a tale of two cities

Today was a series of lectures on the Moroccan education system and language situation in Morocco.  I am going to focus on the latter.  To put it simply: Moroccan is the land of many languages.  Most people when they hear Morocco, they think Arabic, which is technically correct.  According to the Moroccan constitution: "Le Royaume du Maroc, Etat musulman souverain, dont la langue officielle est l'arabe, constitue une partie du Grand Maghreb Arabe."  Now this brings up so many questions for debate.  The first obvious one: why is it written in French?  The second being, Arabic is officially stressed as important (as the word appears twice in that one second) but what Arabic are they referring to?  The dialect here, known as Darija, is a blend of Arabic, French and some of the berber languages, but it is still a dialect of Arabic.  I have studied Modern Standard Arabic for four years in college, and being honest, I can't understand a single word that's going on here.  When I speak in my MSA, nobody understands me either.  Making matters even more confusing, there is not just Darija but there is also a Middle Moroccan Arabic that is supposedely some sort of hybrid between Darija and Modern Standard Arabic.  That's two languages, and two versions of Arabic.  They key different and what I find most interesting is that there are no native speakers of Modern Standard Arabic or Middle Moroccan Arabic.  Something for those linguists out there to think about.

Now, besides Arabic it is important not to disregard the language of French in Morocco.  It was the language of the colonizers, which in itself speaks volumes.  Most signs here are still in both Arabic (Darija) and French.  Science classes at the college level are conducted in French and the majority of important documents are also written in French.  People still speak and understand it, but there is a no push to be learning English over French.

 The other important language is of the Berber language, known as Tamazight.  Berbers have always had an important role in Moroccan life and there is a push to standardize the language and continue teaching it in schools.  This interest in keeping the Berber dialects alive is an interesting cultural quality of Morocco as most countries try and move to having a single language (I also heard that Princess Lalla Salma is of Berber descent, and Morocco is still a monarchy sooooo...)  Now I am no expert on the Berber dialects, and I know that they different greatly in different regions of Morocco. 
This was an attempt (and i repeat attempt) at trying to explain Morocco's language situation. I guess the diversity of the language situation is a pretty good way to look at Morocco: 


For me right now (especially since it is Ramadan) my mind is trying to wrap around everything Moroccan. There is so much information to absorb, so much information to learn and so many different experiences to have and all the while I am thinking of my American comforts that are no more (mainly air conditioning, my bed, a cell phone that was made in 1991 and of course, lattes)


As they say, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times...