The language I brought with me: this is how North Africa sounds in Spain

Languages ​​do not understand purism when they are exported.

It is impossible to keep them intact when their speakers are surrounded by other alphabets and phonemes.

Keeping them is almost an act of rebellion;

claim.

For this reason, it is normal for the Hassanía spoken by Nadhira's parents to become Hassañol, a hybrid that escapes her when she talks to her sister with whom she grew up in the Canary Islands.

For Halima's generation, born in Madrid but with Moroccan ancestry, her dariya level is "touristy."

Fathi, however, discerns between Arabic, Spanish and English like no one else, as he is a translator.

With more or less pristine languages, they all share the same goal: not to lose them.

Each variant mutates and enriches itself, although they also run the risk of being absorbed by other predominant languages.

These eight protagonists are united by the land and memories that are condensed in language, music, stories, poetry or childhood programs.

They are a kind of direct passageway to the secret conversations between the women of the family that Najat remembers from his childhood in the Rif, or to the children's fables in Soninké that Boubou's grandfather told by the light of the bonfire in his village in Mauritania.

In North Africa, classical Arabic is the root of more than twenty lexical families, from which a myriad of dialects are derived, loaded with sounds and expressions that are nothing like each other.

This enormous wealth is the reflection of the mosaic of cultures and peoples of the same region.

So different and so the same.

Nadhira Mohamed Buhoy, 31, Western Sahara

Maintaining the hassanía is my claim;

my tool in front of the world

• City of origin

  : Smara, Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf (Algeria)

• Language

  : Hassanía

• Speakers

  : more than nine million

• Countries where spoken

  : Western Sahara, Mauritania and Algeria

• Alphabet

  : Classical Arabic or Latin script is used with certain numbers to indicate phonemes that do not exist in Roman languages

• Official status

  : Hassanía is the national language, but the official languages ​​in the Sahara are classical Arabic and Spanish

Halima Brini, 26, Morocco

I speak Moroccan tourists;

is part of here and there

• City of origin

  : Halima was born in Madrid;

  her maternal family comes from Casablanca and her father is from El Jadida

• Language

  : Moroccan

• Speakers

  : more than 44 million

• Countries where it is spoken

  : coast and center of Morocco

• Alphabet

  : Classical Arabic or Latin alphabet calligraphy is used with certain numbers to indicate phonemes that do not exist in Roman languages

• Official Status

  : Classical Arabic has always been the official language.

  And since 2011, also the Riff, as a result of the protests of the Arab Spring.

  However, Moroccan is one of the most widely spoken languages ​​and a lingua franca in all colloquial areas

Najat El Hachmi, 41 years old Rif

I cannot separate the affective from the linguistic.

The mother tongue is linked to the mother, the person who transmits the first affection to us

• Hometown

  : Nador in the Rif region

• Language

  : Riffian, tarifit

• Speakers

  : seven million

• Countries where it is spoken

  : Rif region (northern Morocco and Algeria) and in Melilla (Spain)

• Alphabet

  : tifinagh

• Official status

  : the Riff is official in Morocco since 2011, as a result of the protests of the Arab Spring.

• Curiosities

  : it has many loanwords from Spanish, such as the verb “flipar”.

Boubou Kamara, 64 years old Mauritania

Losing your language is losing your roots, it is losing your cultural identity

• Hometown

  : Dafor

• Language

  : soninké

• Speakers

  : 1.7 million

• Countries where spoken

  : Mali, Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia

• Alphabet

  : Latin, but it is a fundamentally oral language

• Official status

  : not official in any country, but considered a national language in Mali, Mauritania and Senegal

• Curiosities

  : the Soninké language, like the ethnic group, come from the city of Soní, a name that was given in the time of the pharaohs to the current Aswan, in Egypt

Fathi Sayed, 60 years old Egypt

My mother tongue takes me back to when I was a child and I woke up with the stories on the radio

• Hometown

  : Cairo

• Language

  : Classical Arabic and Egyptian

• Speakers

  : Classical Arabic is spoken by about 280 million people, it is the fifth most widely spoken language in the world and the Egyptian variant is dominated by 83 million

• Countries where spoken

  : Egypt

• Alphabet

  : Arabic

• Official status

  : official language

• Curiosities

  : Spanish preserves 25,000 words of Arabic origin.

  And more than 5,000 of them are used frequently today.

  But if this language is characterized by something, it is by its multiple words to designate the same element.

  There are, for example, more than 300 words to name the lion and, although not all of them are used anymore, ten of them are still widely used, depending on whether one wants to refer to the strength, solemnity or bravery of the animal.

  Luz is another example.

  It is known as

  dau'un

  if it is a warm light and

  nur'un

  to quote the moonlight.

  A distinction is also made between

  almátar

  , which is the rain that causes harm, and

  algaiz

  when it is beneficial.

Khaled Ahmed Azzouz, 45 years old Libya

In Spain, not all immigrant children have access to study their official Arabic language

• Hometown

  : Tripoli

• Language

  : Libyan Arabic

• Speakers

  : 4.5 million

• Countries where spoken

  : Libya

• Alphabet

  : Arabic

• Official status

  : language spoken without grammatical rules that in turn has three variants, but they are not given official status.

  The official language in Libya is Standard Arabic

• Trivia

  : Libyan Arabic nouns have three grammatical numbers: singular, plural and dual, which refers to two units.

  The

  paucal

  number

  (when it refers to less than ten) is also used in some nouns

Mariam Barouni, 35, Tunisia

In the Maghreb they tell us that we are the ones who speak singing

• Hometown

  : Yerba

• Language

  : Tunisian Arabic, also known as Dariya (dialect) or Tunisian

• Speakers

  : 11 million

• Countries where spoken

  : Tunisia and Algerian border

• Alphabet

  : Arabic and Latin

• Official status

  : it is a Maghrebian dialect without official status.

  The official language in Tunisia is Arabic.

  No official recognition or standardization for Tunisian Arabic was granted in the country until 2011

• Curiosities

  : the linguistic classification of Tunisian is a controversial matter: some linguists consider it an independent language and others believe that it is a dialect of Arabic.

  Since the country's independence it has been widely used in the media and in literature, and since the 2011 revolution, various initiatives have been carried out to promote its use.

  One of them was that of the Tunisian Ministry of Youth and Sports: they published a version of their website in Tunisian, but they had to close it after a week because a survey concluded that more than half of users were against it. the idea

Amina Gobbi, 50 years old Algeria

When I listen to songs in chaoui my eyes fill with tears

• City of origin

  : Tébessa, in the north of the country, just over 40 kilometers from the border with Tunisia

• Language

  : chaoui

• Speakers

  : almost three million

• Countries where it is spoken

  : Amazigh is the language of the indigenous population throughout North Africa and Chaoui is one of its four main ramifications.

  This dialect is spoken mainly in eastern Algeria

• Alphabet

  : Classical Arabic or Latin alphabet calligraphy is used with certain numbers to indicate phonemes that do not exist in Roman languages

• Official status

  : Classical Arabic and French are the official languages ​​and Amazigh has been national since 2002, although there is a movement against it, since not being a language as such, but a family with multiple variants, the choice of just one of them relegates to a second category the others

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• Credits

• Audio coordination and production: Lola Hierro and Noor Mahtani

• Format: Brenda Valverde and Alberto Quero

• Art direction: Fernando Hernández

• Design: Ana Fernández

• Layout: Alejandro Gallardo

• Audio production: José Juan Morales

• Future Planet Director: Lola Huete Machado

• This Planeta Futuro / ELPAÍS special is possible thanks to the alliance with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation