El árabe ceutí, una lengua minorizada. Propuestas para su enseñanza en la escuela

Abstract

The Arabic of Ceuta is the native language of 40% of the Spanish population of Ceuta, which also speaks Spanish. The remainder 60% is mostly monolingual and their native language is Spanish. There is also 1% of bilingual citizens whose native tongue is Sindhi. The Arabic of Ceuta is Moroccan Arabic, the native language of 60% of the population of the neighboring country and, specifically, it shares common features with the northern dialect area (Yebala region and the Atlantic coast down to the city of Larache). But its use in Spanish territory since the second half of 19th century gave rise to two phenomena: Spanish borrowings and code-switching in the case of bilingual speakers. The Arabic of Ceuta is an oral language, like Moroccan Arabic, which has never been standardized from the political sphere, in contrast with literal Arabic (also called cultivated, standard, modern or classic), which is not the native language of any Arab in the world and has emerged as the only means of educational, political, and cultural expression due to political and religious power. Despite this, there is a whole literary tradition, oral and written, in Moroccan Arabic, especially from the 20th century. Currently, there is a group of Moroccan professors and intellectuals working on its coding in order to generalize a writing system in Arabic script. Ceuta is the Spanish region with the highest school dropout rate in Spain, and this is particularly acute in schools where the majority of students are bilingual. Many experts recommend teachers and professors to teach in the native language of their pupils, at least at the beginning of their education. In this paper we will put forward some proposals for the recognition of Ceuta Arabic as coded by the movement of Moroccan intellectuals who are already working on the development of a dictionary, a grammar, text collections, and translations of works from the European literature to Moroccan Arabic. The ultimate goal should be its inclusion in the educational and administrative services of the city as well as to achieve an official status in the future, rightly recognized by the Spanish Constitution.