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Morocco: An Informal Passage to Literacy in dārija (Moroccan Arabic)

In this contribution, I shall deal with a recent development in keyboard-toscreen communication indārija (MoroccanArabic). I postulate that qualitative change is takingplace and thatwe arenow reaching a stagewhere a further step is being crossed, from the passage to writing and deciphering that took place from the early 2000s, to literacy proper. From the late 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, the new technologies have allowed a spontaneous passage to writing for a language variety that has not been codified. It was led by actors from civil society who, slowly but steadily, taught themselves to read and write in dārija, with a true d.i.y. (Do It Yourself1) spirit. This writing is ‘informal’, in the sense of taking place in the ‘informal sector’, i.e. first, outside of state control or regulation, and second, with the ‘coping’ behaviour of individuals who take over when the institutions are absent (by ‘coping’ I mean taking responsibility and initiative at their level).

could afford to buy a computer and have a connection at home; this went on from 2005 to 2010. Unlike Facebook, the early chat systems provided users with anonymity.
Mobile phones also gave people independence -especially girls, who could exchange text messages, whereas they were not allowed to go to cyber-cafés, which sounded like "cafés" in the eyes of their families. Even for those who were not fluent in reading French, mastering the Latin alphabet could be reinvested in writing short messages in dārija (see the case studied in Caubet 2004).

Dārija: A Change in Practices and Status in the Civil Society
Dārija has undergone a drastic change in practices and status in the Moroccan emerging civil society, while the institutions completely failed to follow suit.
Practice first came in the form of a passage to writing on first-generation mobile phones in Latin script. This choice was not ideological, but practical, because the only available phones and computers at the time were equipped with French keyboards. In 2006, the same young people who wrote dārija in Latin script on keyboard-mediated exchanges, when given a pen, would instinctively write in Arabic script (see Caubet 2012). They would use a different script (Latin vs Arabic), whether they wrote on a piece of paper or on a keyboard. At the time, older people would either not be aware of -or despisethese practices.
Status came slightly later and was influenced by the development of these practices. Voices started to claim that dārija was a key element for the definition of a new Moroccan identity, being the language that unites all Moroccans. Such voices came from a social and cultural movement which emerged in the early 2000s and was compared to the Spanish Movida. Nayda3 was the name given to a cultural effervescence that took place during the years 2005-2008. However, the key year is 2003, when two dramatic episodes contributed to change the course of events: first, the arrest of 14 young heavy metal music lovers, their trial in February 2003, and the public mobilisation that followed; second, on May 16, seven simultaneous kamikaze fundamentalist bombings involving 14 youngsters from a neglected neighbourhood in Casablanca (Sidi caubet Moumen), causing the death of 33 people (apart from themselves), and leading to massive public questioning in Moroccan society. As a consequence, the 'legal' fundamentalists (the present Prime Minister's party, the pjd) disappeared from the political life for a whole year and brought a breath of freedom. This is when the underground movement started to grow on the public scene until it became a socio-cultural movement, and was heavily mediatized from 2006 (see Caubet 2007, 2008, 2010a.4 Dārija played a central part in the artistic productions of this new music scene, and artists claimed that it was their language and that they were proud of it. Dārija was a means to convey things in a more Moroccan way, to try and speak the language of the people.
The status of dārija has changed radically in the last ten years: it had been associated with illiteracy, backwardness and was considered incompatible with education or progress. Now it has become trendy and modern, considered as the language capable of accompanying the Nayda. At the same time, fierce debates about the official use of dārija in the schooling system have been going on since October 2013. This is in itself significant: while institutions seem to have rejected dārija once again, the fact that the question has been raised and discussed at length is a sign of change.5 One also should not underestimate the fact that the absence of an institution and official formatting may present an opportunity for boundless communicative freedom and creativity.
For writing in Latin script, techniques have been described (Benitez Fernández 2012, Caubet 2013, Moscoso 2009), noting variation in writing between 'scriptors' and even for the same writer. But over the years, people have taught themselves to write and to read (in that order), acquiring a high level of fluency that I wish to describe as a 'passage to writing' . The phenomenon is so important that it is mentioned in columns, like Zakaria Boualem in Telquel weekly by Reda Allali; on February 21, 2016, in a paper called "Zakaria Boualem et l' école en français,"6 he writes: While commissions address and theoreticians gloss daily on strategic choices, millions of Moroccans, exchange every minute in dārija, using numbers and letters because (the authorities) refuse to normalize what should be our language.
Although it was technically possible to write in Arabic script from 2009, with the Facebook Arabic interface, it takes time to change practices. But when people do switch to using Arabic, they also undergo what I will term a 'passage to literacy' . Thus, in 2014-2016, I observed a passage from the stage of plain writing and deciphering dārija to that of an ability to comprehend and express longer, elaborate, and even literary, texts.

The Arabic Script: Literacy on Smartphones and Computers
For the general public and internet users, the passage to the Arabic script is recent and slow, simply because people find it difficult to type in Arabic. Nowadays however one can download an application that provides an Arabic keyboard for smartphones, which makes it easier. By the end of 2009, out of a million users, 85% used the French interface and only 6.5 %, the Arabic one (Tancrez 2009). In 2012, the French interface had gone down to 76%7 -and it remained at 75% in 2014,8 with 7.2 million profiles; more recently, the use of Arabic went up: from 17% at the end of 2012 to 33 % in 2014. The figuresadding up to more than 100% -show that a number of people use both French and Arabic interfaces.
By the end of 2009, 25 million mobile phone subscribers had sent 2.85 billion text messages.9 The corresponding figures for 2011 were 36.5 million/over 5 billion sms, and for 2013 42.4 million/over 11 billion sms. Just a comparison and a reminder about the situation ten years previously, in 2003: the number of sms was estimated at 550 million, for 7.3 million mobile phones (see Caubet 2004).
Internet penetration went up tremendously in one year, reaching 30 % at the end of 2014, up from 17% in 2013. 7 For the 2012 figures, see https://eplume.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/les-reseaux-sociaux-au -maroc-et-dans-le-monde-arabe-twitter-facebook-statistique-etude-du-printemps. 8 The last available figures are for 2014: http://www.usinenouvelle.com/article/les -marocains-toujours-accros-a-facebook-mais-retifs-a-twitter.N272945. 9 All the following figures are taken from the annual reports of the anrt, and can be found at anrt.ma. caubet To switch from a system of writing you master to another one, you need to have a strong motivation: either you find it easier to write in Arabic, or there are new technical possibilities (Arabic interface for Facebook and Arabic keyboards on smartphones), and your social network (your friends) is also switching to Arabic. But it may also be that you have made a political decision to write in dārija in Arabic script, because this is how your message will be conveyed to a maximum of people who are not really at ease reading Standard Arabic or French. Another reason, more political, is the idea of access to the people, in a post-'Arab spring' climate. The writers I interviewed are convinced that if you want to reach the people, you must write dārija in Arabic script, and this is what they have decided to do when posting on Facebook or when writing longer texts on a blog. They write in dārija for the following reasons: in order to be understood; because it is rich and authentic (ħit ġanya u aṣila), because it is very powerful (qwiya); because you cannot lie to the people by using lughat l-khashab (< Fr. "langue de bois", i.e. political cant). Some of the authors I have been following for over two years had a link with the 20th February movement (#Feb20); not with the more politicized students who would use Standard Arabic, the language of politics, but with the oulad cha3b of more popular origin. Some of them have been jailed on fallacious pretexts, like Mouad L'7a9ed who spent one year and eight months in jail over a period of three years,12 or Mohamed Sokrate, a blogger who was sentenced to two years in June 2102;13 a sign that shows how disturbing they were for the system. Others were members of the Feb20 lejnat el-ibda3 (Creative Committee).

New Literacy: Examples of Elaborate Texts
The idea of writing and reading in dārija has become commonplace and does not constitute a problem any longer in civil society. The general attitude is 'informality' and 'tolerance' , and the absence of an official norm gives total What is remarkable is the massive character of the process -which concerns millions of youths in Morocco, and in the Arab world -for languages without any official recognition, and whose status is given by the civil society and not by the state. I will present three authors: 1) rapper Mouad L7a9d, 2) blogger Harabish and 3) slammer Mustapha Slameur (for a wider range of authors, see Caubet forthcoming 2017).

Mouad
Mouad is a rapper, but in February 2015, he published two stories, "T7arbichat" number one and two,14 where he writes about his memories of the first demonstration of February 20, 2011. The title comes from "7arabich", i.e. the name the members of the lejnat el-ibda3 (Creation Committee) of the Feb20 chose for themselves. We will also see texts by a close friend of his, who blogs under the name Harabish (see below).
In late 2015, Mouad decided to leave Morocco and come to Europe, because it was impossible for him to express himself there: well-known as he is, he had not been able to perform in a concert of his own; they were all banned. The only times he went on stage was when he was invited unannounced by fellow rappers, like L'Moutchou (Mobydick).15 The general tendency is not towards solidarity with Mouad L7a9d among rappers, and very often on the two-faced grounds that he is not a good rapper … In Belgium, he wrote more prose texts and on 13 February 2016, he announced the publication on his l7a9d page: "Stay tuned for Mouad l7a9d's exclusive diary on goud.ma": The series is published under the title "Men 3okacha l Molenbeek" (From Okacha to Molenbeek); the publication started on 18 February 2016 and came out regularly two or three times a week (parts 1 to 15). 14 Text 1  This extract is the second part of T7arbichat number 1 (in bold the terms whose spelling will be discussed below): kan9ol m3a rasi lyoma gha ysali had ši, ḫaṣṣ-ha tše3l, ḫaṣṣ-na nghowwto, ṣafi mša we9t s-sokut w-el-ḫof; wa7ed l-le7ḍa ne99ez wa7ed ḫona smiyto le7sin, ghadi nete3rref 3li-h men be3d, o 9al l-wa7ed ḫona kan kiṣowwer '7bes et-teṣwir!' o bda kighowwet 'O l-maḫzen yṭle3 berra!' o n-nas kat3awed men oura-h, ḫona mol l-kamira mša b7alo o deḫlat wa7ed ḫetna 7ta hiya bdat katehḍer? I said to myself, all this is going to end, it must stay lit, we must shout; the time of silence and fear has ended. And in an instant, a guy named Lhocine -whom I would get to know later -jumped up and he told a guy who was filming 'Stop filming!' and he started to shout 'Let the Makhzen leave!' and people repeat it after him; the guy with the camera went home and a girl came in, and she too started to speak. Wa7ed el-le7ḍa kayban li-na l-bigab (pick up) o l-mikruwat kitbranšaw (> Fr. brancher) o tejme3 te9riban kolši f-el-9ent l-liser dyal sa7at l-7mam, o bda ṣot kattesme3 ši 7edd kiyhḍer; mšina ana o 3ešrani nšofo aš wa9e3, l9ina mejmo3a dyal n-nas 7eṭṭo bigab o dayrin sellom ṭale3 fo9o, wa7ed kihḍer o mleṣṣ9in wa7ed šara wa9ila mektub fi-ha 20 feb, o dayrin wa7ed d-da2ira mân3in bnadem ydḫel liha ila ma kanetš dik šara f-ktafo … caubet After a while, we saw the van and mikes being plugged in, and nearly everyone gathered on the left corner of the Pigeon Plaza, and a voice could be heard, someone speaking; I went with my friends to see what was happening, we found a group of people who had brought the van and put a ladder to climb on top, and a guy talking; they all had stuck badges that said 20 Feb, and they had formed a circle, forbidding people to get in if they were not wearing that badge on their shoulder … 7arbichat men l-bo3d laḫer ("7arbichates"17 from another dimension), is a very close friend of Mouad and he has engaged with him in artistic projects. He is present on several clips and has recorded a number of tracks with him since his 2014 album, Waloo ‫و‬ ‫ا‬ ‫ل‬ ‫و‬ ‫و‬ ‫و‬ ‫ا‬ "Nothing";18 his voice is more on the reggae side. Previously, he was trained as a blogger in Casablanca for a project entitled "Reinforcing the capacities of Arab bloggers and journalists for the promotion of Human Rights", in 2013 by the Arab Institute for Human Rights,19 a regional ngo based in Tunisia. His blog won one of the three awards presented on 14 December 2013 in Tunis. His idea was to blog in his own language, as Harabish puts it: Had-el-mudawana dyal wa7ed mubtada2, t-tadwinat b-ed-dārija elmaġribiya el qaṣ7a, katna9ech mawaḍi3 ijtima3iya o siyasiya o mawaḍi3 ḫora la 3la9a, te9der te3jbek te9der ma te3jbek ch, el-mohimm howa ana 3ajbani.

‫و‬
This blog is the work of a novice; the entries are written in harsh Moroccan Arabic; it deals with social and political issues, and also with other subjects that have nothing to do with this. It may appeal to you and it may not appeal to you; anyways, what's important is that it appeals to me.
Scene two: (Scene: silence; place: a very full bus where more people are standing than seating) -She climbed on the bus and she kept staring at him.
-He too, started looking at her, because he knew her; she is the girl he has on his list of friends on Facebook, who is always writing about the subject of equality between man and woman, and that they are the same: what man does, she can do it too.
-She goes on staring at him because she felt that he is thinking of her and that he is staring at her.
-He was lost and did not know what to do. caubet -She felt that he was very tense and he was not at ease anymore.
-He did not find what to do, so he picked up a book from his bag and began to read, in order not to look at her anymore; she was giving him a hungry cat's look for him to get up and let her sit in his place, because there was a crowd, and it would take care of her, because she is a girl … Harabish sometimes posts long texts or extracts form his blog texts on his Facebook profiles on which he has nearly 5000 "friends". He is a student and it is not always simple for him to connect, with very little means to do so.

Slam Poetry
Slam Poetry or 'Spoken Word' is poetry in performance; it started in the 1990s in the United States with African-Americans poets who were explicitly following what the Beat Generation and the "Négritude" poets had done previously when they declaimed their texts. Poets compete with intense emotion during public Slam sessions. This genre is very new in Morocco and is found more in the form of videos posted on internet than performed live, due to the lack of events. The languages used can be msa, French but mostly dārija, sometimes with some codeswitching.
Mustapha Slameur is a former rapper who started very young in the late 90's under the name Steph Raggaman. He began slamming around 2012 and he was the first to publicize this art on the social networks where is very active. He regularly posts videos of slam texts on his youtube channel, Le Slam de Mustapha. In 2015 he initiated slam workshops at the Institut Français of El Jadida, the town where he works as a teacher. On his Facebook profile, he regularly posts long texts or very short videos giving his point of view, or defending street arts in general, and a street artist from Algiers in particular (January 16, 2016). He has texts in French, and more recently in Standard Arabic (because he aims at Francophone and Arab audiences), but the language he uses most naturally is dārija, which he calls25 "al-Magharibiya; en référence au Maghreb. A la base on n'est pas des Arabes, mais des Maghariba, Tunisie, Algérie, Maroc", referring to the Maghreb and not just Morocco. And he adds, defining the language: "Donc forcément il y a des mots en français; une super grande ouverture sur l'espagnol". 24 Come on! Speak up, in Dārija, tklm (talk), no one will stop you! The mike will be open to all those who want to declaim, to share poetry, their text and their state of mind in complete freedom, far from any censorship; whethet in Dārija, French, English, or even in Japanese, come and share your poetry. We'll be happy to meet you … Transcription Slameur claims the right to mix languages, because a) it is common in North Africa; and b) as an artist, who defines himself as a 'rime hunter': "Je suis un chasseur de rime. Entre arabe, dārija, espagnol ou français, Je me sers. La sonorité prime et les mots ont une charge f le sens spécial qui donne forcément un punch aux phrases."26 He also uses English (see below). When he reads out his texts, this mixing is extremely well-done and sounds perfectly natural, and very dramatic as is the habit with Slam. He does not publish his texts apart from the videos. The lyrics have to be found on internet and for the title chosen here, it was published by Don Badr.27 Nevertheless, we will examine the way this person writes dārija.
Slam is by definition 'spoken word' and, unlike the previous texts, it is not meant to be read. I am including it as a form of elaborate text, composed by an author. Apart from Mustapha, young artists have emerged in 2014 or 2015, like Hamza El Mssati (whom we saw above) or girls, like Salma and Loubna, who post videos regularly.28 I chose to give long extracts of a text.29 It is the first of a series called 'Taire-bouche'30 (a word play with the Moroccan word terbuš "Fez, brimless cap", and the French 'Taire bouche' [lit. hush up-mouth])a collaboration with three other authors who are rappers, L'Morphine, Mehdi Black Wind and Magma (published in September 2014, counting over 251.000 views in February 2016). Mustapha speaks against injustices, corruption, the lack of social equality, the lack of trust in politicians, etc.; all these themes are also present in some rap texts (see Caubet 2010b). His motto, printed on T-shirts, is self-explanatory: kedbou 3lina … ‫ع‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ي‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ا‬ ‫ك‬ ‫ذ‬ ‫ب‬ ‫و‬ ‫ا‬ "they lied to us". This is an extract of Mustapha Slameur's piece; I must thank Mustapha for the help he gave me for the translation: 26 "I am a rime hunter. I help myself to Arabic, Darija, French, Spanish. The sound has priority and gives words a load in a special sense, and it inevitably adds some punch to the sentences." 27 The lyrics, as published by Don Badr, count 420 views: https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=4afbLTUIS2Q. 28 For Salma Slameuse, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPDn_JSNnTs; for Loubna La Slameuse, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK0_WSmJChU, where we get a glimpse of her note book, which shows that she writes Dārija by hand in Latin script; for Mssati, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whsj-lEX_jI, Slam f Dlam "Slam in the Dark", with the lyrics in Latin script. 29 For more extracts see Caubet forthcoming. 30 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1MzuCoUAQ4 and http://qgprod.com/2014/09/ mustapha-slameur-feat-lmorphine-magma-mehdi-black-wind-taire-bouche. The text has 545 words in Arabic script and 62 lines. ‫ن‬  ‫ي‬  ‫ت‬  ‫ع‬  ‫ل‬  ‫ا‬  ‫م‬  ‫م‬  ‫ا‬  ‫ك‬  ‫ا‬  ‫ي‬  ‫ف‬  ‫ي‬  ‫ك‬  ‫س‬  ‫ي‬  ‫ك‬  ‫ت‬  ‫ا‬  ‫ح‬  ‫د‬  ‫ب‬  ‫ع‬  ‫ي‬  ‫ن‬  ‫ي‬  ‫ه‬  ‫م‬  ‫ك‬  ‫ي‬  ‫ت‬  ‫ن‬  ‫خ‬  ‫م‬  ‫و‬  ‫ش‬  ‫ا‬  ‫ل‬  ‫ن‬  ‫ا‬  ‫س‬  ‫ف‬  ‫ا‬  ‫ل‬  ‫ز‬  ‫ن‬  ‫ا‬  ‫ق‬  ‫ي‬  .   ‫ك‬  ‫و‬  ‫ل‬  ‫ش‬  ‫ي‬  ‫م‬  ‫د‬  ‫ي‬  ‫ه‬  ‫ا‬  ‫ف‬  ‫س‬  ‫و‬  ‫ق‬  ‫ج‬  ‫و‬  ‫ا‬  ‫ه‬  ‫م‬  ‫ب‬  ‫ل‬  ‫ي‬  ‫ب‬  ‫م‬  ‫ح‬  ‫ا‬  ‫ب‬  ‫ق‬  ‫و‬  ‫و‬  ‫ل‬  ‫ي‬  ‫ه‬  ‫م‬  ‫س‬  ‫ا‬  ‫ق‬  That's what I need I wish for a world where people do not stare angrily at each other, where they do not spit aggressively at each other in the street, A world, where everyone minds his own business and cultivates his garden. In this country, our mothers don't have time to experience the "baby blues", All you do is give birth and throw him on the street and (for men) swell your balls by eating almonds. In this country they want you to steal and to sell chips at the corner Even if everyone talks about religion, the minds are filled with sins. In this country, the youth is lost in a virtual world, Living with "Sharapova's string", they don't care about the way she plays (tennis) Everyone, my friends, wants a sky "blue Ferrari" The "arrivist" (social climber) looks very nice, as usual, and the posters are well printed The "tie" suits him nicely, wow … from "bisara" ("broad-pea soup", the poor man's meal) to "Carbonara" He lives in a street where the pizza "delivery guy" does not set foot He set up a "tent" in Dar El Amane, near the yellow kiosk33 Because we are used to publish a "hashtag" when we set a knife in the watermelon He is a tough guy, but it is impossible to visit the Mellah34 at three in the morning. There are men, and there are "dogs for life" wearing a ring in their hands …

‫ت‬ ‫م‬
Although spoken word is meant to be performed orally, it goes through a phase where it is written down, either on paper or on a keyboard by its author before it is read aloud. Its poetic texts are considered elaborate and pertain to literature.

Remarks on the Spelling of dārija
The spelling of dārija differs from one author to the other, but they are many more points in common than there are differences. Mouad l7a9d, for example, has a much more phonetic approach than Harabish and Don Bader, who wrote down Mustapha Slameur's text.  (Caubet 1993 i:12).

The future particle
The future particle in dārija is ‫غ‬ ‫ا‬ ‫د‬ ‫ي‬ ġadi.35 It is often reduced to ġa, leading to the same question as for the preverb ka-(see below); ġa-can be spelled ‫غ‬ or ‫غ‬ ‫ا‬ . The most common spelling is the short form:

Variation
There is variation in some points of phonology or morphosyntax where there is hesitation, and often the same scriptor is inconsistent in his choices, but never to the point of incomprehension or ambiguity.

-The article
When the first consonant of the noun is "solar", it is assimilated to the "l" of the preceding article, and is perceived as a gemination. the article can be elided: ma-k(a)-ywṣel-li-h-š where the final "l" of verb wṣel is assimilated to the preposition "l-". and Mustapha Slameur's motto, which is even printed on T-shirts and gives an idea of his position, is: "they lied to us":

The relative lli
The relative lli/elli, is written in slightly different manners.
Both spellings are common in dārija.
The variation probably reflects a difference in style or in level of speech, Mouad's first texts being close to oral speech,36 whereas the others are more elaborate, even in their writing, with literary ambitions; but, they are all constructed texts. All three of them are used to posting fairly long texts on their 36 As we saw earlier he is presently working on more elaborate texts in view of publication.

A New Literacy or Just a Step Forward?
Whether it be in Slam or in elaborate prose texts, dārija is being used and accepted more widely and openly than ever in today's Morocco. The conservative government tried to impose an Arabization of tv programmes, launching a debate on the new Media "Book of technical Specifications" (Fr. "Cahier des charges"), among which the disappearance of French and the massive extension of the use of Arabic from 2012.38 The tv channels (mostly 2m) cunningly translated "Arabic" into the massive introduction of "Moroccan Arabic", and developed what they had already started doing from 2009: the dubbing of Turkish and South American series in dārija (see Miller 2012b andZiamari &Barontini 2013). They also used darija in magazines and programmes and in political debates.

Conclusion
As early as June 2014, the journalist Reda Zaireg (2014) wrote a paper in the weekly Telquel, called "Tendance: dārija, langue littéraire" (A new trend: dārija, a literary language. A prison Journal, poverty and exploitation chronicles, memories of a prostitute … texts written in dārija and posted on social networks are becoming a real literary phenomenon): For a few months, writing in dārija has had the wind in its sails. With the help of the social networks, it has bypassed the traditional publishers who are reluctant to welcome dārija, managing to reach its audience directly.
Slam is meant to be performed and heard, whereas blogs and posts are meant to be read on screens. Long texts have to present enough interest -whether through their content or their form (aesthetic, literary) -to foster a desire to read. This reading goes beyond the stage of basic communication and has to be dealt with as a novel passage to literacy.
If "reading is the motivated and fluent coordination of word recognition and comprehension,"39 how does one cope with rapid word recognition when there is variation in the spelling of lexemes and grammatical morphemes for a language -dārija -that has undergone an informal pragmatic d.i.y. languageplanning with no institution to standardize it? How does one acquire fluency when there hasn't been any school-type learning and when you had to teach yourself to read? In the Moroccan case, this can only be done through practice and experimentation. Gunvor Mejdell (personal communication) suggests the use of the sociological concept of 'conventionalisation' , through collective behaviour and repeated usage; youth read and copy from each other, so that separate actions have an impact on the community.
Together with its new visibility in the civil society, intense practice has lead dārija to being written more and more naturally and profusely on Internet, resulting in the first strands of literacy. People are gaining security, fluidity and fluency in their handling of written dārija. For the kind of elaborate texts that I have examined here,40 it would be interesting to confirm this hypothesis by the organisation of reading tests in order to study the speed of comprehension for completely unknown dārija long prose texts. Over the years, most connected Moroccans have reached a decisive stage where written expression and creation is at work and the exchanges have acquired a deeper dimension. The wave is moving fast with new authors trying out dārija; and among them, Ahlem B., who has been publishing short stories in French on her blog41 and on Facebook since 2012. On 28 February 2016, she published the translation of the first story of character Sam Lgaouri in dārija written in Arabic script.
Another kind of elaborate text has appeared under the form of what the authors call "educative" videos that use dārija for extremely technical and legal 39 See http://www.readingrockets.org/article/what-reading. 40 Also see Caubet forthcoming 2017. 41 "Ahlem B. vous raconte de folles histoires" on http://www.ahlemb.com.
explications on societal problems. A site like Aji Tfham (An educative Site)42 tackles a question -like the banning of VoIP communication:43 their video is a scientific demonstration in dārija, with fast and precise diction; drawings, words or expressions in Arabic script in dārija (msa or French when necessary for technical reasons), and long extracts of legal texts in msa can come to illustrate. In an eight minutes' video, the issue is dealt with and made clear to every citizen: a performance … in dārija! But is there, or should there be, an ambition to move into the publishing world? Can literacy on keyboards and screens be exported to printed paper and books? These texts are only published on the internet for the time being. Some authors dream of a printed version, a book, which would give a different social status to their writings; but is the world of publishing ready to cross the (language) barrier? And anyway, Internet offers a much wider audience than could ever be given to a book in Morocco.
Is this kind of practice the gateway in the process of promoting a standard variety, even when the language has no recognition? It is felt as a necessary passage by the authors in their wish to express themselves and share their feelings on screens; they produce long writings in dārija without thinking about their status or their potential role, but as a natural but decisive step in the promotion of their language, dārija.