The Berber Language: Officially Recognized, Unofficially Marginalized?

   Tamazight is the standardized version of the Amazigh languages. An estimated 25 to 30 million speakers of Tamazight and other Berber dialects are spread throughout the North African countries, from the Atlantic Ocean to Egypt.

    Amazigh languages (there are three main regional variants) are spoken by an 

estimated 35 to 40 percent of Morocco’s population. But North African political discourse, whether nationalist or Islamist, has long been hostile to the Amazigh language, perceived as a threat to national cohesion. For decades, giving children Amazigh names was forbidden in Morocco. Not recognizing the language spoken in the country’s poor rural interior was an effective means of discrimination that shut the Berbers out from participating politically, socially and economically in Moroccan society.

    In 1994, King Hassan II came out in favor of teaching Tamazight in schools. In 2003, his son, now King Mohamed VI, put the initiative into practice. In the new constitution he helped create in 2011, Tamazight was recognized as one of Morocco’s official languages. Tamazight writing now adorns the facades of most public buildings.

    For many speakers of Tamazight, teaching their language is a question of social justice. His mother and grandmother only spoke Tamazight, says Khalafi. “It was their only opening on the world. Their whole life they couldn’t watch TV, listen to the radio, or make themselves understood if they went to a hospital.” Today there are some media in the Amazigh language. But courts, hospitals and other parts of the public administration still operate exclusively in Arabic.

    The decision to include Tamazight in the curriculum is important symbolically, says Silverstein, as “a recognition that being Berber is not something you should hide.” But even Amazigh activists and intellectuals do not generally work and write in the language. According to the Royal Institute, only 250 books have been written in Tamazight.

    Silverstein doubts that the new education policy will stem the ongoing decline in Tamazight speakers. The language competes with English, French and Arabic, and when young people think about what they will need in the future, Tamazight often takes second place, he says.

   Berber identity is more recognized than ever before in the country’s history, but this recognition is unlikely to stem the language’s decline.



^{(adapted from https://www.al-fanarmedia.org/2015/07/the-berber-language-officially-recognized-unofficially-marginalized/)}