Mohamed Aymane FarhiSome people often say that "Western Sahara" is "Africa's last colony." In reality, the last colony is ALL of North Africa.
According to a recent article titled "Augmentation and Classification of Requests in Moroccan Dialect to Improve Quality of Public Service: A Comparative Study of Algorithms" by University of Hassan II Casablanca researchers, published by MDPI, Tamazight (Berber) is nothing but a "sub-dialect" of "The Moroccan dialect, known as Darija."
Now, one could argue this is a genuine error or confusion, but the first highlighted passage in the paper is all you need to see the blatant dishonesty and ideologically-driven attempt to relegate Tamazight to a mere "sub-dialect" or completely deny its influence on Darija.
The authors state Darija contains "loanwords [...] from French, Spanish, and Portuguese." Yet, anyone who has studied Darija knows that the language which influenced its vocabulary the most (and which should be mentioned first) is Tamazight.
This influence extends beyond vocabulary, reaching into its very grammar—a fact even many Tamazight speakers don't realize or discuss often enough! And what meaningful influence did Portuguese even have on Darija? I consider myself a bit of a linguistics nerd, and I honestly still can't think of a single Darija word of Portuguese origin.
These are supposed to be researchers and scientists; they should know better! I can't help but be reminded of the Moroccan Darija saying: "غير كوّر و عطي للعور" (Just make a ball and give it to the blind one—meaning, do a sloppy job).
Ironically, the first two words of their abstract are "Moroccan law." If they even bothered to read the most foundational legal text in the country, the Constitution, they would know that Tamazight is an official language, not a sub-dialect.
This is absolutely not an isolated incident. Just last year, The King Fahd Higher School of Translation in Tangier labeled Tamazight a "foreign language" on its student application website.
If you care about marginalized languages and eradicating the last remnants of colonialism, I would be grateful if you would boost this to expose these shameful acts.
Link to the paper: https://www.mdpi.com/3273842
#Tamazight #Darija #Arabic #Morocco #Linguistics #Colonialism
athmane mokraoui [BoF] ⏚ꝃñ⌁⁂@ayffus So they consider Tamazight as "sub-dialects", just like this, gratuitement.
@ButterflyOfFire It's actually worse: they consider Tamazight a sub-dialect of Darija which is a dialect of Arabic.
Which means that according to their logic, Tachelhit or Kabyle are sub-dialects of a dialect of a dialect 😂
Which means that according to their logic, Tachelhit or Kabyle are sub-dialects of a dialect of a dialect 😂
@ayffus 😅 May be they are able to classify Kabyle as foreign sub-dialect of sub-sub-dialect, in fact 😅
Actually, we don't have any issue with Darija. This Darija should be a national and official language, even in Tunisia.
Instead of creating conflicts between minority languages, we have to be smart and clever : these minority languages are making *the diversity* everywhere.
@ayffus In french language, they used to use the word "patois" instead of "dialect" to describe regional languages.
They used to use "patois" to avoid using the word "language" as if only French language has the *right* to be labeled as *language*.
There is no patois and no dialect and no language, they are all the same.
@ayffus Loan words is not specific to Darija and Tamazight, it affects even major languages.
Loan words is not a problem at all, it is a false problem.
@ButterflyOfFire Say that Pan-Arabists 😅 they think Arabic doesn't have a single loan word.
@ayffus We say « fishta » in Tamazight, the same way in darija it is « fishta » even if it is a loanword from « fiesta », no problem.
They say « trend » in Arabic even if they have an equivalent word for it to say « trend » such as in « Trending topics or videos » : it is a loan word.
@ayffus By the way, we have some guidelines and recommendations for what we call « Tamazight » in Algeria, regarding this topic of « loanwords ». Here is it :
- When we have to use a loanword, we have first to get it internally from other amazigh languages before using any other foreign language.
At least that is one of the general guidelines.
@ayffus The same rule is applied for neologism :
- We have rules to create new words (never seen words) but we have to dig more and use an amazigh native word before inventing, everyday, a new word.