Pardon my tirade

I just realized that one of the hardest things about being in Morocco is the language ideologies.  It’s not like the US and Japan don’t have their fair share.  It’s just that in Morocco, there are a lot of languages about which to have an ideology.  My genuine love for all languages and my background in sociolinguistics make me extremely sensitive to these issues when they come up in conversation.  I can’t help it.  My reaction is both emotional and logical, coming with equal intensity from how I feel as from what I have read.  (Maybe because of that I don’t think people will ever really get it.)  It really drives me insane sometimes.  How can a well-educated, multilingual person tell me that “the Moroccan way of speaking” is so easy you just need to be around Moroccans to learn to speak it, and then tell me that the language has no rules?  Can you imagine trying to learn a language that had no rules???  Yeah, good luck learning that one.  It would be impossible.  What would you do?  Memorize endless amounts of dialogue and then recite them from memory when the occasion arose?  All languages have rules, people, even languages that lack the prestige or power to be called a language.  And that brings me to another big thing: one nation = one language = one big 19th century European nation-building propaganda.  The Spanish don’t own Spanish, the French don’t own French, and Americans aren’t rationed English as the only language they are allowed to speak with any authority.  Also, authority: native speakers aren’t the only ones who have it.  They don’t own the language either.  If you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, then ask me.  Ask a librarian.  Think about it while you are standing on your head.  Because at the moment I feel like I am shouting the gospel truth in hell’s busiest intersection.  No one’s getting it, and no one’s really listening.  Repent! Repent! 

By the way, it is true that “the Moroccan way of speaking” is so easy that you just need to be around Moroccans to speak it.  Unfortunately, as in all the world’s languages, that offer only applies to learners between the ages of 1 and 13.  I guess we adults will just have to start memorizing…