Rabat -
Twenty years have passed since the establishment of the Royal Institute for Amazigh Culture in Morocco, an institution created by royal decree, whose mission is to give an opinion to the King on measures that would preserve and promote Amazigh culture in all its expressions, and to participate in the implementation of policies related to the inclusion of Amazigh in The educational system, and ensuring its radiance in the social, cultural and media space.
In this interview with Al Jazeera Net, the Dean of the Institute, Ahmed Boukos, talks about the path that Amazigh has taken in Morocco since the institute was established in 2001 and its constitutional recognition in 2011 as an official language of the country, until today.
He also talks about the difficulties that the Amazigh language faces in its teaching, and the work that the Institute is doing through its various centers in order to make this language standard, and prepare it to move from the level of dialects to the level of traditional and digital writing, codification and dissemination of the Amazigh oral heritage, and the advancement of Berber culture in all its expressions.
The following is the text of the interview:
20 years after the establishment of the Royal Institute for Amazigh Culture, what has been achieved in general in the field of promoting and rehabilitating Amazigh culture?
In my view, the most important thing that has been achieved is the feeling of self-recognition and the Amazigh identity, as well as the demarcation of the Amazigh language in the new constitution of the Kingdom in 2011, which I consider the culmination of the achievements made years ago.
I think these two events have more symbolism and significance than any other event.
On the legal level, organizational laws were issued, especially the law on activating the official character of Amazigh, the framework law for the education and training system, as well as the law related to the creation of the National Council for Moroccan Languages and Culture.
These are basic laws that frame all processes that concern the integration of Amazigh into public policies.
In February 2003, the adoption of the Tifinagh letter was approved as the only official letter for writing Tamazight in Morocco. At that time, there were fears that the adoption of this letter would hinder the spread of the Amazigh culture and language.
After years of implementing this decision, have you experienced difficulties in teaching or publishing?
How do you currently view those concerns?
Indeed, as I mentioned, at the beginning, when we were talking about the line that we will adopt to write Tamazight, there was a debate and discussions that took a turn that confused the observers (observers) who had an interest in Tamazight, and there was a questioning of the feasibility of adopting the Tifinagh letter, and some went to say that writing with this letter It touches the Arabic letter in which the Qur’an was written and the Arab-Islamic heritage.
These fears frankly obstructed the work for the advancement of Tamazight for a certain period, but the study carried out by the Institute on the comparison between the Arabic and Latin letter systems and Tifinagh, showed that the latter is best suited to writing Tamazight for purely technical and objective reasons.
Tamazight, with its different dialects, includes a number of phonetic peculiarities that are not found in other languages, and therefore in other writings, including Arabic and Latin.
I think that the royal endorsement of Tifinagh as an official letter for writing Tamazight was crucial, so that this letter was then adopted in teaching, teaching and learning the Tamazight language.
Over the past years, we have gone from an understated view of Tifinagh as “shepherds scribbling on the rocks” to one in which the craft has been modernized.
We passed from the traditional writing system to another system that absorbs modern technology, and in a short period of time we were able to prepare the feel of the computer in Tifinagh letters, and researchers and technicians at the Royal Institute worked on this process with the help of some external expertise.
Al-Jazeera Net correspondent with the Dean of the Royal Institute for Amazigh Culture (Al-Jazeera)
Tamazight language is taught in schools and universities, what is the level of its presence in teaching?
What are the obstacles that stand in the way of generalizing its teaching in schools?
In the 2003-2004 school season, the Ministry of National Education, in coordination with the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture, decided to integrate the Berber language into Moroccan schools at the elementary levels.
This decision was taken in a difficult context characterized by a lack of human resources and the absence of didactic pregnant women (pedagogy or pedagogy) to teach Tamazight, on the other hand, there was a general curriculum for its teaching prepared by the Ministry in 2000-2001 before the establishment of the Institute.
Despite the difficult context, as I mentioned, there was enthusiasm on the part of the institute’s researchers, and strong involvement from those in charge of the Ministry of National Education, and the prevailing expectation at the time was that within 10 years the teaching of Tamazight would be generalized in primary schools, and then we would pass to preparatory, secondary and university finally.
Unfortunately, however, the policy of the Ministry of National Education towards Tamazight has changed, and the new officials had a different view that, according to their belief, it was not possible to continue teaching Tamazight in the absence of a legal framework, so the matter was assigned to the Supreme Council for Education and Training to set the legal framework of reference.
The Council set the strategic vision for education reform in Morocco (2015-2030). This vision gives a narrow space for Tamazight in public educational engineering, and includes conditions that limit the generalization of the teaching of Tamazight.
Although Tamazight has become an official language under the constitution, there has been a kind of procrastination in its teaching, and in the end there was a slowdown in the process of generalizing its teaching in schools, which gives us the current situation, which is half a million students learning Tamazight in primary, and this is a meager number, and the teaching of Tamazight In primary school, it is not public, and in the private sector only 2% of schools teach it.
In universities, only four universities have courses for teaching Tamazight. Add to this the poor educational resources. The Ministry of National Education did not allocate enough financial positions to hire Tamazight language teachers.
What happened is that the previous government issued a very important law regarding the activation of the official character of Tamazight in 2019, with its intention to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of generalizing the teaching of Tamazight, and to grant sufficient financial and logistical resources.
Some publications of the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (Al Jazeera)
You launched workshops to collect and record the Amazigh oral heritage, where did this project reach?
The issue of collecting and studying the Berber oral heritage, as well as reproducing it, then publishing and distributing it, is an essential task for the Institute, which is supervised by the Center for Literary Studies.
The researchers at the Institute conducted field research, during which they collected material from the mouths of Berber men and women, then studied and wrote it down, and within this heritage were tales, folk proverbs, and poetry.
In addition to codifying the Amazigh oral heritage, what areas have the Institute and its researchers worked on?
At the Institute, we work on a thorny and important topic, which is language. Our vision is that we need a written standard language used in school and research, and one day it will be the language of communication and work in departments.
To achieve this goal, we must prepare this language at all levels, and we have been able to reach a common morphological system for the Amazigh language.
Our teams are also working on translating the mothers of world literature into the Amazigh language, so important books have been translated from Arabic, French, English, Spanish and Persian, and the importance of these translations is that they enrich the Amazigh language, so it is called "lyrical translation".
Another area we are working on is related to modern technology, and at the beginning of our dialogue I talked about the use of modern technology in the field of typifying the Tifinagh letter. Learn Tamazight for smartphones and tablets, and we have developed didactic digital stands to facilitate learning Tamazight online.
Is there cooperation or joint work at the level of language standardization or the development of Amazigh terminology with countries in North Africa where there are Amazighs?
There are attempts to coordinate and interpersonal relations, exchange visits and experiences and participate in scientific meetings, and we have agreements with Algerian universities such as the University of Tizi Ouzou, the University of Bejaia, Batna and Algeria.
Researchers from the Institute participated in meetings and seminars in Algeria, and earlier Algerian researchers came to the Institute to benefit from the training and to learn about the Moroccan experience, especially since the Berbers of North Africa consider the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture a pole of reference in the field of Berber studies.
In its government program, the current government has committed itself to activating the official character of Tamazight, and has created a special fund with a budget of one billion dirhams ($110 million) by 2025 with the aim of “integrating Tamazight in the fields of education, legislation, information, communication and cultural and artistic creativity, as well as its use in administrations and in all public facilities.” .
What is required in your opinion to translate these commitments into reality during the next five years?
I think that the current government has taken upon itself the responsibility of integrating the Amazigh issue as a main focus in its work program at the level of engaging in public policies, and on an important level, which is the concrete activation of Law 16-16 related to determining the stages of activating the official character of Amazigh, by allocating a fund to finance the policy Integrating Tamazight into institutions as an official language.
The political will is important to implement what is contained in Chapter Five of the Constitution and the Organic Law, and this is what we see in the current government.
We note that a group of ministries submitted projects and benefited from the fund. An example of this is what the Ministry of Justice did last week, when I met the Minister of Justice in my capacity as Dean of the Institute, and we agreed to open a match for the employment of social assistants skilled in the Amazigh language to facilitate communication with Berber-speaking Moroccans.
This idea came after the courts recorded difficult and painful cases for a number of citizens who do not speak or understand Arabic, which made their interests and rights lost. Therefore, there was an urgent need to hire people who would receive citizens who come to the court for a specific purpose, listen to them and give them information about their files in the language they understand .
The institute will assist in the selection of candidates, organize the competition, and keep pace with the successful candidates at the level of continuing training, and will translate a set of legal texts into the Amazigh language.
Over the course of two decades, the Amazigh culture has made significant strides, and the Amazigh cultural, artistic and literary presence seemed remarkable, what do you aspire to achieve in the coming years?
Our ambition is for the constitution of Amazigh and the demarcation of the Amazigh language and culture to become a tangible reality in the daily lives of Moroccan citizens, as well as in the work of various institutions.
On the other hand, we aspire to generalize the teaching of Tamazight at the level of primary education and move to secondary and then expand Amazigh studies to include all Moroccan universities, because this matter objectively does not affect the legal status of the Arabic language or any prejudice to the Islamic religion, as the Amazighs are known for their adherence to Islam.