Officially, Morocco is an Arab country. Despite what many people believe, Arabic is the only official language of the country. The news, whether broadcast or in print, is in Arabic. Official proclamations are done in Arabic. Speeches are given in Arabic. Road signs and nutritional labels are written in Arabic. That’s probably not very strange to you. If you changed “Arabic” to “English,” and “Morocco” to “the United States,” you’d feel such a strong sense of “duh” that it might actually hurt. I wouldn’t recommend trying. The problem with Morocco is that pretty much no one speaks Arabic.
I should probably clarify. When I say “Arabic,” I’m referring to Modern Standard Arabic, often called “Fos-ha.” And despite the fact that many people do actually know how to speak it (it’s the language of school, as well as the language of almost all major Arabic television programs), it’s not the language of Morocco. Moroccans speak their own version, Darija Maghribia, the “Moroccan Dialect.” Everywhere you go, you hear Darija. This can be really hard for volunteers (and other Americans) who speak Standard Arabic (henceforth, Arabic). It can be hard for Arabs who come to visit the Kingdom. Darija is the language of the street, of the souks, of the young, and of the old. It’s not slang or street language or the result of poor education. Darija is the language spoken by Morocco.
But that’s also part of the problem, it’s the spoken language. Whenever anything gets written down, it’s back to Arabic. Not only does this mess with the grammar, the two languages don’t always even use the same word. Back in training we had a homework assignment to learn the names of a bunch of things in a picture. One of them was a snake. Now, I knew that “snake” is “hensh” in Darija, but there are two H-sounding letters in the Arabic alphabet, so I asked a boy how to write it. He started writing, and when he’d finished I read a word that I’d never seen before: “theu’baan.” I didn’t understand. I asked him, “This is a hensh, right?” “Yes,” he said. “But you wrote “theu’baan,” I insisted. “Yes,” he said.
It turns out that the Fos-ha word for “snake” is “theu’baan,” and, as we’ve mentioned, Darija is never written. It’s just the way it is. To this boy, it would have been as strange to him to write “hensh” as it was to me that he would write “theu’baan.” He sees the one and thinks the other. Never mind the fact that none of the three TH-sounding letters in the Arabic alphabet are used in Darija.
But it doesn’t always work out so well. I was working with some kids to make a peer tutoring program for their junior high and we needed an informational brochure to give the teachers. I don’t speak – let alone write – in Arabic, so I helped them come up with the words in Darija and let them do the translating. We were able to figure out what we wanted to say in about ten minutes, but it took another thirty or more to switch it over to Fos-ha. In fact, they may have had to take it home with them. It amazed me that these boys, who are very eloquent in their own language, would have so much trouble trying to write.
And why is this? Well, first, Arabic is an old language, and old languages often have very complicated grammar. That’s not a rule, per say, but it’s definitely true in this case. Just think of Latin, with all its genders and declensions and what have you. The course of human progress has gotten rid of most of that nonsense, and Darija is a much more modern language. It’s also been affected pretty seriously by interactions with Berber languages and French. Most Moroccans, when they can’t think of the word they want to say in one of these languages, just use the same word from another. A lot of these have caught on enough that a water faucet, for example, is a robinet. No one knows how to say that in Arabic.
A lot of Moroccans like to compare this to the relationship between British and American English, but the analogy falls short. There are significant differences between the way we speak English that go beyond the standard deviation of a mere regional dialect. I may have grown up hearing people talk about the “colah of youah apahtment,” but whether you’re from Providence, Dallas, or Vancouver, you’ll write it as the “color of your apartment.” I don’t have a “favourite colour,” and I wouldn’t be caught dead in a “flat.” These colors don’t run. That’s something we just don’t understand about each other here. We have our own English and use it for everything, they’ve got their language for speaking and another for writing. I’ve never been able to get a good answer as to why they do that, nor have I been able to satisfactorily express why we do things our way.
So, how does all this affect your volunteer? The worst is all those volunteers who wanted Morocco because they’d studied Arabic in college being crushed by the realization that they’re going to have to start from the beginning like all the rest of us. I met a couple poor suckers who were doing two-month trainings at a university in Fes to learn Arabic, learning Arabic in class but then being spoken to in Darija whenever they leave.
Then there’s all those times when you get Fos-ha instead of Darija. Whenever I tell someone I speak Arabic (which is usually a term for either Darija or Fos-ha), they start talking to me with all the complicated grammar and melodramatic inflection of Modern Standard. And, we get a lot of Syrians here in Freedonia. They come for the summer and, apparently, to dig wells. I’ve started to take it as a compliment when people speak to me in Fos-ha because they think I’m from Syria. It’s clear that my Darija isn’t my first language, but it sounds like I have at least some business speaking an Arabic-inspired dialect.
Just the other day I was having lunch with another volunteer who’d come to visit me in my site. He’d ordered a salad with his kebabs; I don’t like the mayonnaise they put on salads here, so I just got the kebabs. While we were waiting for our kebabs, he was eating the salad and we were talking. Two guys sitting next to us were talking, too. One of them leaned over and told me to eat my friend’s salad. He said, “Kool ta’am,” which means “eat the couscous.” I was a little confused because he was eating a salad, not couscous. I was also a little confused because this guy was offering me some of someone else’s lunch. I looked back and said the only thing I could think to say, “Hadshi mashi ta’am” (“This isn’t couscous”). He gave me the strangest look I’ve ever seen, and said, “But you’re Syrian, aren’t you?” I told him that no, I’m actually an American, we chatted for a few moments about where I live, and then we politely ignored each other for the rest of our lunches.
But it’s a very good example. “Ta’am” is a common Moroccan word for couscous, but the actual Darija word for it is “kus-ksu,” “Ta’am” is the Berber word for it, but it comes from Arabic originally, where it simply means “food.” (That’s got to be an anthropologist’s dream.) This guy was just telling me to eat the food, but how was I to know? We say “makla.”
We really don’t get too much Arabic, though. Not spoken to us, anyway. The hard part is the writing. People say that not too long ago there used to be a newspaper in Darija. They printed it for the foreign population who’ve learned how to speak the local dialect but don’t know anything about Fos-ha. Granted, it was in the Arabic alphabet, but the spelling, grammar, and vocabulary were that of Darija. All you had to know where the sounds of the letters. It would be great if that was still around.
As it stands, I’m functionally illiterate here, which has taught me the most important lesson of all this: illiteracy really sucks. You take for granted just how much information reading gives us access to. It’s not just the heavy, sacred tomes of The Iliad, The Wealth of Nations, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that you’re missing out on. You wouldn’t know what’s on television tonight or how much it costs to park your car. You wouldn’t be able to say you read Playboy for the articles and your wife would give you a bunch of doodles instead of a grocery list. You wouldn’t know if the aerosol can your toddler’s been sucking on is poisonous or what to do if it is. You’d have gained nothing of my wisdom since I’m not there to read this for you.
It is the ultimately humbling experience, and it makes you feel just how vulnerable you can be when you have to ask or figure everything out with only your best guesses to aid you. The only comfort is knowing that 47.7% of everyone else around you is in the same boat. On second thought, that's not very comforting at all. I guess that's why we're here in the Peace Corps.
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