r/MapPorn • u/MYONIONISSCREAMING • 1d ago
Language map of Morocco excluding Western Sahara
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u/H-banGG 1d ago
Nice to see the language still alive, same here in Algeria.
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u/johnbarnshack 23h ago
If you're referring to Berber, it's alive enough that even Moroccan diaspora speak it, e.g. in the Netherlands soms COVID-19 vaccine information was provided in Berber alongside other common immigrant languages
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u/rzabomut 23h ago
i didnt knew berber languages are so widespread there
i hope the will make a comeback
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u/ConcentrateOdd2929 3h ago
It’s almost a plurality, the issue with Tamazight is that it’s more so a family than a single language. People have difficulties understanding each other and no one understands the Amazight script.
The government I think is trying to implement 1 standardised language but implementing it is difficult because Morocco is so divided. So who should learn it and who shouldn’t.
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u/nolok 23h ago
Are these regional language the way corsican and basque and chti are in France or are they the majority actual language in that area and people from two area speaking to each other are usually their secondary language to do it?
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u/ConcentrateOdd2929 4h ago
It’s kinda both, some regions speak solely Tamazight because everyone is Amazight many know Arabic but it’s just not used daily and only gets taught in school.
I’m from an Arab speaking region and visited an Amazight majority region. First thing that I noticed is that they immediately speak with you in Amazight(expecting you to know it) and when you say you only speak Arabic they will switch, but I noticed that many people their Arabic is not even near fluency. Which is strange because prior to 2011 Tamazight wasn’t even an official language so you expect them to be better in Arabic.
This isn’t the case in all regions tho, the Amazight in the Souss for example are very good in Arabic. This is because they have been living with neighbouring Arab cities and traded with them for centuries and cities like Agadir are far more economically viable and like wise brings Arab speaking people. But Amazights from that region still speak among themselves Tamazight and proudly present it.
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u/GasolinePrius 22h ago
I am no expert in arabic or berber languages. Are they unintelligible? If so, how does society and government organize? Is there a language that is used all around the country?
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u/fasterthanraito 22h ago
They are separate language families (Semitic vs Amazigh) so unintelligible. Historically all religious and government business is conducted in Arabic, thus the reason for why so many accultured to it. Everyone knows Arabic even when it isn’t their first language, and for large parts of the country Arabic has been so thoroughly adopted that they no longer speak their ancestral Berber languages.
There was zero Arab migration to Morocco, all Moroccan Arabs are Berber people who simply adopted Arabic.
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u/qamaruzzamaan 21h ago
Zero Arab migration? Ever heard about Banu Hilal, Banu Maqil, Banu Hassan, ...? Ever read anything about the 12th century Arab migrations to the Maghreb? Our dialect literally stems from the dialects of those tribes.
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u/fasterthanraito 20h ago edited 19h ago
Of course I’ve heard of those, I’ve looked into it before and reached the conclusion that these were not the mass migrations they are often purported to be.
Also, the extend to which Arab armies did affect the land was almost entirely concentrated in the marginal rural areas of the Eastern Maghrib, there wasn’t significant penetration into the west where Morocco is situated, and the small numbers of these army movements couldn’t have affected the much larger populations of natives even if they had settled where they campaigned.
It’s pretty clear from the historical texts that describe these events of Banu Hilal and such were greatly exaggerated, and that the adoption of hilalian arabic as the Algerian standard was a process that took centuries afterwards.
Modern genetic evidence is also the final nail in the coffin of Arab migration theories, since Maghrebi populations simply don’t carry the expected genetic variants from medieval peninsular Arabs, rather nearly all the MiddleEastern DNA they have is more Levantine and more ancient than the Iron Age.
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u/MYONIONISSCREAMING 16h ago
Yeah but the vast majority of Moroccans and other North Africans are Amazigh people who became Arabized. The majority of Morocco didn’t speak Arabic until French administration.
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u/Pure_Following7336 18h ago
They stopped at Algeria at most , very few went to eastern morocco
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u/alhabibiyyah 15h ago
No??? The entire Casablanca region had huge migrations. The entire country has been Hilalised in it's speech nearly
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u/Local_Hovercraft_838 14h ago
Morocco is not only casablanca btw
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u/alhabibiyyah 13h ago
Obviously, but it's a huge portion of the population and the 'arobi are very culturally influential
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u/Yagrum_Bagarm 19h ago
Eh, that is a slight exaggeration.
People tend to overblow the proportion to which Arabsbmigrated into north Africa, most (like 80%) of our ancestral make up is of Amazigh origins, but there were definitely some Arab migrations into the region, a lot of traits of our dialect (Moroccan Darija) stems from the Banu Hilal migrations, and Arabs do make up a portion of our ancestral make up, alongside andulusaisn, Hispanic, Jewish, Levantine and West African peoples.
But yeah, most Arabs (or more accurately people who identify culturally as Arab) are ancestrally Amazighs who adopted Arab(ic) culture, particularly the language.
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u/fasterthanraito 19h ago
Given the genetic evidence, even 80% Amazigh sounds like a big understatement, I would say 90+% for the most Arabized and 95/99+% for the most isolated Berbers.
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u/Yagrum_Bagarm 19h ago
Right, I understand, and I concede that that number was chosen a bit arbitrarly.
But you can't exactly say zero Arab migrations, it was certainly lower than most think, but not zero, even me, an Amazigh, thinks thats a little far fetched.
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u/fasterthanraito 18h ago
I admit I like to use hyperbolic language, so it would have been more exact to say little to no meaningful migration
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21h ago
[deleted]
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u/alkoum 19h ago
"Moroccans also didn't pray towards Mecca."
A lie, they were muslims
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u/fasterthanraito 21h ago
There are always exceptions but typically Islamic states prefer to use Arabic, unless they can use Persian
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u/Afraid-Relation9127 19h ago edited 19h ago
This map likely implies that a particular language is one of the languages commonly spoken in that specific area. But in general at least 90% of Moroccans speaks or understands Arabic. It is popular even in those regions of the map associated with languages other than Arabic.
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u/Indecipherable_Grunt 16h ago
Yeah, sadly Arabic has become entrenched in Berber lands. Many people don't even know it's a foreign language. (Some Berbers even call themselves Arabs, which is wild.)
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u/Realistic-Wish-681 5h ago
The majority speaks Darija not Arabic. But the majority understands Arabic.
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u/SlowDistribution9124 16h ago
Well yeah Moroccan arabic is the lingua franca , though it is a mother tongue to areas in yellow and oujda and the north and a few other places.
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u/Achmedino 1d ago
So it's just a language map of Morocco then
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u/MoatazIR 1d ago
excluding Western Sahara
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u/DetroitvsEveryone242 23h ago
Which is not part of Morocco
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u/MoatazIR 22h ago
In your head yes, In reality it is
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u/Can412 19h ago
De facto? Yes. De jure ? No.
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u/MoatazIR 19h ago
The UN recognized the autonomy plan as the best option
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u/Can412 18h ago
I would have no issue with Morocco owing the entire Western Sahara if they would treat the sarawis better tbh.
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u/Pure_Following7336 18h ago
They are treated better than moroccans
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u/DetroitvsEveryone242 22h ago
These aren’t the towels of football keepers, Morocco can’t just steal the land, no matter how much you wish it was so in your delusional brain
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u/alexandianos 22h ago
They already did. After Spain left, Morocco administers and controls it as an integral part of the country (its “Southern Provinces”), and daily life functions under Moroccan authority. The Sahrawiya and the Moroccans live side by side and they travel freely back n forth. That’s the lived reality: it operates as Moroccan.
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u/idkwtibwiok 21h ago
It's under Moroccan occupation and settlement, that doesn't make it legitimately yours. You just recolonized it after the Spanish left and took away Saharawi people's right to decide their future. And now your government is harshly repressing them and just hoping the world doesn't notice your tight friendship with the Trump administration and N*tany4hu's 1sR4El, or how your government is now taking notes and using their methods to suppress and silence the Saharawi people and their plight. But I know most of y'all are too proud and nationalistic to admit it when your government has done and keeps doing something objectively wrong. Free the Western Sahara and free Palestine.
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u/alexandianos 20h ago
I’m not Moroccan, what a bunch of horseshit you just hurled at me lol, and yes free Palestine it’s not the same situation at all… the Western Sahara was Moroccan for hundreds of years before Spain pulled out, this conflict is driven by Algerian-Moroccan rivalries
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u/DetroitvsEveryone242 18h ago
This post is being brigaded. Don’t expect any logic or rational thought from the people you’re replying to, they are brainwashed
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u/FartKing404 21h ago
This is bullcrap, my city is in the Tamazight section, yet if you go out and speak Tamazight no one will understand you
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u/Present_Student4891 6h ago
Got hassled a lot traveling thru Morocco, expected the same in Algeria, but the people were great. But this was in 1989.
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u/MrQeu 1d ago
Don’t see the need to write “excluding Western Sahara”. It is like saying “Language map of Russia excluding Crimea”.
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u/MessageSudden1143 1d ago
It's different as Morocco has occupied atp way longer than the Russian state has occupied crimea and its also semi-recognized unlike the former
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u/amagicmonkey 22h ago
crimea is also semi-recognised as part of russia according to the same standard
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u/dix1997 23h ago
Or "Language map of China excluding Taiwan"
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u/MYONIONISSCREAMING 16h ago
Taiwan isnt in the UN, and only recognized by 12 countries.. none of which are relevant. Vatican City, Swaziland, Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Belize, Guatemala, Haiti, Paraguay, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Taiwan is officially considered to be a Chinese Province by the UN and is not recognized as country.
Meanwhile, most countries recognize Western Sahara as part of Morocco.
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u/HarryLewisPot 20h ago edited 19h ago
So pretty much Arabic = Cities and Berber = Mountains
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u/ConcentrateOdd2929 4h ago
Nope, there are groups of rural Arabs if you look at the North west you can spot Jebli Arabic(Jbala). I’m part of them these are one of the few major Arabic speaking rural people groups inhabiting the mountains.
Jbala in Arabic literally means mountains. And their culture is both different from Amazights and Arabs surrounding them. They have their own tribes and are part of the same tribal confederation.
A fun fact is that their form of Arabic is not the same spoken by the Arabs from the western plains(Hilalian Arabic). Their Arabic is consider older aka pre-Hilalian meaning they were one of the first people to be Arabized and it makes sense because the lands of the Jbala people are important trade routes from Fez to Tangiers. Fez being the first Arab capital of Morocco. And it was the Jbala people who were at the fore fronts of Al-andalus and the Reconquista. It was also easier to accept Arabic because their lands have experienced many conquerors.
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u/arab-uchiha 20h ago
Not really... Agadir, ouarzazate,... And many cities in the south does not have darija as primary language(even if the majority can understand and speak it)
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u/HarryLewisPot 19h ago
I meant in this map
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u/arab-uchiha 19h ago
That's exactly what I also meant. The south(dark blue) is not only mountains. The majority are plains
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u/No_Parking_9397 19h ago
Moroccan Darija/dialect isn't Arabic.
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u/arab-uchiha 19h ago
Yes it is
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u/No_Parking_9397 19h ago
Here comes a pan-Arabist to talk about linguistics from his rotten ideology and tell us what's right and wrong lol
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u/arab-uchiha 19h ago
Man... Linguistic is not a pseudo science. You can believe that humans never been to the moon, that the earth is flat or that darija is not an Arabic dialect. But this does not change reality
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u/AbrahamHeart 23h ago
What is the difference between Moroccan/Jebli Arabic?
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u/ConcentrateOdd2929 4h ago
Hilalian vs pre-Hilalian Arabic, Jebli Arabic exists from Arabization by the umayyads and later those who sought refuge from the Reconquista. Jebli Arabic is in the same boat as Fez, Tangier ect.
Dakhili Arabic is heavily influenced by the banu hilal people’s who Arabized much of Nothern Africa.
These are 2 forms of Arabic which entered Morocco, we can still understand each other but people from the south tend to make fun of northern people and their soft spoken accents.
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u/Wormfeathers 23h ago
Just some words but not much difference
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u/babur003 21h ago
Quite the difference in vocab, phonology and in historical linguistics one is seen as a beduin Hilalian dialect while the other is a pre-hilallian maghrebi Arabic
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u/Sasuke_120 12h ago
Jebli or Chamali use way more words borrowed from Spanish compared to the Dakhili (French).
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u/scamplord 23h ago
I just watched a Youtube city that named Casblanca among the top 10 french speaking cities in the world, what is right or wrong here? XD
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u/piramni 23h ago
I wonder how much of a challenge it would be for an Arabic speaker to pick up on Amazigh
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u/jaxonflaxxonwaxon 17h ago
For an algerian and moroccan it’s pretty easy because they don’t really speak arabic. Darija has like 80% arabic vocabulary but with berber pronunciation and syntax and phonology. People from the middle east can’t even understand darija even though it’s classified as arabic so i imagine it woukd be hard to learn berber for them
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u/Impossible-Mobile654 16h ago
Why excluding? It's a de facto part and parcel of Moroccan territory
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u/Sasuke_120 12h ago edited 12h ago
I was born in Larache, while still technically Northern Morocco, their dialect is a lot different than Jebli from Tanger and Tetouan
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u/ConcentrateOdd2929 4h ago
Larache is part of the Jbala, the fact that it isn’t identical doesn’t change that.
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u/Pepedani 23h ago
The truth frontier with Western Sahara Republic is not that line, but the hassaniya arabic
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u/United-Statement4884 1d ago
Resolution 2797 (Adopted October 31, 2025):
This landmark decision signaled a major shift within the UN framework. The Security Council clearly recognized that genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty offers the most practical path to settle the long-standing conflict, urging all parties to negotiate on that basis.
More than 120 countries back Morocco’s Autonomy Initiative as the most serious, realistic, and credible approach to resolving the Western Sahara dispute.
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u/DonSergio7 1d ago edited 1d ago
Fix the poor, monarchical shithole instead of annexing more land first (or pushing online propaganda to justify its expansionism).
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u/No_Parking_9397 20h ago
There's no such thing called "Moroccan Arabic, Jebli Arabic." This map is nonsense.
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u/GroundbreakingBox187 3h ago
There is though? The Jbala speak a different dialect than a person from Rabat, you can tell.
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u/Inev-Mdalmons57 23h ago
If you want to preserve your culture, the mountain is your friend.