I'm French/English bilingual, surely I should go there and find myself a job. :P

One reason for French language resilience in the Maghreb is that it allows for very clear class distinctions - which for some is even more important than development.

If you look at a country like Morocco, I think you will find it is actually both more linguistically diverse and actually less dependent on French than one might think. There are a few Moroccans who speak only Berber dialects, although most speak darija, and then only a fraction of the literate ones (around 55% of adult pop.) speak decent fusha/Modern Standard Arabic. I was surprised to see statistics that only about 15% speak a decent level of French. Then up north and in the Western Sahara there's the Spanish speakers, and English has really made great strides. Moroccan immigrant communities also speak a variety of European languages, and some come back to live in Morocco.

French still remains dominant at elite levels, and my experience is that many people from this background use French as a working language, darija (Moroccan dialect) as an everyday language, and don't master MSA that well orally or in writing, although most are able to read it. Tel Quel did an interesting cover story last year on the dominance of French among the elite. One interesting element is that this Francophile elite schooled in the French mission were often the children of the Arab nationalist Istiqlal movement (dominated by Fassis), which in the 1970s would embrace Arabization policies for the "masses".

Another element is that some institutions retained a strong French influence, notably the military that in the 1950s to the 1970s still had French instructors and followed French doctrine. That too has presumably changed by now, especially with the general decline of the Moroccan military into affairisme.

I should thank first Shaheen for giving analytical content to a recent rant of mine with respect to business.

Second, some observations.

The persistence of French as a vehicle for knowledge and trade in the region decades after the independence of the region was unexpected. French was supposed to be a transitional phenomenon for the newly independent Maghreb. So far though, it has prevailed against both native and foreign languages that might have pushed it away.

What is interesting and at some level amusing in a wry way is the degree to which French actually has penetrated deeper post-independence that during colonial rule.

An obs. here
Efforts were made towards arabization of administrations and higher education, but the results are mixed and most people find themselves unable to reach native-speaker mastery of either French or (Literary) Arabic.

It strikes me as a very French goal that operational usage of the language in such situations as business - above all when it is being used between non-native speakers - should aim for "native fluency"; this is quite the contrary of the situation in English were the focus is on pragmatic communication.

Only in francophonie have I seen interventions at business meetings where one non-native takes it upon himself to make a subject-matter irrel. comment correction to usage, and not a correction that would be substantive to achieve clarity. Style.

Another factor at play is the near absence of experts in scientific fields able to fluently express themselves in Arabic and teach in that language. Those elements strengthen the perception that Arabic is outdated, impoverished and inadequate as a professional tool. Most importantly however is the fear of linguistic isolation resulting from complete arabization, which lends support in the political debate to those who favor a bilingual (French Arabic) education as opposed to a more complete arabization.

In this context I always recall the observation from a famous Egyptian economist, to me personally about a decade ago [I won't name the person], stating he no longer bothered to write serious economics in Arabic as the only response he got was nit-picking criticism over his use of the language, whereas in English he got substantive feed back and discussion.

It strikes me that the Arabisant scholars, being largely of a religio-literary background, have contributed to freezing the language and cutting it off from real world activity, outside of literary and religious production. Creating a vicious cycle of irrelevance.
With respect to this:
French seems to be resisting the progress of English too, which would probably make a lot more sense than French as a second language. One of the problems businesses might face in the Maghreb in terms of human resources is the scarcity and the poor quality of English speakers when targeting non francophone and non Arab markets.

Very true.

France of course spends a lot of capital and resources trying to defend its declining turf, and I think one should not underestimate the payoff France gets from its constant sponsorship of Maghrebine elites to France for trade fairs, cultural blah blah, etc.

Whereas neither the US nor UK do anything in particular to push the use of English - other than mere intertia and mono-lingualism.

The French effort in relationship to the Maghreb is enough, for the moment, to trump market forces that would induce English growth (although it seems to me that it is occuring slowly), given a critical mass of francophones and further, key decision-makers that are most comfortable in French.

The ubiquity of French not only aggravates the dependence of the Maghreb to France, but it impedes the region's ability to develop beyond its traditional (colonial) ties.

Absolutely.

The degree to which the Maghreb is cut off from "Anglo Saxon" developments is often stunning.

Worse, it not only serves as an economic chain, it culturally acts like an albatross around their necks: everything, from law to social models is borrowed from France. Considering how inefficient and sterile French models and intellectual production can be today in most fields when compared to their anglo-saxon counterparts, the Maghreb is riding a losing horse. It isolates individual Maghrebis from most scientific and economic literature, access to reckonized professional bodies which require English, etc.

I'd largely agree - there some exceptions, areas where France is more or less strong, as in engineering, but even there France itself is experiencing a brain drain to more hospitable (buxiness wise) climates, above all in the areas of new tech or business innovation requiring start ups.

Ironically, English as a language enjoys more prestige than French in North Africa. Here lies an opportunity. The question of what the United States could do to improve the situation in the Arab World has been raised several times here on Aqoul. One of the tools France has used to maintain its linguistic - and resulting economic, political, cultural - dominance over the Maghreb is its massive investment in a set of structures that promoted ties with it. ..... This exposure makes it a lot easier to stay within French networks than trying to look outside. Creating incentives to consider alternative networks would come by making it as cheap in terms of money and efforts for a North African as it is to remain within existing ones - or at least much less costly than it currently is. Financial packages aimed at pushing further the study of English in Maghrebi public systems to increase English-awareness, more grants to potential leaders in every field (from politics to arts) to study in the US or Britain, increasing the presence of educational institutions abiding by their curricula the way the mission does for France would be a good start.

I would not leave other anglophone countries out of this, the UK seems queerly blind to the Maghreb as well (or rather it seems they are content to leave Maghreb as France's pre-carre as it's not worth the irritation and French reaction; the French elite gets visicous when their francophonie is touched, last thing France has left is this captive audience).

But I absolutely agree - although before the Iraq fiasco the opening was better. Back then I was constantly hearing from Maghrebine actors (business, etc) that they wanted more US presence, more Anglo-Saxons to allow them to break out. France's political capital was clearly declining.

Now, the US has managed to utterly reverse this. I never hear positives now, only about what a threat the US is; whereas savvy French maneuvering (w/o substantive policy change) has them on the ascendance.

Diversifying foreign exposure in the Maghreb might bring new dynamics there. It might bring a much needed liberalization for a start. In fact, even France might want to push for it, because eventually, a more prosperous Maghreb would benefit everyone, France very much included.

Sadly the French themselves can get liberalisation going, even though it's painfully clear that it is necessary.

On the question of imperfect mastery of either French or Arabic among Moroccans, I've heard people grumble that an AUC education leaves young Egyptians "illiterate in two languages" - and grammatically adequate mastery is pretty important when you're writing business letters and so forth, I'd think. It's a bit idealistic to think you'll have equal fluency in two languages, advocates of bilingualism notwithstanding, so perhaps functional literacy a la AUC is the best that can be hoped for. The problem, of course, is that when you have a large (social, geographic)gap between elite colonial-language speakers and everybody else, it's hard to get good English or French teachers to work at non-elite schools, so you maintain a low standard for the mastery of the colonial language at the mass level (e.g. English in many Indian schools).

The elites pushing Arabisation for the masses while clinging to French to preserve their own status sound so predictable. Sigh.

A propos, there was an article in the Daily Star about the rising popularity of English in Libnan.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=78746#

The L.,

Ditto. Just one point:

It strikes me as a very French goal that operational usage of the language in such situations as business - above all when it is being used between non-native speakers - should aim for "native fluency"; this is quite the contrary of the situation in English were the focus is on pragmatic communication.

Very true. Yet, in the context of cultural production in its broader sense, reaching a native speaker level is desired. Cultural production is perhaps not the most immediate priority in economic terms, but improving it could have indirect returns that are certainly very positive although no study I'm aware of has been conducted to quantify them. I can think of its impact on the way people see and identify themselves for example. That impacts their decisions, the choices of their partners, the models they're going to adopt, etc..

For both SP & Shaheen Bey

Well, I tend to look at language use for these markets from a utilitarian perspective.

Clearly, of course, higher level of fluency is of use and an ideal goal.

At the same time, for much ordinary use, being reasonably at ease but not fluent is good enough, at least in terms of work and even liesure.

I am perhaps over-sensitive to the issue of fluency given how frustrating I find the French style ... well, I hate to be stereotyping but arrogance and instistence on perfection in style etc. with respect to people just getting down to business.

I would say with respect to AUC, that it is largely literary / cultural left types, and snobs generally, who make that criticism.

Certainly, of course lots of graduates are imperfectly trained in English and end up being also very weak in Standard Arabic, but then in my experience few of the public university graduates are particularly strong in Standard Arabic either and even less capable in English.

Such criticisms frequently fall into the category of letting the Perfect be the enemy of the good.

The L.,

I agree when it comes to foreign languages. The point of learning foreign languages is mainly professional and economic (or at most, being able to absorb foreign production in the fields of knowledge). In that sense, the level of French in the Maghreb for example more than serves its purpose, and indeed, I do note that often to those who criticize the lack of native level fluency in it.

OTOH, lack of native level fluency in Standard Arabic is a problem. Maybe bringing Standard Arabic more in line with Colloquials is needed (it's possible without loss of Standard Arabic's universality) or something of the sort, but that's beyond the point. Arabic cultural production is absolutely sterile, and reviving it implies that people would find natural, i.e. effortless, to express themselves in it. Why is it needed as opposed to other languages? Because that's the only language to which you might isolate people's identification (politicized minorities aside). IOW, giving Arabic a sense of usefulness would allow putting all other languages back in the realm they belong to: that of mere tools that you can efficiently pick and dispose of according to your own interests, as opposed to learning them out of irrational confort areas or perceptions of dependence that others created for you.

"IOW, giving Arabic a sense of usefulness would allow putting all other languages back in the realm they belong to: that of mere tools that you can efficiently pick and dispose of according to your own interests, as opposed to learning them out of irrational confort areas or perceptions of dependence that others created for you."

Which is precisely what the French don't want to happen. I think this point and L's point come together in that the French demand maximum fluency specifically because they do want to transfer their culture, not merely conduct business. The vacuum created by a weak MSA and a weak pan-Arab culture means that French language and culture can thrive in the Maghreb. All of this is not only good for business in France, but it also helps spread Frenchness which is an end in and of itself for those in the univeralist tradition.

Frankly, I wonder about the success of the French in spreading their culture and language. Some have noticed years ago that the French apparently are mainly successful in dubbing US TV series in French and making them more accessible to Maghrebi markets. The same could be said now about South American TV series. However, it seems to me that the Arabic-dubbed ones are far more successful.

There is almost no French movies among the latest successes in Morocco, for example. The French are successful mainly among the French-mimicking middle and upper class - of course they are important since they staff most institutions (governmental, economic, corporate). But even those should at one point realize that they're fighting a losing battle. Obviously, they will fight to the death, since French is their most obvious title to internal hegemony.

Thought of this thread while reading a report on the Maghrebi Star academy, specifically this bit:

Karoui said that the contestants, who will be arriving in Tunis at the end of this month, will not be restricted to using a uniform language. "We have left them free to speak the dialect of the places they are from. I believe that in time they will agree on a common language and learn the words they don't know, and likewise with the audience."

I think this point and L's point come together in that the French demand maximum fluency specifically

Actually L. was also pointing out (and I concur) that even non natives did insist on it - which can be a bit irritating.

The vacuum created by a weak MSA and a weak pan-Arab culture

A weak MSA in the Maghreb, certainly (though not necessarily worse than in many other Arab countries - e.g. the Gulf, Lebanon). A weak pan-Arab culture in the Maghreb? Certainly not - unless you consider it to be weak in other Arab countries as well.

I am trying to create a glossary of urban and "bienseance" expressions from traditional Moroccan dareeja. For example what you say when you want to thank someone :"allah i barak feek" (godly) which is the equivalent for the secular shoukran. This glassary will in a sense show -via the evolution of language- how Morocco is actually becoming more and more secular. so for all you Moroccans out there who have expressions (of bendictions or maledictions) to offer, please visit my blog :
http//www.sublimereason.com

or send me an email : sublimer@sublimereason.com

Thanks !