It was in 2022, during the Francophonie Summit in Djerba, Tunisia, that a discussion on the French language revealed a rather worrying trend. Between the desire to reclaim the national cultural language, the need for a conciliatory international language, and the rejection of French in favour of English, is all this turning sour politically between the Maghreb and the language of Molière?
The Maghreb, that region covering the entirety of Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Mauritian and Libyan territories, shares a common Arabic-speaking culture. Today, in some of these countries, several factors appear to be coming together towards an assertion of identity, coupled with a distrust of the French language. This linguistic conflict was born recently and is taking on new proportions. The reasons for this are manifold, the primary one taking the form of a reconquest of origins. As a reminder, it was in Algeria that the French language first appeared in the Maghreb during the colonisation of the territory in the 19th century. In the 1950s, certain thinkers such as the Martinican essayist Frantz Fanon, who fought for the Algerian National Liberation Front, laid the initial intellectual foundations for the self-determination of peoples worldwide. Language, which characterising the reality specific to each people, thus became one of its main guarantors.
However, Algerian policy did not fail to react to this dilemma. Algiers chose multilingualism. The Arabic language and the Berber dialect, Tamazight, are the official languages. French has been recognised as useful for scientific education and internationally. It has enjoyed good days in recent years but now faces a new European competitor, English. Indeed, the learning of the English language from primary school was established on 30 July 2022 by the Algerian President A. Tebboune. Far from being an innocuous decision, the shift to English signals a political will to break, at least in part, with a Francophony that has long been contested in Algeria. Nothing very new because ever since independence in 1962, the Algerian authorities had already “redoubled efforts to erase the remnants of French rule.» More recently, the Algerian authorities expressed their desire to distance themselves from Paris, followed by the Tunisian President, exasperated by the «injustice» of Europe, France included, which views Tunisia merely as a holding area for immigration candidates.
Decline of the French-speaking world among young Maghrebi people
Is it Emmanuel Macron’s fault? On the one hand, his difficult relations with his African partners are reportedly partly responsible for the disillusionment with the French language in these regions. On the other hand, the local press cites other factors that somewhat exonerate France: the generational renewal on the African continent is unique, and the dreams of pastures new held by this segment of the population are currently coming up against France's lack of eagerness to welcome young Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians into its universities. It is by no means certain that this new French policy is a decision that will help rekindle enthusiasm for the French-speaking world.
Consequently, French is no longer the sole benchmark in the region. Several studies show that young North Africans are drawn to the English language, particularly in the worlds of business and diplomacy. Business English is making a dramatic entrance among golden boys who do not fear broad institutional multilingualism. There is nothing new under the sun: multilingualism, a Mediterranean heritage, has been part of the North African world for centuries. In Morocco, too, English is gaining ground. Is this a sign of the decline of French-speaking culture in the Kingdom? Sadly, yes. Although figures from the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie remind us that more than 13 million Moroccans are French-speakers, representing 36% of the population, these figures risk reversing in the coming years in the face of English and Spanish, which are gaining ground. Still according to the experts, «for a while now, a number of researchers in languages and linguistics have been observing a gradual decline, both in quantity and in quality, of the presence of the French language in Morocco and in several African countries formerly colonised by France.
The new Moroccan politically correct
It is true that recently, the avoidance of French has been very noticeable in Morocco, essentially during the period of cooling relations between the two countries (which, fortunately, now seem to be settling their differences). In the past, the French language was always used in the Kingdom for public and political communications. However, the situation has changed recently. Some heavyweights of Moroccan politics have chosen to break with this tradition. Thus, during a meeting bringing together Mohamed Ouzzine, Secretary General of the Popular Movement (MP) and Vice-President of the House of Representatives, with ambassadors belonging to the diplomatic corps accredited to Morocco, the unthinkable happened: the meeting poster was in English! Mr Ouzzine then addressed the audience in Classical Arabic, «prompting many people to wonder if it wasn't some kind of « partial tear » with French having long dominated aspects of public life in the Kingdom.» Another significant example: during the activities of theSeventh International Parliamentary Forum for Social Justice held at the House of Councillors, the press noted that French was absent from the speeches of the Moroccan and foreign guests at the forum. Later, another minister caused a stir in journalistic circles during the ministerial meeting of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris. That Minister Delegate for Investment, Mohcine Jazouli, addressed the participants that day in English! Another setback: on 29 September, in Marrakech, the Moroccan Minister of Industry and Trade, Ryad Mezzour, who is perfectly francophone, also refused to speak to journalists in that language, choosing instead to use English, Spanish and Arabic! An unappealing assessment, isn’t it? While the Moroccan press has had a field day with the topic, the fact remains that these journalistic clichés, however spectacular, are nonetheless superficial at their core, given that relations between Paris and Rabat, despite a few mutual irritations, remain genuinely as strong as ever.
Nationalism and pragmatism
Apart from the disagreements over the visa scandal and other diplomatic missteps by Macron's France, the responsibility for these linguistic frictions, according to researcher Hicham Sebti, actually stems from «anti-Muslim sentiments of a certain French political class, responsible to a certain extent for this turnaround in the population. A viewpoint not shared by a large number of Moroccan business leaders, for whom pragmatism takes precedence. During a recent study on this topic, «the use of French within Moroccan companies is said to be associated with a success factor likely to lead the company to growth. For them, proficiency in French remains a necessary means to keep abreast of scientific and technological progress, a way of opening up to the West and an asset for cultivating one's imagination.»
A few years earlier, the researcher Toufik Majdi, writing in Les Cahiers de L’Orient, published a study on the place of the French language in Moroccan SMEs. He noted that French was not merely a subject to be taught or a profession, but an essential cultural, economic and commercial issue. It is an asset, when one considers Morocco's economic growth alongside a considerable number of Moroccan SMEs open to their environment outside the Kingdom. For Toufik Majdi, Moroccan business people do not ask themselves awkward questions. They consider that learning and practising French as a «free man» is not alienation.
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