Talk:Languages of Morocco

I just deleted the following table from the article. I did so for three reasons:

• The figures of only 6 million Berbers are far away from any other figure given in Morocco, where around 12 million is stated, with a trustworthy source (Encarta).
• The source Looklex ^[1] is definitely not trustworthy, I've used it sometimes and I find it less trustworthy than Wikipedia itself, so I wouldn't rely onto. Nobody explains where the figures given at Looklex come from and sometimes they are blatantly contradictory.
• The figure given in the table of 6 million Berbers does not even reflect the figure of Looklex, which gives 9 million. So the table is useless.

I'm sorry for the original research I fitted into the article, but it builds upon two sources: the official population figures of the regions and the map inserted in the article. Until we get some better sources, we could leave the text like that. It is, in my opinion, better than a Looklex-sourced table, which cannot be considered a well-sourced information.--Ilyacadiz (talk) 17:02, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

• It's not allowed to enter original research in the article, I have replaced all the original research by sourced material.81.243.116.244 (talk) 16:50, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

deleted table, sourced to Looklex:

^[2]

I have a good source, The Moroccan population census of 2004 asked people older than 5 what languages did they speak, the figures are on the Haut commissariat au plan which is an official Governmental website, it gives the numbers by region (12 regions in total), after adding things up:

• 3.89 million for tashlhyt
• 2.43 million for tamazight
• 1.27 million for tarifit

I'll add these figures later with the proper link. Tachfin (talk) 10:12, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Done, Questions are welcomeTachfin (talk) 13:50, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Rev the last edit, the use of the term "Amazigh" instead of "Berber" is per official government terminology as used in the Constitution text, and on the government website here you can read:
the official status of the Arabic language has been enhanced, and the Amazigh language has been granted an official status with a gradual integration process (schools and main public sectors).

There is no "English word" issue because:

• 1. Proper Noun
• 2. Unlike other languages e.g, French there is no authoritative institution to establish what's an official English word and what isn't. OED states:
  

The Vocabulary of a widely diffused and highly cultivated living language is not a fixed quantity circumscribed by definite limits...there is absolutely no defining line in any direction: the circle of the English language has a well-defined centre but no discernible circumference.

• We should stick to government terminology since it is the authoritative source on this article, for instance The U.S uses the term African American instead of Black or sub-Saharan African in its ethnicity statistics...No body challenged the terminology a government chooses to use.

Lastly, this is merely an esthetic issue. Even if a user does not recognize the term while reading the wikilinks are provided to redirect to the proper "Berber Languages" page. Tachfin (talk) 18:52, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

There is some data from some interviews from the Ennaji that may be useful on here:

• p. 157: She gathered data in 2000, 2001, and 2002 in the northern hemisphere summers to determine language use and attitudes towards language among educated people. She sent 160 questionaires in Arabic and French to participants living in urban areas who were literate; she received 124 back.
• p. 158: She also interviewed 28 people, half of them Berber

I'll be using this survey as a source WhisperToMe (talk) 23:59, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Hello,

Actually, different sources give different figures about the % of French speakers in Morocco :

• according to the OIF : 13.5% fully francophone + 19.5% partially  ;
• according to the CIDOB : 29% speak Arabic & French, 35% Arabic, French & English, 8% Arabic, French & Spanish  ;
• according to the 2004 census : among alphabetized people (57% of pop. in 2004) 53% can write and read Arabic & French, 16% Arabic, French and another language .

Imho we should only put the "crude data" on the Template (33% (OIF) to 39% (census), these are relatively close), and put the details in the corpus of the article, explaining the details given by each source.

Regards,
--Omar-toons (talk) 05:06, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good to me :) WhisperToMe (talk) 15:02, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Hello,

As the inclusion of political maps is not indispensable and since a map without borders is already given on the infobox, imho we can avoid putting any map with marked political borders as it is contrary to WP:NPOV to make the disputed territory of Western Sahara as fully independent or fully integrated to Morocco.

On the other hand, the map of the 2004 census is based on regional data that can't be ultimately "croped" to a region like on Mouh2jijel's map ; for example, Berber speaking population in the Goulmime-Smara region is concentrated on the north, and if they only represent 20-40% of the province's population, the figure could be up to 60-70% on the northern part of the region, then the second map would be biased: this is why WP:OR can't be added to Wiki.

For all these reasons, keeping the article without political map would be, imho, the appropriate way to avoid a WP:POV dispute.

Regards,
--Omar-toons (talk) 09:37, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

• Many censuses are criticized but result using in map and etc--Kaiyr (talk) 07:41, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello,

As explained in my summary edit, the problem with the 2004 census data is that it was asking people "which language do you use in everyday's communication" rather than everyone's native language.

Also, scientific estimates, INALCO for example, give 40-45% for Berber , and there's no WP:UNDUE for these figures.

Regards,

--Omar-toons (talk) 00:02, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

• • • Are you berber or arab?--Kaiyr (talk) 06:54, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

None of your business. Could you give us any argument in favor of WP:UNDUE for INALCO's data? --Omar-toons (talk) 17:49, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

• If you are talking about the deletion of maps it seems they were quite a) reliable; b) useful. If "data does not give the % of Berber speakers but "% that used Berber in everydays' communication", it would be more reasonable just to change captions. Something like "Percent of Berber speakers (use in everyday's communication) in Morocco by census 2004 based on data found ..." -Koryakov Yuri (talk) 15:10, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Koryakov Yuri's suggestion that if the captions are inaccurate, they should be corrected. Deleting the maps altogether seems like a disservice to the article, since they do contain relevant and interesting information. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:19, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

After Morocco gained independence with the end of the French Protectorate in 1956, it started a process of Arabization, with the aim of transforming the nation into a monolingual one, with political and economic independence and an Arab-Islamic identity. In the year 2000, after years of neglecting and ignoring the other languages present in Morocco, the Charter for Educational Reform recognized them and the necessity for them. Until then the Tamazight languages were marginalized in the modern society and the number of monolingual speakers decreased. In recent years, the Tamazight culture has been gaining strength and some developments promise that these languages will not die (Tamazight is the generic name for the Berber languages. The term Berber is not used nor known by the speakers of these languages).

Arabic, on the other hand, was always perceived as a prestigious language in Morocco. However, there are very distinctive varieties of Arabic used, not all equally prestigious, which are MSA (Modern Standard Arabic), the written form used in schools and ‘Dialectal Arabic’, the non-standardized spoken form. The great difference between the two forms in terms of grammar, phonology and vocabulary is so great, it can be considered as diglossia. MSA is practically foreign to Moroccan schoolchildren, and this creates problems with reading and writing, consequently leading to a high level of illiteracy in Morocco.

The French language is also dominant in Morocco, especially in education and administration, therefore, was initially learned by an elite and later on was learned by a great number of Moroccans for use in domains such as finance, science, technology and media. That is despite the government decision to implement a language policy of ignoring French after gaining independence, for the sake of creating a monolingual country. From its independence until the year 2000, Morocco opted for Arabization as a policy, in an attempt of replacing French with Arabic. By the end of the 1980s, Arabic was the dominant language in education, although French was still in use in many important domains. The goals of Arabization were not met, in linguistic terms, therefore a change was needed.

In 2000 the Charter of Educational Reform introduced a drastic change in language policy. From then on, Morocco has adopted a clear perpetual educational language policy with three main cores: improving and reinforcing the teaching of Arabic, using a variety of languages, such as English and French in teaching the fields of technology and science and acceptance of Tamazight. The state of Morocco still sees Arabic (MSA) as its national language but acknowledges that not all Moroccans are Arabic speakers and that Arabization did not succeed in the area of science and technology. The aims of the Charter seem to have been met faster than expected, probably since the conditions of the Charter started to be implemented immediately. Nowadays the different minority languages are acknowledged in Morocco although Arabic still is the dominant one and is being promoted by the government. ^[1]

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For some reason this article makes clearly distinct approaches to Arabic and Berber. Arabic is always treated as a uniform language, while Berber - as many different languages. However, Berber is not very much older than Arabic. --Yomal Sidoroff-Biarmskii (talk) 01:28, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

There's currently no such distinction. Also no idea what languages being "old" has to do with anything 2A02:AA13:8104:C080:1D69:3FEA:5D9A:5826 (talk) 18:52, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

An IP editor, user:86.129.185.144, insists on edit-warring and keeping all his changes en bloc, even though they contain at least 3 different deletions of sourced content: Francophonie, National languages, MSA as foreign. If there is any legitimate change among all of those in the edition, the IP editor should explain them ONE BY ONE. Meanwhile I can't do much more than recovering the previous edition. --Jotamar (talk) 16:40, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

• @Jotamar: Firstly the view of the national languages source is not widely accepted because most sources view Arabic and Berber as the two national languages. Secondly the source next to the sentence on MSA being foreign does not support the statement and wouldn't make sense either since MSA is an official language. And by "numbers randomly changed" I assume that you are speaking about the percentage of Moroccan Arabic speakers which I changed to the correct percentage as sourced above. 86.141.92.175 (talk) 11:27, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Ok, first, this discussion is not just about the contents of this particular page, it's also about how to edit any WP page. In general, it's not a good idea to lump together several unrelated changes in one single edition, especially when it's foreseeable that some of them will be controversial. Deleting contents is always a red flag for other editors, and even more so when those contents are sourced. So it's important to explain the changes in detail. Notice that there are lots of people out there who want to adjust certain pages to their own ideologies or points of view, and experienced editors like me know that. You should make as clear as possible that you really only want to improve the page, not to manipulate it so that it suits an agenda. If a source is not good for whatever reason, that doesn't justify a deletion, otherwise we could delete 80% of WP contents in no time. You can use templates such as better source needed in those cases. Or you can look yourself for a better source, as I did with Morocco being part of the Francophonie organisation. Then if your so finicky about bad sources, it's kind of a contradiction that you don't cite sources for your own additions to the page. Etc. Etc. --Jotamar (talk) 20:38, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

In terms of your claims, Arab and Berber are not 2 languages. Most sources speak of MSA and Darija as different languages, and certainly there are several Berber languages. The fact that MSA is official doesn't make it less artificial for Darija speakers, who identify MSA with cartoons on TV. I have firsthand experience about MSA being artificial and foreign for many Moroccans. And of course, if a change of figures is supported by a source already referenced in the page, you should add a ref tag for it. In sum, your argumentation needs a real lot of improvement. --Jotamar (talk) 20:38, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Alright. Your first-hand experience is not a reliable source and you will need to provide reliable sources which "speak of MSA and Darija as different languages". To begin with, MSA is simply the standardised version of Arabic. Indeed there are differences between MSA and the Moroccan dialect however this is the same case with every other Arabic dialect, and this certainly won't make all Arabic dialects different languages but rather different dialects. It is widely accepted that Moroccan Darija is an Arabic dialect as supported by reliable sources such as Glottolog, Ethnologue, and ISO 639, as well as 28 million Google Search results for "Moroccan Arabic" and 76 thousand Google Scholar results. On the other hand, MSA is not spoken and is the written form of Arabic. MSA is nobody's mother tongue but rather an official language which is widely used in Morocco for various entities such as schools, government, news, etc... 86.129.184.193 (talk) 15:50, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm quite aware of the relationship between MSA and all the spoken varieties of Arabic, and how different they are. You might want to read the page Diglossia. But again your assumptions are wrong, being called Moroccan Arabic does not mean that it is just a dialect, especially since there is agreement among many contemporary linguists about this: the difference between language and dialect is rather irrelevant. The relevant part is that MSA and any of the spoken dialects are so different that people learning to read need an additional effort, compared to people learning to read in other languages of the world. You don't like the current sources? Ok, I'll look for sources that say that in a more explicit way. --Jotamar (talk) 23:43, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

I think it would in any event be "Languages in..." All the best: Rich Farmbrough 21:15, 26 October 2024 (UTC).

I don’t believe the RFC applies in this case. “Standard Moroccan Amazigh” is an official designation and a term of art, not a compositional phrase whose elements can be substituted independently. Bananakingler (talk) 21:47, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I don't think it's an official designation as it can be referred to by more than one name such as "Standard Moroccan Berber" or "Standard Moroccan Tamazight." We should probably keep it consistent with other Berber-related articles. Skitash (talk) 23:12, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

It actually is an official designation but I understand how this could be confusing. IRCAM uses the term “Standard Amazigh” with capital letters, not „standard Amazigh“. . This means that we are dealing with a fixed official term rather than a freely compositional phrase.

Here we should follow the designation used by the responsible institution and the relevant rs

for clarity, i am fine with adding “Moroccan” to differentiate it from Algerian. However, we should avoid constructing “Standard Moroccan Berber” unless that exact formulation is supported by reliable official sources. Bananakingler (talk) 00:04, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

@skitash do you have anything to add? Bananakingler (talk) 23:26, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Your cited "Standard Amazigh" which you're saying is official doesn't look like "Standard Moroccan Amazigh" to me. Like I said, many terms are used to refer to the standardized language such "Standard Moroccan Tamazight," "Standard Moroccan Berber," and "Standard Moroccan Amazigh," which is why we should stick to what the repeated consensuses advise on Berber/Amazigh. Skitash (talk) 17:10, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes I cited Standard Amazigh.

Please read this: „ for clarity, i am fine with adding “Moroccan” to differentiate it from Algerian“?

sure there are many terms. Still since there is an official name, in my opinion we should be using it, especially since the RFC, would then not be applicable. Bananakingler (talk) 17:23, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Inserting "Moroccan" into the middle of an "official designation" sounds like WP:SYNTH. Consensus is clear and there's really no good reason to change anything. Skitash (talk) 17:28, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

But it is not WP:SYNTH. We should really be consistent with the official naming. Bananakingler (talk) 17:37, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

You're contradicting yourself because the name you're insisting is official does not contain "Moroccan" in the middle of it. Skitash (talk) 18:39, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes we may add it to differentiate it from Algerian, but I said this before? That’s not contradicting. Bananakingler (talk) 19:13, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

It would be great if we could link to the RfCs we're talking about. I support Standard Moroccan Amazigh as it is generally not referred to as "Berber" in Morocco. It makes sense that the official name in Morocco is Standard Amazigh/Tamazight and on Wikipedia we add Moroccan to note that it is the official register within Morocco. إيان (talk) 18:47, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Here. It's been established that "Berber" is the WP:COMMONNAME and should be used instead of the other names. Skitash (talk) 18:57, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

To be precise, it was solely about moving the articles. No one wants to move this article but to use the official naming. Bananakingler (talk) 19:12, 27 February 2026 (UTC)