Rabat-Morocco-January 31, 2031

Despite Morocco's recognition of Amazigh as an official language

With its alphabet or special characters printed on road signs and government buildings it is hardly taught in schools.

Native Berber speakers fear the state is happy to see their language disappear in what some Berber activists see as a betrayal of promises made in a new constitution drawn up after the 2011 protests.

Amzel, 36, who is trying to learn Tamazight by taking online courses, said: "Tamazight must be taught in schools to enable citizens who have not learned this language at home, like me, to regain awareness of the roots of Moroccan identity... The language we don't study is a language we kill".

According to activists, the number of children learning Amazigh has decreased from 14 percent in 2010 to nine percent now, despite its teaching in some schools.

Amzel works in a commercial company in Casablanca, and she asked her mother why she and her father only spoke Arabic at home. "She (Lee) said that we had to prioritize the language of instruction at school so that our course of study would not be affected,"she explained.

The experience of amzel is familiar to many Moroccan families, as people have left the Amazigh-speaking rural areas in recent decades and moved to the big cities where the Arabic language prevails in the Moroccan dialect.

Abdelmalek Yemini, 34, a Casablanca native with roots in the Zagora region of southern Morocco, does not speak Tamazight at all. "We only speak Arabic because our grandparents and parents did not speak Amazigh to us,"he said.

Although many Moroccans are of Amazigh origin, the High Commission for Planning says that only about a quarter of the country's population still speaks the Amazigh language.

"This figure confirms that the Amazigh language has lost two-thirds of its speakers over the past five decades,"said Amazigh writer and human rights activist Ahmed asseed.

Anthropologist afoulay Al-Khatir stated that the use of Arabic in the Moroccan dialect is increasing even in cities located within traditional Amazigh regions such as the southern city of Agadir.

While the factors of moving to city life and personal satisfaction were the motivation for many to switch to Arabic, many activists say that political decisions are also one of the reasons for the decline of the Amazigh language as well.

The Amazigh-speaking regions were the stronghold of armed resistance against the French and Spanish colonialists, but Morocco adopted Arabic as an official language during the fifties immediately after the country gained independence. The ruling elite, which considered itself mainly Arab, ignored the Amazigh in the context of the wave of Arab nationalism.

Despite the Moroccan economy ignoring the poorer regions, the Amazigh flag with blue, green, yellow and red symbols began to be hoisted during protests against inequality.

Although King Mohammed VI pledged in 2001 to strengthen the language, the issue was raised in the "Arab Spring" protests in 2011, which the authorities were able to partially quell by drafting a new constitution.

According to this document, Amazigh is an official language, but a law governing its use has not been published until 2020, and its teaching in schools has been delayed.

Ilham bouakal, the only teacher of the Amazigh language at a school with about 600 pupils near Rabat, said that she teaches children only up to the age of eight and suffers from the lack of textbooks in this language.

The government has raised the budget for teaching Amazigh by 50 percent this year to 300 million dirhams (30 million dollars) and pledged to hire hundreds of official clerks who are fluent in this language in public administrations, but activists still feel dissatisfied.

"The slow pace of the activation of the official character of Amazigh further weakens this language,"said Imad minyari, president of the Moroccan Association for research and cultural exchange, the oldest association defending the Amazigh language and culture in Morocco.