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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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."