Moroccan language in the Netherlands

There are numerous immigrant communities within the Netherlands, with the most prominent from former Dutch colonies, such as Suriname and the Dutch Antilles, and either of Turkish or Moroccan descent. According from data of the CBS, the Dutch Central Bureau for Statistics, around 2,2% of the total Dutch population is of Moroccon descent and is either from the 1st or 2nd generation. The Dutch language has seen some influences from the Moroccan community already: this community is represented in e.g. the hiphop community, with Sofiane Boussaadia, better known as Boef, being perhaps the most prominent figure. Dutch researchers, such as Khalid Mourigh from Universiteit Leiden, have done research to the influence of Marokkaans in the Dutch language.

Within language science, this type of Dutch is called MFD, short for Moroccan Flavoured Dutch. MFD is Dutch with some Moroccan/Arabic influences, such as a very present ‘Z’ sound or using die instead of dit/dat, for instance when they say ‘die meisje’ (that girl) instead of ‘dat meisje’. Mourigh’s research was initially not intended to be for the mainstream Dutch public: in fact, this can be interpreted as a new contribution to Dutch language sciences and perhaps Dutch statistics regarding demography sciences. However, the fact that MFD is now considered to be a language science phenomenon definitely turned some heads in the mainstream media.

While MFD is not necessarily an IML, Immigrant Minority Language, it is influenced by immigrant minorities who have settled within the Netherlands and gave birth to children. You could perhaps argue more against the claim that MFD is not a language: there is no certain vocabulary or grammar rules, which officially rules it out as a language. However, it might be better for the sake of this topic to look at MFD as a means to communicate, therefore being a language for particular people, especially immigrant teens in the Netherlands. If you want to really get into the nitty gritty of this, you could perhaps argue more that MFD is a dialect of Dutch. Or as Nortien and Dorleijn state in their article in 2008, Dutch was born out of a necessity and MFD, together with other variants, as a way to stand out from standard Dutch.

Photo 1: Dutch Foreign Affairs minister Stef Blok visiting his Moroccan colleague.

The origins of MFD

Where did this desire to stand out come from? In order to answer that, it is definitely necessary to look at the history of the last 20 years. Since 9/11 in 2001, the attitude regarding Muslims changed and just like most Western countries at that time, anti-Muslim sentiments emerged from more or less underground discussions towards the national mainstream politics within the Netherlands. In this regard, Pim Fortuyn became one of the prominent faces of these sentiments as he openly admitted to be worried about the Muslim culture in the Netherlands. Eventually, he was murdered by a nature activist, Volkert van der Graaf, in 2002. Another prominent figure,  someone whose death perhaps was more valuable for the existing sentiments to grow stronger, was Theo van Gogh, Dutch filmmaker whose criticism towards the Muslim culture saw him getting loads of threats and eventually a brutal murder by someone who was from Moroccan descent. With these two men being killed and the emergence of Moroccan gangs over the past 20 years, Moroccans received a bad image by the Dutch media and this resulted in stereotyping the Moroccan way of speaking Dutch.
It might be possible to say that MFD’s origins is more like a protest movement rather than desiring a new language to be founded.

Is there an organization pushing this movement?

Although it has never been stated that there is an organization behind this movement, you could argue that this way of speaking is more or less pushed. For example, it is present in the lyrics of quite some rap artists in the Netherlands, which eventually  leads to younger people to imitate this way of speaking. Although this does not explicitly mean that this way of speaking is being pushed, it is known that young people look up to the people that, in their eyes, have made it in society. As a result, these youngsters are more inclined to adopt this way of speaking, because they could believe that it might bring them success and wealth. These incentives are especially important for some immigrants, since they might find themselves in situations where they desire to be a little wealthier and to be in a position with perhaps more opportunities.

Conclusion

Morrocan Flavoured Dutch is an interesting language influence within the Dutch language: it is seen as a protest movement rather than a new language or dialect, based on stereotypes surrounding Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands. By speaking in this way, the people that affiliate with this movement seems to likely want to kill of the stereotypes. Furthermore, by using MFD, immigrants from all directions could use this way of speaking as a way to set themselves off against the mainstream, ‘native’ Dutch people. Eventually, this might provoke a tougher us versus them narrative: MFD could lead to more segregation and that could possibly worsen their status within the Dutch society. However, it is not a movement with a political target, as there is not necessarily an organization behind this movement. Nevertheless is it interesting to see this dynamic within the Netherlands regarding immigrants and their position in society.

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