Living or working cross-culturally inevitably involves learning one or more foreign languages. Depending on where you go, you might face a simple and yet still challenging task of learning a language that’s both spoken by everyone and whose written form isn’t much different from the spoken form. Countries like Korea, Spain, France, or any major city in Latin America might be good examples.
On the other hand, you might find yourself in a more complicated and challenging situation where the trade language is different from the heart language of the people, and there are also different dialects. The spoken form might also be different from the more formal, written form. Unfortunately for myself and folks who work in North Africa, this is the situation we find ourselves in.
The trade language, mainly used in commerce and government, in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia is French. The official language of these countries is Modern Standard Arabic, used in official and formal settings, but it is rarely spoken outside those settings. The people speak a local dialect of Arabic on the street among themselves. The dialect spoken in Morocco is called Derija, and it’s a world removed from Modern Standard Arabic or any of the dialects spoken in the Middle East. Many educated people in Morocco actually speak Arancia, a fluid combination of local Arabic dialect and French. Expats in Central Asia may face similar challenges – Russian and a local dialect such as Kazhak, Uzbek, Kyrgiz, etc., but at least they don’t have an international standard form of the local language as we do in North Africa in Arabic.
Another challenge in Morocco is that there are Berbers who have their own language. There are three distinct Berber dialects – Rifi in the north, Tamazight in the Middle Atlas region, and Tachelhayt in the south. In rural areas, most women and children only speak one of these Berber dialects. On top of that, people in the North and Western Sahara which were Spanish protectorate speak Spanish. People in Western Sahara use a dialect called Hasaniya, which is similar to Derija, but still has some differences. Algeria and Tunisia also have similar language issues.
It’s certainly not an easy situation to live and work as expats in this region. But if you are a high challenge person in language learning, this should convince you that you are in a paradise. It’s a great cross-cultural and language learning opportunity since you get exposed to a matrix of different languages and cultures. Expats would do well to enrich their life experience through capitalizing on these opportunities.
