{"id":47,"date":"2012-08-17T16:10:15","date_gmt":"2012-08-17T16:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/?p=47"},"modified":"2012-08-17T16:10:15","modified_gmt":"2012-08-17T16:10:15","slug":"47","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/?p=47","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Adel, the unexceptional quintlingual<\/p><\/div>\n

EDUCATION<\/p>\n

Generally Moroccans grow-up speaking one of two languages, Darija or Amazigh.\u00a0 Darija is the Moroccan Dialect of Arabic, influenced heavily by Amazigh and French.\u00a0 Never taught in school, Darija\u2019s spelling isn\u2019t standardized and certain vocabulary and pronunciation change within the country.\u00a0 Amazigh is the name applied to a diverse group of dialects spoken by the native non-Arabs in various places in North Africa.\u00a0 In certain areas, like Merzouga where I entered the Sahara, people may speak Amazigh and have no knowledge of Arabic.\u00a0 Amazigh became a written language with it\u2019s own script for the first time in 2004.<\/p>\n

Moroccans in grade school begin learning Modern Standard Arabic and French.\u00a0 Amazigh children will also learn Amazigh, meaning they study three different scripts.\u00a0 Grade schools in the north or very south of Morocco (where the Spanish protectorate was) may also begin learning Spanish.<\/p>\n

Moroccans in high school continue studying French and MSA and may add on English and\/or Spanish as well.\u00a0 College language study is just as variable as in the United States.<\/p>\n

THE RESULT<\/p>\n

People remember the foreign languages they use.\u00a0 Thus professionals and businessmen, or those in the tourism industry usually keep up fluency in MSA and a few European languages.\u00a0 Shopkeepers, on the other hand, knew numbers or could explain the greatness of their products in French but usually not much more.\u00a0 (Granted they may have never completed grade school).\u00a0 Taxi drivers likewise knew the French names of places and maybe even some basic greetings in English but nothing more.\u00a0 There were exceptions, however.<\/p>\n

The result of this country\u2019s many languages is interesting.\u00a0 In America knowledge of foreign languages is a nice little plus, but here it\u2019s necessary for most jobs.\u00a0 For instance my friend Adel speaks fluent Darija, MSA, French, English, Amazigh, and quite a bit of Dutch, and this has earned him a customer service job a Match.com.<\/p>\n

The lesson from this experience has been that Americans should study foreign languages but also something else, because other countries prioritize language more in education and provide environments where multilingualism naturally flourishes, while in America we may study some Spanish in high school and never NEED it, but on the other hand have great programs in subjects such as business or science that Moroccans often leave their country to acquire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EDUCATION Generally Moroccans grow-up speaking one of two languages, Darija or Amazigh.\u00a0 Darija is the Moroccan Dialect of Arabic, influenced heavily by Amazigh and French.\u00a0 Never taught in school, Darija\u2019s spelling isn\u2019t standardized and certain vocabulary and pronunciation change within the country.\u00a0 Amazigh is the name applied to a diverse group of dialects spoken by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}