Rugs in the souks of Marrakech

When I visited Morocco in March, I was not just impressed by the World Heritage Ksar and the one-humped camels. I was equally blown away by the polyglots of the country—a loosely defined word meaning “speakers of many languages.”

The souks of Marrakech provided a fantastic example of how tourism fuels language learning. We normally associate English as the language of tourism, and Morocco was no exception: every vendor knew at least enough English to sufficiently hassle you until you a) nearly flipped them off, or b) caved and bought a camel keychain you never knew you needed.

The souks of Marrakech

But Morocco was a melting pot of languages like I’d never before witnessed. As a prior French colony, most Moroccans know French along with the official language of Arabic, both Moroccan and Modern Standard. (Arabic varies hugely between the countries that use it, so Standard Arabic is the lingua franca for writing and formal speech.) As a country with a mushrooming tourism industry, many add four or five tongues to their reportoire. I met vendors who started bargaining with me in English; they switched to Spanish once I lied and said I was a Spain native (thinking maybe they would hassle me less). When they found out I was living in Bilbao, some began rambling off words in Euskera. (Euskera! A language of less than a million!) Our tour guide through a desert oasis easily accommodated our Japanese comrades with some words of their own language, and assured an older couple in their native Italian that the precarious river crossing over slippery stepping stones was a piece of cake. He also spoke a dialect of Berber, the language of the native people of Morocco and the country’s second official language.

Sunset camel ride through the Sahara

Me: “Je suis malade! Il y a des toilettes?” (I’m sick! Are there any toilets?)

Driver: “Aprés, aprés. Maintenant, les sacs!” (Later, later. For now, plastic bags!)

Sure, my recent rainy-day hobby of reading French grammar books proved somewhat useful, but the Moroccan polyglots put me to shame.

About The Author

Jenny

Jenny Marshall studied Language, Culture, and Society at the University of California Santa Barbara, and now teaches English in Spain. Here she writes about the intersection of language and culture, and lives a life translated by travel.