Stop the bleeding and save the Amazigh language from extinction
“The life or death of a language is relative. Life and death for languages are measured by the vitality of its functions and the people’s interest in them, or by the shrinkage of their functions and the people’s departure from them.”
The issue of the possible extinction of the Amazigh language has returned to the limelight. The news website Sky News published a dossier on the alarming decline in the number of speakers of the Amazigh language in Morocco. In preparing this dossier, which it published on February 2, the site relied on the testimonies of experts from the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture.
Concerns about the disturbing decline of the Amazigh language were also expressed by writer Ahmed Assid and Dr. Bouyakoubi Al-Hussein when they answered questions from journalist Aurélie Collas of the French newspaper Le Monde, who published an analytical article on the subject on February 9. The same concerns and fears were also reported by digital newspapers, citing Reuters.
The return of interest in the issues of the possible extinction and extinction of the Amazigh language coincides with the current government’s retreat from many of its obligations related to the workshops for the demarcation of the Amazigh language, after it suspended the work of Organizational Law No. 26-16 and dismissed it from the integrated government plan to activate the official character of the Amazigh language, and replaced them with a roadmap of 25 procedures; Replacement Many warn of its negative consequences for the Amazigh demarcation workshops and for the ability of this language to withstand the threats that pursue it.
?Has Amazigh reached the crossroads between life and death? Is there a way to stop the bleeding Amazigh
Crossroads between life and death
The issue of the disappearance of the Amazigh language is considered one of the strange paradoxes that permeate Moroccan political life. Despite the passage of two decades since the royal care for the Amazigh language and the affirmation of His Majesty the King in a worthy speech that he pays special attention to the advancement of the Amazigh language, we are back to square one after the enthusiasm for the renaissance that marked the time has died out. The Royal Workshops (2001-2010) were replaced by fears of extinction in the time of the constitutional labyrinth (from 2011 to today).
It appears from the clippings of the international press that interest in the issue of the extinction of Tamazight began to spread among the general public, after the preoccupation with it was limited and confined to the circles of those interested in the Atlas of the World's Languages Endangered, issued by UNESCO. It can be said that there is a new awareness of the importance of addressing the subject and being keen to track the state of the Amazigh language branches that are threatened with extinction, and to remind whenever necessary that other branches have died and have been forgotten. Those familiar with the stages that pave the way for languages to reach the stage of extinction will notice the speed with which the Amazigh language is approaching death.
Tamazight passed through most of the stages that pave the way for languages to reach the stage of extinction as defined by linguists, including Stephen Wurm. Some of its branches (Berber both Fakik, Ait Eiznasen, and Asrar...) after the youth left it and stopped transmitting it from generation to generation, and the specter of extinction haunts the rest of its branches, taking advantage of the roaring waves of the tsunami of the languages of globalization and the information revolution, and the keenness of successive governments to disrupt its demarcation workshops and empty it of its content.
There are many reasons behind the disastrous situation of the Amazigh language. There is no single reason to which we can refer to the deterioration of its condition and the decline in the number of its speakers. However, political choices in general and linguistic and cultural policies in particular have a major and decisive role in accelerating the pace of the extinction of the Amazigh language. These policies have contributed to the departure of the Amazighs from their language after they chose other languages that guarantee access to the social elevator, languages that enjoy political support, financial support, and leadership in education and the media.
It can be said, then, that the death of the Amazigh language, if it happens, God forbid, will not be natural nor due to linguistic development, as is the case with the Latin language, nor due to the extinction of its Amazigh owners, but it will be an extinction by replacement and benefit the replacement as explained by the linguist “Louis Jean Calvi” the extinction of a language Or several languages after the dominance of a dominant language/languages, as happened after the dominance of the English language over the indigenous languages of the United States of America and the dominance of the French language over the national languages of many peoples in Africa.
Is there a way to stop the bleeding of the Amazigh language
There is no doubt that the Amazigh language has been in a dramatic decline since 2011, which is considered a turning point between the time of the royal workshops in which the Amazigh language accumulated gains that no one expected (2001-2010), and the time of demarcation in which the Amazigh language got lost among the offices of bureaucrats, parliamentarians and ministers. The decline followed all the gains, according to the testimony of the institute’s experts and its dean, who sounded the alarm on more than one occasion. Likewise, the associations working in the field of promoting the Amazigh language were unable to cope with the challenges of post-constitutionalization and demarcation.
The decline is also the number of speakers in the branches of Tamazight, as people began to turn away from it slowly, and the frequency of transmission of Tamazight from generation to generation decreased. The figures of the General Population and Housing Census for the year 2014 confirm this decline, although these figures lack accuracy, and may be exaggerated or vice versa, especially since the question of spoken languages, as adopted by the High Commission for Planning, is surrounded by questions from every aspect and was discharged by those charged with statistics. Without a little tampering, according to the testimonies of citizens. Therefore, it can be said that the demography of languages in Morocco (Démolinguistique) does not give us a clear picture of the speed of the deterioration of Amazigh, and worse things may surprise us in the coming years.
There is a tragedy, then, and a great loss looming on the horizon, because the extinction of the Amazigh language will have catastrophic consequences for our linguistic, identifiable and value security. Morocco will also lose what it cannot find in the markets for goods and services. It will lose a rich immaterial wealth that characterizes its privacy and uniqueness. It will also lose a large part. From its intangible capital, which includes the basic constituents of the historical stock and the social, economic, institutional and environmental resources thanks to which wealth is produced and social cohesion, stability, solidarity, cooperation and security are achieved among all segments of society.
It is a great tragedy looming on the horizon, and the responsibility to prevent it from occurring lies with the political actor first, the administrative actor second, and the civil actor third. All these actors must respect the pillars on which the management of the Amazigh file was based since 2001 until the Moroccan people voted on the 2011 constitution. The first pillar is the pluralistic nature of the Moroccan identity and its Amazigh core (as emphasized by His Majesty the King on three occasions in 2001 and 2011). As for the second pillar, the constitutional legislator confirmed it by stating that Tamazight is a common asset for all Moroccans without exception, and the third pillar is represented in the requirements of Organizational Law No. 16-26.
Abdallah Hattous
Source: websites