Pinning down the language of Morocco...

By AUTUMN on February 29, 2008 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

...because it can get slippery if say, someone tells you that Moroccans speak Arabic, and so you absorb 5 books on the Arabic language, and then, when you get to Morocco, you find you cannot understand a word after "salam alekum."

Arabic is the language of the Quran and therefore, of the Muslim world. Even those Muslims whose native language is not Arabic are still encouraged to learn it so that they can understand the Quran, which they say cannot be fully understood in any translated form. And then, even those who are native speakers of Arabic may not be able to fully understand Quranic Arabic because it is such an old and highly involved form. Some would take religious classes to better comprehend its meaning.

For modern formal communications such as newscasts and political speeches, all countries from Morocco to Iraq use Modern Standard Arabic.* Unless otherwise noted, this is what Arabic language books will teach. This standardized version of Arabic derived from the Quranic form is not a native tongue to anyone, but it is said that the Levantine dialects such as those of Syria and Palestine are among the closer spoken forms of it. The Moroccan or Maghreb dialect is arguably the most deviant form. It is so different that a Middle Eastern person could not understand what Moroccans are saying, although Moroccans can generally understand Middle Easterners because most movies and popular media come from Egypt and Lebanon. Needless to say that you can also speak MSA with most of them, but you still won't know if they are talking about you in Moroccan....

So if I want to go to Morocco and I really want to understand what people are saying, I have to be a little more creative on how to learn it, because there are very few books on the dialect. I don't want to get hung up on the reading and writing as I might in other languages (although it helps a lot to know the Arabic alphabet), because it is a spoken language, and not for formal discourse. I suppose that's why there is not much on it in print. Fortunately I have come across some indispensable resources, my wonderful Moroccan coworkers not the least of them. The others include Lonely Planet's Moroccan Arabic Phrasebook, and a fantastic website at www.speakmoroccan.com where you can read and ask questions about language, culture, and anything Moroccan.

For this project, I do not know nearly enough of this language to base my observations on it, so most of the data has to be non-verbal. I will use what I can understand (things other than curse words), like greetings, numbers, and any other phrases (curse words are relevant). These days leading up to takeoff, I've been using spare moments to brush up so that I can have more to draw on for my qualitative data ... not to mention it's lots of fun, and gratifying when you can understand something new.

*Check out Arabs need to find their tongue for a short but interesting commentary on the politics of MSA by JHU professor Niloofer Haeri.