ti’ [حماتي]* instead of as ‘ʻduza’ [عدوزة] or worse ‘ʻguza’ [عݣوزة],' which latter two words the woman associated with 'a rural background and lack of education' (pp. 203-4). it's furthermore interesting to me that she described عݣوزة as "worse" than a word that's identical except for its inclusion of the gaf (ݣ; /g/; hard "g" sound), given that gaf is not in the Standard Arabic abjad, while dal (د; /d/) is!

Oui en tant que kabyle né à Alger très soucieux de la préservation de mes racines, j’en suis plus que convaincu qu’il n y a pas de solution pour la Kabylie ni dans le cadre fédéral ni dans la régionalisation modulable ni non plus dans l’autonomisme, la seule voie appropriée demeure l’indépendance de la Kabylie.

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