COURSE OVERVIEW
Even under the best conditions, learning a new language can be challenging. Add to this challenge the rigors of Peace Corps training, and you're faced with what will be one of the most demanding-and rewarding-aspects of your Peace Corps experience: learning to communicate to Moroccans in their own language. But it can be done. And rest assured that you can do it. Here are a few reasons why:
- You are immersed in the language: Some people may need to hear a word three times to remember it; others may need thirty. Learning Moroccan Arabic while living and training with Moroccans gives you the chance to hear the language used again and again.
- You have daily language classes with Moroccan teachers: You're not only immersed in the language; you also have the opportunity to receive feedback from native speakers on the many questions that predictably crop up when one learns a new language.
- Peace Corps has over forty years of experience in Morocco: Your training, including this manual, benefits from the collective experience gained by training thousands of Americans to live and work in Morocco. You will benefit from and contribute to that legacy.
Despite these advantages, at times you may still feel like the task of learning Moroccan Arabic is too much to handle. Remember that volunteers like you having been doing it for decades, however. One of the most rewarding aspects of your time will be communicating with Moroccans in Arabic, surprising them and yourself with how well you know the language. When that time arrives, your hard work willhave been worth it.
PROGRAMS THAT USED THIS LANGUAGE
Morocco: 1963-present
PROGRAM SECTORS
Morocco: Youth Development, English Education, Environment and Health
Modern Standard Arabic has developed out of Classical Arabic, the language of the Quran. During the era of the caliphate,Classical Arabic was the language used for all religious, cultural, administrative and scholarly purposes.
Modern Standard Arabic is the official Arabic language. It can be written and spoken, and there is no difference between the written and the spoken form.
In its written form, Modern Standard Arabic is the language of literature and the media. Books, newspapers, magazines, official documents, private and business correspondence, street signs and shop signs - all are written in Modern Standard Arabic.
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD. This includes both the literary language and varieties of Arabic spoken in a wide arc of territory stretching across the Middle East and North Africa. Some of the spoken varieties are mutually unintelligible, both written and orally, and the varieties as a whole constitute a sociolinguistic language. This means that on purely linguistic grounds they would likely be considered to constitute more than one language, but are commonly grouped together as a single language for political and/or ethnic reasons (see below). If considered multiple languages, it is unclear how many languages there would be, as the spoken varieties form a dialect chain with no clear boundaries. If Arabic is considered a single language, it perhaps is spoken by as many as 280 million first language speakers, making it one of the half dozen most populous languages in the world. If considered separate languages, the most-spoken variety would most likely be Egyptian Arabic, with 54 million native speakers still greater than any other Semitic language.
Arabic Moroccan is spoken in: Morocco
Arabic Moroccan has no known alternate names.
