In recent years, there has been a marked shift in the way many Moroccans use and talk about language, specifically with regard to writing. There are those who strongly advocate the recognition of Moroccan Arabic (dārija) as an official language that would fulfill all linguistic functions, whereas others view dārija solely as a spoken variety (some say corruption) of literary or Standard Arabic that has no place as an official language, much less a written one. This latter position stresses a certain view of Standard Arabic's central role in transmitting and preserving the Islamic religious and cultural heritage, as well as its unifying role in the Arab world more generally.Footnote 1 Between these two poles lies a much more complicated reality, involving changes in the use of language in Morocco that are difficult to ignore. In print media, advertising, music, fictional writing, and literary translation, dārija is increasingly written in a variety of ways that point to a shift in perceptions of dārija and in its linguistic role and potential uses in daily Moroccan life. This shift, occurring within Morocco's already complex linguistic landscape, has important social, political, and cultural implications.
The position and role of the French language in the Maghrib has been the topic of much research across numerous academic fields, including sociolinguistics, literary and cultural studies, and education. Taking into consideration the role of the French language in the colonization of the Maghrib, and its continued importance in the postcolonial period, many of these studies treat complex issues of cultural definition, the Maghrib's place in relation to Europe and the Arab world, and the appropriate ways to express that relation.Footnote 2 In Morocco, as in other parts of the Maghrib, French remains important (and English is becoming increasingly so) in many sectors of society, despite Arabization efforts. The situation is made even more complex by a movement that has sought to assert the place of Amazigh culture and language in Moroccan history and contemporary society.Footnote 3 Issues of language choice and change in Moroccan writing, and debates surrounding appropriate national languages, share much in common with those in other parts of the Arab world, and are by no means new.Footnote 4 At the same time, what is occurring in Morocco demonstrates interesting, local specificities that cut to the very core of Morocco's cultural and linguistic definition.
In this article, I provide a survey of recent developments in the use of dārija in writing, and discuss how this evolving situation is articulated by intellectuals, journalists, publishers, writers, and translators. Far from representing an organized movement, these actors are a diverse group, with differing ideologies, methods, and goals. What makes their activities so interesting is that they provide a wide lens through which to view the linguistic situation in Morocco. It is clear that changes in language and writing practices are occurring, and that these changes point to what could prove to be a significant shift in reading and writing culture in Morocco.
ARABIC'S OFFICIAL STATUS
Fuṣḥā (literally “the most pure,” thus clearly expressing its status in superlative terms) is the language of pre-Islamic poetry, the Qurʾan, the whole of the written Arabic tradition. The status of Standard Arabic (contemporary fuṣḥā) in Morocco was bolstered by the Moroccan nationalist movement that arose after the establishment of the French Protectorate in 1912. With French as the language of the enemy, Standard Arabic served as a logical unifying language for the national independence movement during the Protectorate period; independence leader ʿAllal al-Fassi defined Morocco's culture as Islamic and its civilization as Arabic.Footnote 5 Unlike amāzīghiyya or dārija, Standard Arabic was viewed as a viable “literary” alternative to French and served to define Morocco as an Arab country against France. Four years after independence from France in 1956, the Institute for the Study and Research of Arabization (Maʿhad al-Dirasat wa-l-Abhath li-l-Taʿrib; l'Institut d’Études et Recherches pour l'Arabisation) was established to “carry out the activities necessary for Arabization . . . and to make the Arabic Language a tool for work and research in all fields, especially in science and technology.”Footnote 6 However, for a variety of political, economic, and ideological reasons, Arabization has not been as successful as some had hoped.Footnote 7 Despite more than fifty years of official Arabization policies, knowledge of French and, increasingly, English is viewed as necessary for success in a wide range of fields including science, technology, and business. Morocco still suffers from illiteracy rates hovering at around 50 percent, higher for women and in rural areas.Footnote 8 Most Moroccans thus remain alienated not only from the halls of power but also from full employment and, in general, from daily official business (e.g., in governmental offices or courts of law).Footnote 9
Standard Arabic's official status was assured in the Moroccan constitution of 1962, the preamble of which states that “the Kingdom of Morocco is a sovereign Muslim state, the official language is [Standard] Arabic [al-ʿarabiyya], and it constitutes a part of the greater Maghrib.” In 1996, the constitution was amended, and the word “Arab” was added through an assertion that Morocco was now “a part of the greater Arab Maghrib,” further emphasizing Morocco's place in the Arab world. On 1 July 2011, 98 percent of Moroccan voters supported constitutional amendments put forth by the king following protests associated with the Arab Spring. There have been serious questions about the legitimacy of the vote and its likelihood of leading to democratic reform,Footnote 10 but setting these issues aside it is important to note that in this amended constitution, Morocco's different languages are placed into a clear hierarchy. In Chapter 1, Article 5, Standard Arabic's status as official language is rearticulated, along with a statement that “the state will work to protect and develop it, and to expand its use.”Footnote 11Amāzīghiyya is also recognized as an official language. Ḥassāniyya, the language of the disputed Western Sahara, does not receive official language status, but the state will work toward its “maintenance” (ṣiyāna) nonetheless, “considering it is an inseparable part of a united Moroccan cultural identity.” Finally, “dialects and current cultural expressions” receive state “protection” (ḥimāya). The new constitution thus solidifies Morocco's Arab identity, accords amāzīghiyya official status, and further cements ties with the Western Sahara so as to emphasize Morocco's territorial integrity. Dārija, the mother tongue of the majority of Moroccans, is deemed important for “cultural” reasons but not in any official capacity.
WRITING IN DĀRIJA
Since the medieval period, Arab grammarians and literary critics have discussed the efficacy and permissibility of writing in colloquial Arabic. The appearance and subsequent writing of the strophic muwashshaḥ and zajal lyric forms in 11th-century Muslim Spain was initially met with resistance, or at least ambivalence, but by the 14th century these forms came to be widely praised and duly recorded in literary anthologies and histories.Footnote 12 However, the debate surrounding what constitutes acceptable written literary expression continued. Beginning with the 19th-century nahḍa (rebirth) movement, and continuing into the 20th-century independence movements and beyond, Arab intellectuals have grappled with Arabic's multileveled linguistic spectrum and with how best to modernize Arab society while building both national and Pan-Arab identities. Standard Arabic's rich heritage and religious significance, as well as its unifying role in the contemporary Arab world, is pitted against questions of whether it is sufficiently expressive, flexible, and intelligible for the majority of Arabs, which in turn calls into question the very ideal of Pan-Arabism.Footnote 13
In contemporary Morocco, publication in dārija has been increasing in print media, fiction, and works translated into Arabic, and there are those who strongly advocate for its acceptance as a written language. Beginning in the 1970s, but really taking off in the early to mid-2000s, writing in dārija has gained support as serving the practical, political, and artistic needs of a dynamic and multilingual society. During this time, new technologies such as e-mail and texting, as well as the growth of private radio outlets, have encouraged a widening use of dārija in writing and in artistic creation.Footnote 14 These developments have begun to provide a range of written forms for an increasing number of Moroccans and to acclimate them to the use of dārija in an expanded range of contexts.
THE PRESS
In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, a number of dārija language publications appeared. These included Akhbar al-Suq (Marketplace News), established by journalist Muhammad Filali and run by Bouhali Hamid. Describing the choice to use dārija (the journal grew out of a French language publication entitled Satirix), Hamid states: “Our editorial line was very simple. We would chronicle the lives of the ‘little people,’ speaking the language of the lumpenproletariat.” Emphasizing political cartoons and short articles written in a combination of dārija and Standard Arabic, the paper ran from April 1978 to June 1980 through 121 issues, with distribution surpassing 5,000 copies per week. However, according to Hamid, “we were young and without any business management experience” and the publication folded due to financial troubles.Footnote 15
Akhbar al-Suq inspired another publication, Akhbar al-Buq (Megaphone News), which only ran five issues in April and May 1982. The relationship between the two publications, already suggested by their rhyming titles, is articulated on page 2 of the latter's inaugural edition, in a short poem addressed to the new readers:
Brothers and sisters, we burst forth from here.
Our hope is to treat everything that is broken,
And everyone who is beaten down.
After the disappearance of Akhbar al-Suq, today we replace it with Akhbar al-Buq.
If you feel that you are hanging on the gallows, pull yourselves together,
Even if you've got no money in the bank!Footnote 16
In 2002, an important foray into dārija language publishing was made when Elena Prentice, an American-born longtime resident of Tangier, started the weekly newspaper Khbar Bladna (Our Country's News). According to Prentice, the reasons for the establishment of the paper were both short-term (delivering important information to Moroccans in an easily accessible language) and longer term (helping to reduce illiteracy).Footnote 17Khbar Bladna enjoyed a run of over four and a half years, printing 214 issues. It was distributed in twenty-six cities of Morocco, with a print run of 6,000 per issue; readership was quite robust, especially when one takes into account the likelihood that these papers were shared and/or read aloud in groups.Footnote 18
Arguably the most successful example of written dārija in the media appeared in 2006, when the publishers of the Moroccan French language weekly Tel Quel (As It Is) launched a dārija-inflected publication entitled Nishan (Straight Up). With in-depth coverage on such controversial subjects as sex, prostitution, drug use, government corruption, and even the monarchy, this publication combined hard-hitting journalism with easily accessible language. After just five months on the newsstands, Nishan was selling over 14,000 copies per week; within three years of circulation, it had become Morocco's top-selling Arabic weekly.Footnote 19 The critical coverage of topics people wanted to read about, in a language more widely understood than pure Standard Arabic,Footnote 20 was an important factor in Nishan's popularity, but this combination also led to more intense scrutiny and criticism. The publication quickly became embroiled in various legal battles with the state.
Soon after its establishment, Nishan published an article on religious jokes in Morocco, the result of which was a three-year suspended sentence and a fine of 80,000 Moroccan Dirhams (approximately U.S. $9,300 at the time) for both the magazine's editor-in-chief Driss Ksikes and journalist Sanaa Elaji. The two were also banned from all journalistic work for two months.Footnote 21 The following year more court battles ensued, when publisher Ahmad bin Shamsi (Ahmed Benchemsi) was charged with disrespect for the king as a result of an editorial he published in the 31 August 2007 issue of Nishan that criticized King Muhammad VI; addressing the king directly, the editorial was entitled “Sidna, Ash Katgul?” (My good sir, what do you say?). The cover of the issue featured a picture of the king, with the caption, again in dārija: beʿd timinya senewat min al-ḥukm, fin ghadi bina khuya (After eight years of rule, where are you taking us, brother?). The second part of the caption is a reference to a classic song with clear social and political themes by the Moroccan supergroup of the 1970s, Nass el-Ghiwane, titled “Fin Ghadi Biyya Khuya?”: “Where are you taking me, brother? Where are you taking me? / Knock after knock, who can stop the misery? / Don't blame us for living abroad, O people. / Don't blame us for living abroad . . .” Footnote 22 Although the song is critical of Moroccan social and economic inequalities and hardship, it does not refer directly to the king, whereas Bin Shamsi's headline clearly does, making it quite a bold statement.
Nishan was forced to cease publication in October 2010 due to increased pressure from the government, but the closure was not a direct result of official censorship. Rather, it stemmed from a loss of advertising revenue from assets controlled by the king's investment fund, Omnium Nord Africain, and its parent company Société Nationale d'Investissement. Nishan's French language counterpart, Tel Quel, has thus far avoided such a fate, largely due to the fact that its readership and its advertising base are more international.Footnote 23 Thus, the Nishan case underscores the possible limitations of a localized, pro-dārija movement (not to mention prospects for a free press and a democratic society in a country where the king holds such a large portion of the wealth). While the local is, of course, the point of a movement that favors a regional language and identity over a Pan-Arab one, the financial viability of these endeavors is a real issue that cannot be ignored.
With the precedents of Akhbar al-Suq, Akhbar al-Buq, Khbar Bladna, Nishan, and others, the use of dārija in Moroccan print media has become much more widespread. In fact, it is now quite common to find in Moroccan Arabic daily newspapers a page or two devoted to news or goings-on in dārija. Dārija is also used to a limited degree throughout the print media in story titles, interviews, and to “lighten” the tone in news stories.Footnote 24 Since Nishan's closure in 2010, there has not been another publication that purports to write extensively in dārija, but the example has been set and it is only a matter of time before such an endeavor is undertaken again.
FICTION
On the use of colloquial Arabic in novelistic writing, Abdelfattah Kilito, a Moroccan novelist and critic who writes in both French and Arabic, describes the alienation he feels while reading an Egyptian novel that uses Egyptian colloquial (ʿāmmiyya) for its dialogue:
I tolerated ʿâmmiyya in the cinema and the theater, but I could not stand its intrusion into the premises of writing, the temple of the book. I was annoyed because I found myself excluded from communication: the “we” was no longer evident . . . Because of the trivial issue of language, half of the Egyptian novel's contents escaped me.Footnote 25
This alienation from the Egyptian novel seems to suggest that, at least for Kilito, Standard Arabic is the most suitable language for an inclusive Arabic literature that can be understood across the Arab world. However, he also admits that for Moroccan literature, “colloquial Arabic . . . as a bearer of [a certain] history and geography, would allow one to recognize a Moroccan work, in Arabic or French, ancient or modern!”Footnote 26 Kilito's comments clearly articulate the dilemma that the contemporary Moroccan writer faces: writing in Standard Arabic ensures that a work can be read across the Arab world (by highly literate readers, of course), whereas writing in (or at least including) dārija can ensure a work's “Moroccan-ness,” but could result in it being much less accessible to non-Moroccan readers.
In addition to fictional writing composed mainly in Standard Arabic but including some dārija (e.g., in dialogue),Footnote 27 works have appeared in recent years that are written completely in dārija. The output is limited, and the authors I discuss below are not part of any organized effort to write and publish fiction in dārija. There is no standard orthography,Footnote 28 and each author approaches writing in dārija from a unique perspective. In fact, what makes the literary production of the members of this “group” so interesting is that, rather than representing a cohesive literary-linguistic movement with stated goals and ideologies, their work shares little except for the dārija in which it is written. It is exactly the disconnectedness of these texts that underlines the widening presence of fictional writing in dārija available to the Moroccan reader in recent years.
Yusuf Amin al-ʿAlami (Youssouf Amine Elalamy) is the author of six works in French, including Un marocain à New York (1998); Les clandestins (2000), which won the Prix Grand Atlas in 2001; Paris, mon bled (2002); Miniatures (2004); Nomade (2009), a multilingual, traveling literary gallery installation due to open soon in Cologne, Germany; and Oussama mon amour (2011). Tqarqib n-Nab (Gossip) is his first and only foray into writing in dārija.Footnote 29 Published in 2006 by the publishing house Khbar Bladna (established by Elena Prentice, as discussed above), it comprises a series of very short profiles or portraits (ranging from a few sentences to a few paragraphs) of fictional yet easily recognizable character “types.” “Abdelhaque is twenty-nine years old, God forbid! Even he is unemployed . . . He spends his time in the cybercafé chatting and trawling for girls on the internet.”Footnote 30 “Rouchdi is a good boy who is crazy for America” and who watches on television as the World Trade Center buildings fall on September 11.Footnote 31 “Soraya is a girl from Tangier who loves make-up and all things gold.”Footnote 32 The texts (klam) are accompanied by illustrations (teṣawer) by the author. Rather than serving as a vehicle for an ideological or artistic stance, al-ʿAlami describes Tqarqib n-Nab as a “literary experiment,”Footnote 33 and has expressed no immediate plans to write another work in dārija. He describes the writing process of this book as natural, almost effortless, flowing directly from his thoughts without need of “translation” into another written language (French or Standard Arabic), and when he read excerpts at a high school in Larache in the north of Morocco, the response was like none he had ever experienced before. The students were enraptured by the text that “spoke to their hearts, not their minds.” He said that the book sold faster than he had ever seen a book of his sell. According to Elena Prentice, the publisher, about 1,000 copies have sold—not great by American commercial book standards, but not bad for Morocco, where book sales figures are generally rather low. The sales were no doubt helped by the book's cost of 10 dirhams (approximately U.S. $1.12), a price that al-ʿAlami insisted on so as to make it as accessible as possible. The book was adapted for performance by Theatre Nomad, a street theater school and group founded and directed by Mohammad Assouni.Footnote 34
Murad ʿAlami (Mourad Alami) is a professor of German, a professional translator, and a vocal spokesperson for the official recognition of dārija (what he calls al-lugha al-maghribiyya, “the Moroccan language”). Having spent some thirty years in Germany, ʿAlami recently returned to Morocco and has taken up the mantle of advocate for dārija writing; he appears on television; publishes in numerous newspapers in French, Standard Arabic, and dārija; and has translated numerous works from German and world literature into dārija. ʿAlami's project is simple: for dārija to be accepted as a written language and recognized as the official language of Morocco. He aims to prove by example that “we can write anything we want with it.”Footnote 35
In addition to his translations of classic European works into dārija, which I will discuss below, ʿAlami recently published his first novel in dārija, entitled r-Rahil, Demʿa Mesafera (Leaving, a Traveling Tear). The novel tells of a young Moroccan who emigrates to Germany, and it falls neatly into the genre of the contemporary travel narrative, whether fictional or non-fictional (e.g., Youssouf Amine Elalamy's A Moroccan in New York, Radwa ʿAshur's The Journey: Memoirs of an Egyptian Student in America, and al-Tayyib Salih's Season of Migration to the North), providing a platform for cultural description, criticism, and contrasting the home culture to that of the host. The young narrator clearly expresses his frustration with Morocco on the very first page, where he says that “[i]n this country, we learn from a very young age how to torture one another, or, if we don't torture one another, we learn not to feel any enjoyment in our lives.”Footnote 36
In a first-person narrative that runs 213 pages without chapter breaks, the narrator reminisces about his upbringing in Morocco, makes comparisons (positive and negative) between Morocco and Germany, and gives his impressions of his adopted country and its people. Having argued elsewhere extensively for the promotion and use of dārija in writing and as a national language, insisting that it is the “language of the future . . . of clarity . . . of youth . . . of freedom,”Footnote 37 ʿAlami uses the novelistic form to further articulate these views. At one point, the novel's protagonist, musing about the various fields of work he has thought of pursuing, comes to economics and proceeds to cite economic statistics that compare Arab nations in general, and Morocco in particular, to developed countries. He considers “doing something with foreign languages” and mentions “the Moroccan language, which [he] has mastered, [his] mother tongue,” as well as Standard Arabic and French.Footnote 38 Then, after complaining about Moroccan linguistic policy and its swing between acceptance of French and Arabization, he is prescriptive in his resignation: “If only we used the Moroccan language, dārija. By God there would not be a single illiterate person. Of course Arabic will always keep its place as a scholarly language, an essential heritage, the language of universities, religion, newspapers, announcements, and official business.”Footnote 39
In essence, the novel is an extension of ʿAlami's nonfiction writing about Moroccan language policy and the resulting educational, economic, and social problems in Morocco. However, speaking of these challenges using the novelistic form, in dārija, and from the point of view of a young frustrated Moroccan emigrant, the novel voices the most pressing concerns of Moroccan youth today—unemployment, economic instability, and emigration—in a language easily understood by them.
Idris Misnawi (Driss Mesnaoui) was born in 1948 in the area of Tiflet (in northwestern Morocco) and is a retired high school teacher. He has played an important role in the promotion of the zajal form (colloquial strophic poetry) in Morocco and is one of the founders of the Moroccan Association for Popular Poetry.Footnote 40 In addition to his importance as a zajal poet, he published his first novel in dārija in 2009, Taʿirwurut (Rose).Footnote 41 Misnawi describes this work first and foremost as “stories” (teʿawid), and then parenthetically as a novel (riwaya), perhaps because this is his first attempt at the form, or perhaps because the language he chooses to use (dārija) is still not widely established in novelistic writing. In fact, the work encourages a reevaluation of the genre and suggests that this is, in fact, something new. It is a rich tapestry of Moroccan folktales, zajals, proverbs, history, and travel descriptions that transports the reader in time and place and links Morocco's past to its present. On the importance of Moroccan proverbs in particular, linguist and folklorist Zakiyya ʿIraqi Sinasur (Zakia Iraqui Sinaceur) states that they “rest on what our ancestors have said since time immemorial, which we have inherited from them. This [heritage] has become the possession of all, and we must respect these words and study them.”Footnote 42 Indeed, Misnawi respects the proverb and other examples of oral culture (songs, stories, poems), and constructs an entire novel from them.
The story begins in the region of “Zemmour, whose land spreads out between the anti-Atlas mountains to the east, Machraʿ r-raml to the west, the Salé sea to the south, and Meknes to the north; it is beautified by the Bouregreg, Baht, and Nekhilat rivers.”Footnote 43 Although the plot is driven by travel, it is anchored in this region and in the family matriarch Lalla Hamma, whose husband Areeb was imprisoned in Marrakech years before. In the opening, the reader finds himself at the site of “an isolated grave looking out over the gardens spread out below along the river.”Footnote 44 The grave is where everything begins and ends. The narrator speaks directly to the reader in storytelling fashion, and the story's suspenseful pull is laid out masterfully:
A grave, about which I can only say that it is forgotten, or that the nights of time want it to be forgotten. You pass in front of it or stop at it, a strange fear seizing you . . . and many questions overcome you: What exactly is this grave doing here? Why did it choose such an isolated place? What sort of secret is it hiding? Who's lying there? Why such inattention to this grave? What are the reasons for time's deliberate disregard of the grave, not to mention the neglect of its inhabitant's children and grandchildren? And more questions besides.Footnote 45
The reader is plunged into a “narrative journey”Footnote 46 that will attempt to answer these questions. On this journey, it is the grave itself that will tell the story: “The grave, then is the soil's tongue which relates things that happen. Those things constitute stories, call them a novel if you like. The novel is made up of doors and windows that look out upon worlds that are hidden and those that are clear.”Footnote 47 The result is the lyrical tale of Taʿirwurut (a proper name in amāzīghiyya, the equivalent of Warda in Arabic or Rose in English) as she travels from Zemmour to Marrakech to find her father, who was taken by the makhzan (the elite governing class) because of his refusal as leader of his tribe (Aït Yahya) to pay debilitating taxes during a time of drought. The story is linked closely to Moroccan geography and history, and the tale's local quality makes the decision to use dārija a natural one. The language links the past to the present, and the result is a highly successful Moroccan novel, one that is difficult to imagine having taken place anywhere else or having been written in any other way.Footnote 48
Finally, worth brief mention is ʿAziz Rekraki (Regragi), who is from the city of Salé and who has published a number of short works in dārija: Nisa l-Hubb l-Azreq (Women of Blue Love), z-Zaʿima (The Leader), Mulat n-Nuba (The Following), Heyehat l-Basha (The Pasha's Campaigns), l-Fushush l-ʿAryan (Naked Indulgence), and ʿAyb sh-Shahba (The Blonde's Defect).Footnote 49 These relatively inexpensive books (15 Moroccan dirhams each, approximately U.S. $1.68) are short (no more than 65 pages) and replete with scenes of sex, violence, drinking, drugs, and double-crossing; they seem aimed at a young male readership and meant solely for entertainment (rather than having literary aspirations). In fact, the plots resemble those of television dramas, and with their narrative in dārija, short sentences, and extensive dialogue, they read easily with script-like clarity. The tone and style of these books make them an interesting participant in the growing production of written dārija, and it may be that works such as these will play an important role in the development of dārija writing.
TRANSLATION
The views of those who promote writing in dārija are strongly and clearly articulated in their writings, and in their choice of translations of European-language texts (German, French, and English) into dārija. Murad ʿAlami, ʿAbd al-Rahim Yusi (Abderrahim Youssi), and Hakima Barrada (Berrada) are three such translators whose work represents the efforts of highly educated individuals to make an argument for dārija's ability to fulfill all linguistic functions, including writing.Footnote 50
Beginning in 2009, Murad ʿAlami, discussed above, has published a number of translations of world literature into dārija, including Rainer Maria Rilke's (d. 1926) Duino Elegies; Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's (d. 1781) Nathan the Wise (a plea for religious tolerance); a collection of world folktales retold in dārija; and, most recently, a collection of jokes from around the world.Footnote 51 In 2011, ʿAlami published a short manifesto advocating the official recognition of dārija (and amāzīghiyya), entitled The Living Languages of Morocco: Are Moroccans Zionists if They Use, Create, and Produce in Moroccan and Amazighiyya, Their Mother Tongue? The first eleven pages of the essay are a response to charges that those who call for the use of dārija and/or amāzīghiyya for anything other than spoken communication are pro-Zionist agents striving to weaken Morocco's linguistic, social, and national fabric. The rest is a sweeping indictment of the current linguistic state of affairs in Morocco, with particular focus on the failure of Arabization and Moroccan educational policies of the past fifty years, and a prescription for linguistic change and economic development through the use of dārija and amāzīghiyya. ʿAlami's arguments for raising the status of dārija to the level of official written language are both psychological and economic. He begins by stating:
We will not succeed . . . if we are not frank with ourselves and future generations. The language of the future is Moroccan [maghribiyya] and amāzīghiyya, not Standard Arabic [al-ʿarabiyya]. Thus will we be able to tackle the deterioration of our schools, and exploit all of our energies and talents for the purpose of modernization and intellectual innovation and production so that Morocco will be able to join the club of industrialized and advanced nations.Footnote 52
ʿAlami views publishing in general, and translation in particular, as a sign of a country's intellectual and economic success, and as proof he presents a number of statistics that compare Morocco to more economically developed countries: since World War II, Japan has published more than 200,000 translations into Japanese (roughly 3,000 annually); Turkey translates more than 1,500 titles per year. He contrasts this with the entire Arab world's publication of not more than 1,000 translations annually.Footnote 53
ʿAlami does not cite sources for these statistics and he seems to have adopted what Richard Jacquemond calls the “crisis discourse,” according to which “the Arabic translation movement is [viewed as] strikingly weak, a blatant illustration of the cultural lag of Arab societies and their faulty insertion in the international economy of knowledge.”Footnote 54 Jacquemond, in his critique of the United Nations Arab Human Development Report's discussion of the Arab world's deficiencies in the realm of translation,Footnote 55 points out the “political and ideological context” that underpins the report's conclusions, which have taken on an aura of truth in both Arab and non-Arab development discourse. He asserts that translation activity in the Arab world, both from and into Arabic, is greatly undercounted, noting that
according to my own research, the total number of translations published in the Arab World during the current decade amounts to around 2,000 titles a year, compared to 330 according to the AHDR; Franck Mermier, in one of the finest and most recent analyses of the Arab book market, goes even further and suggests an estimate of “between 2,000 and 3,000 titles” translated every year.Footnote 56
Regardless of the accuracy of ʿAlami's statistics, he has taken it upon himself to lead the charge in closing the “translation gap” between the developed world and Morocco in order to demonstrate dārija's equivalence to other world languages and to spur the kind of intellectual growth that drives the intellectual and economic development of other countries.
ʿAbd al-Rahim Yusi (Abderrahim Youssi), a linguist and retired professor of English who has studied and written about Moroccan Arabic and Morocco's complex linguistic situation for years, has translated two classics of world literature into dārija: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's (d. 1944) Le Pétit Prince and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's (d. 1772) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.Footnote 57 His doctoral thesis was published as Grammaire et lexique de l'arabe marocain moderne in 1992, and one of its goals was “to demonstrate that Moroccans possess their own natural language, and moreover, that it could be codified.”Footnote 58 He views his translation projects as the culmination of work that he started on dārija decades ago.Footnote 59
Yusi's purpose in promoting a standardized form of written dārija is to “contribute to facilitating access to the world of reading to greater numbers of people . . . in the hopes of extending the bridge between the two shores of the Arabic language.”Footnote 60 In the preface to his translation of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which is written in dārija (unlike that of Le Petit Prince, which is in Standard Arabic), he emphasizes that its purpose is for “the Moroccan reader [to] find enjoyment in the extraordinary literary beauty of this text” and “to again present proof that dārija can express this beauty with the same power and magnificence as any other language.”Footnote 61 Recognizing Arabic in Morocco as triglossic (consisting of Standard Arabic, Middle Moroccan Arabic, and dārija), Yusi's goal is not to replace Standard Arabic with dārija. He challenges the notion that colloquial forms of Arabic are merely the result of linguistic deteriorations of “pure” Arabic (al-fuṣḥā) through contact with non-Arab peoples following the spread of Islam, asserting that they are different linguistic levels of a single language. His promotion of dārija is practical in purpose; he suggests taking as a starting point for language reform “the reality of our [Arab] societies from their current position.”Footnote 62 Since more than 50 percent of Moroccans are illiterate, not to mention those who are barely literate, “the number of true users of the Arabic language does not, even in the best of cases, exceed 20% of Moroccans.”Footnote 63
Hakima Barrada, a psychoanalyst living in France has, with Mustafa al-Nawi (Mustapha al-Naoui), translated the work of the 16th-century French political philosopher Étienne de la Boétie (d. 1563), Discours de la servitude volontaire, into dārija.Footnote 64 Boétie's essay is an attack on absolute monarchy and tyrannical rule, with the underlying idea that the absence of popular opposition to these systems is tacit support for them. According to Barrada, her translation is part of a larger project of a Parisian publishing house whose plan is to publish Boétie's Discours in four languages: Moroccan Arabic, Kabyle, Standard Arabic, and modern French.Footnote 65 In explaining her interest in translating this text into dārija, she points to the importance of translating classic works “for the majority of people who do not know foreign languages or Classical Arabic, which is no one's mother tongue.”Footnote 66 For a more detailed and in-depth discussion of the choice of a text that focuses on societies that find themselves enslaved voluntarily by tyrannical rulers (a bold choice), and the importance of linguistic reform in changing this situation, she refers to the work of the Egyptian-French psychoanalyst Moustapha Safouan, whom she views as a sort of intellectual mentor. His book Pourquoi le monde arabe n'est pas libre (translated into English as Why Are the Arabs Not Free?—The Politics of Writing) discusses the roots of Arab despotism and the role of Standard Arabic in the Arab world's inability to develop democratic systems. Drawing on a wide variety of historical, religious, and psychoanalytic sources, Safouan views language, and the Arab world's stubborn adherence to tradition, as crippling. He considers Standard Arabic a dead language that is very much removed from most people's daily lives, and sees language reform and the elevation of local dialects to official status as the only way for the Arab world to move forward, as Europe did in the middle ages.Footnote 67
Catherine Miller refers to ʿAlami, Yusi, and Barrada as “translator-humanists,” pointing out that they are all highly educated and that their choice of classic literary texts from the European tradition “leads them to favor a somewhat scholarly–literary dārija, whose borders with fuṣḥā are obviously very blurry.”Footnote 68 In other words, the educational level needed to understand these texts determines the linguistic level of the dārija into which they are translated. The resulting language is not the language of “the people,” but rather a middle language that tends toward fuṣḥā (or high dārija). This is not to diminish the translators’ shared goals of promoting dārija as an acceptable written language in order to allow greater numbers of Moroccans to read, write, and inform themselves for both literary enjoyment and political engagement. However, one does have to wonder about the intended audience of such works, and the view of European humanism that underlies these choices. While they may very well be classics in their original languages, it is questionable whether this is reason enough to warrant new translations of these works into dārija. These choices speak more to what their translators deem important in terms of a certain ideal of world cultural literacy than to what most Moroccan readers may choose to read. Nonetheless, the translations do assert themselves as powerful examples of high expression in dārija that challenge the notion that it is linguistically incapable of such expression. While ʿAlami and Barrada approach Morocco's linguistic situation ideologically and politically, Yusi's project is academic and practical at the same time; he is striving to codify and standardize dārija for written purposes, as well as to strengthen and clarify the ties that exist between fuṣḥā and dārija, in order to allow for more Moroccans to read, whether in dialect or as a logical entry into higher levels of Arabic.
CONCLUSION
The intellectuals discussed in this article, while they may be aware of one another, are not working together as an organized movement for the promotion and official acceptance of dārija as a written language. There are experimenters (Yusuf Amin al-ʿAlami), outspoken proponents of dārija (Murad ʿAlami, Yusi, Barrada, Bin Shamsi), publishers (Prentice, Filali, and Hamid), and writers who have not entered the public debate explicitly but have produced works in dārija all the same (Misnawi, Rekraki). The fact that such examples are emerging from a range of writers, running the gamut of genres, themes, and styles (journalism, political philosophy, folktales, world classics, lyrical fiction, and popular novels), speaks to the linguistic changes that are occurring on multiple levels in Morocco. While it is impossible to tell how these changes will manifest themselves in the future, what is certain is that the dynamic linguistic situation in Morocco will continue to change.
