When Borders Overlap: Spanish and Moroccan in Melilla

by Camila Martinica

Camila Martinica is a senior in Global Studies at The University of Illinois. Camila’s future plans include applying to graduate school. She wrote this blog post in 418 ‘Language and Minorities in Europe’ in spring 2019.

Have you ever been walking down by a beach and noticed the different ways that people communicate with each other? How one group of people can be talking in “American” English while the others speak in “British” English? Or have you noticed how you pick up bits and pieces of a language that you thought you knew, for example Spanish, but in reality what you start hearing is a mixture of two languages and people are just switching from one language, or “code,” to another within the same sentence? This is a phenomenon known as code-switching and I think it makes you feel like you’re in a different world, right?

So, now let me ask you to imagine this:

You’re in North Africa, walking on the Southern coast of the Mediterranean.

You’re at the beach and overhear a Moroccan female in her early 20s say “hua man araf igual que venga o no” which would translate in English to “he, who knows, maybe he comes or he does not come.” This Moroccan female managed to switch from Moroccan Arabic (in bold) to Spanish and was perfectly able to convey her message with the person she was talking to. This is what a linguist named Isabel A. Knoerrich Aldabo observed in her time studying the intricacies of linguistics in Melilla.

At this point, you’re probably searching your mind thinking about whether or not you’ve heard about Melilla or if you could even place it on a map. So, where in the world is it?

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spain_CIA_map.png

If you zoom in on a world map to the Mediterranean Sea, you’ll notice that at one point on that map Spain and Morocco are very close to each other. Traveling between Tangier, Morocco to Tarifa, Spain is just a short 30-minute ferry ride and quick stamp of your passport away. If you take a closer look at Eastern Morocco, it has two small peninsulas. Those two peninsulas are Ceuta and Melilla. They are both autonomous cities of Spain, geographically within the borders of Morocco, Africa. 

In order to understand how this came to be, there’s a rich and complicated history between Spain and Morocco, as well as between their respective languages: Spanish and Arabic. One linguist, Bryan Kirschen from UCLA argues that the influence of Arabic on Spanish dates back to 711 until around 1492. He also informs us that this era is known as the Spanish Reconquista. Shortly after, in 1497, Melilla was conquered by the duke of Medina Sidonia under Isabel I of Castile. What followed was an ongoing fight against the Spanish by the Imazighen people (who, in my opinion, are incorrectly referred to as “Berbers”: https://intercontinentalcry.org/free-people-the-imazighen-of-north-africa/) and the rulers of Morocco to regain control of Melilla and reintroduce it to Morocco. In the late 19th century, Spain stirred trouble over the borders of Ceuta and Melilla, which is seen as one of the tensions that led to the Spanish-Moroccan War. From 1912 to 1956, Morocco was under a French and Spanish Protectorate that was established under the Treaty of Fez. In 1956, Morocco gained Independence. By this point, the enclaves had been integrated into the Spanish state and were considered “plazas de soberania.” In 1986, Spain joined the European Union and included Ceuta and Melilla. However, the European Union customs regulations are not the same for the enclaves than for the EU mainland (https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/calculation-customs-duties/rules-origin/general-aspects-preferential-origin/arrangements-list/ceuta-melilla_en).

As you now know, Melilla is a mélange of different cultures and histories. So, it is reasonable to conclude that language in this autonomous city is just as rich as its history. Melilla is essentially trilingual. The three languages spoken are Castilian, Tarifit and Moroccan Arabic. Tarifit is the Imazighen, or “Berber” language of the Rifian mountains in Morocco (https://www.britannica.com/place/Rif-mountains-Morocco). I think that Melilla is in a special realm when it comes to languages. For people living in Melilla “bilingualism and multilingualism does not mean that all the inhabitants of the enclaves speak two or three languages; it applies almost exclusively to the Moroccan community whose members are exposed to Castilian, which has prestige, since it is the official language of Ceuta and Melilla” (Aldabo, 2011).

So, when it comes to languages, Castilian Spanish is first as it is the official language. Then comes Tamazight, the Berber language, which is not recognized as a co-official language.

I think it’s very hard to wrap my head around how this truly looks on a day-to-day basis, so now imagine this:

You’re in North Africa, walking on the Southern coast of the Mediterranean in an autonomous city of Spain known as Melilla.

You walk into a café farther away from the coast and more towards the west of Melilla, where you start to see Imazighen and Arab influences. At this cafe you can get an authentic Tajine, a traditional Moroccan dish, and talk to a waiter who has Moroccan parents and identifies as Moroccan, but who is a Spanish citizen. The waiter speaks fluent Spanish to you in this formal setting and can tell you all about what it’s like to live under the “four freedoms” of the European Union single-market.

But, this waiter can also speak fluent Moroccan Arabic and when he turns around to place your order, he immediately switches from talking to you, a tourist, in Spanish to a mix between Tamazight and Spanish (think: “hua man arafigual que venga o no” as I mentioned before).

If we think about it, this scenario is extremely peculiar. The logical way it would’ve played out is that the waiter would’ve just kept talking in Spanish and this code-switch for his co-workers would not have been necessary. However, it is very likely that the change came naturally for the waiter. It is what they grew up around. Perhaps they didn’t know a specific word for something you asked for in Spanish but knew it in Tamazight.

On the other hand, this is not usually the case for Spaniards in Melilla. This is in part due to the fact that the Spanish population of Melilla mostly has little to no knowledge of Moroccan Arabic or Tarifit. I believe this is due to the fact that Moroccan Arabic is recently reaching standardization and for centuries has only been passed down orally. This is the intricacy of language in Melilla.

You won’t find many signs in Melilla recognizing the existence of Tamazight or Moroccan Arabic but their presence is strong. Today, the enclaves are in a constant battle of who “claims” them. Whether it is a Moroccan royal visiting Melilla to instigate trouble or Spain ignoring the insults from the Moroccan government of their Prime Minister visiting Ceuta, the tension between cultures is at its peak in Melilla, and I believe that is most evident in their use of languages.

References:

Aldabo, Isabel A.Knoerrich. “When Spain Meets Morocco: Discourses, Language Choices and Linguistic Policy in Ceuta and Melilla.” Dialectologia et Geolinguistica: Journal of the International Society for Dialectology and Geolinguistics, vol. 19, 2011, pp. 103–118. (www.library.illinois.edu/proxy/go.php?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2012901005&site=eds-live&scope=site)

Ceuta, Melilla profile. (2018, December 14). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14114627

Kirschen, B. (2014). The (Not-So) Distant Relation between Spanish and Arabic. Voices, 2(1). Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6w47k24s

When Borders Overlap: Spanish and Moroccan in Melilla

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Lilts, Brogues, and Llanfairpwll: The ‘Englishes’ of the British Isles

by Bryan Lu

Bryan Lu was a senior in Computer Science when he wrote this blog post in 418 ‘Language and Minorities in Europe’ in spring 2019.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

When someone asks you to talk with a British accent, what do you sound like? Chances are, you are trying to imitate the sound of BBC News broadcasters or 19th century Victorian era nobility. You might even throw in some cliché phrases like, “Jolly good show, old chap!” or “pip pip, cheerio!” While these phrases certainly are very stereotypically English, the British Isles contain much more diversity in accents and dialects of the English language than most people would realize. Just take a look at this list, for example. There are quite a few varieties within England itself, including one known as Received Pronunciation (or RP), which is the accent you were most likely trying to mimic earlier. Furthermore, there are the kinds of English spoken in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, all of which have their own quirks and regional variations. These three specific varieties of English are often forgotten or confused for each other, so this linguistic tour of the British Isles will try to give those minority varieties more of the spotlight.

Giant’s Causeway, Ireland. 

Source: Tony Bowden, Flickr Creative Commons

First up is Irish English, or Hiberno-English. There has been a long history of contact between the English and Irish languages in Ireland, as the first English-speaking settlers traveled to the island in the 12th century. So, it makes sense that Irish English is heavily influenced by features of Irish Gaelic. For example, one of the defining features of Irish English is the use of “t” or “d” sounds instead of “th.” In this way, “thin” becomes “tin,” and “breathe” becomes something like “breed.” This pronunciation came about because Irish has no equivalent to the English “th” sounds, causing Irish speakers to approximate them with “t” and “d.” However, it must be noted that most people from Northern Ireland do not use this pronunciation. Another feature borrowed from Irish is the large range in pitch in general speech. On the stressed syllables of words, the voice of some Irish English speakers becomes lower in pitch. This is the reason why Irish English is sometimes described as sing-songy or lyrical. This pattern of intonation is especially characteristic of people from County Cork in the south of Ireland (like Roy Keane, a former Manchester United midfielder). Other famous people who speak a kind of Irish English include actress Saoirse Ronan (more modern Dublin accent), Conor McGregor (older Dublin accent), and Liam Neeson (Northern Irish accent).

Robert Burns, Scots language poet
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Next, we move on to Scottish English. The English used in Scotland can be described as a continuum, with Broad/Lowland Scots on one end and Standard Scottish English (SSE) on the other (Scobbie, Gordeeva, & Matthews, 2006). The case of Scotland is particularly interesting, as there are two different languages that have affected the English spoken there: Scots and Scottish Gaelic. One aspect of this is the unique vocabulary that the languages have brought to Scotland. Words like wee ‘small’ and bairn ‘child’ and the suffixes -nae ‘-not’ and -ie (like in laddie) all come from the Scots language, which was also the original language of the poem/song Auld Lang Syne. While Scots words are mostly restricted to within Scotland, many loanwords from Scottish Gaelic are used in all types of English. These include words like clan, slogan, and of course, whisky. There are also a number of pronunciations that are characteristic of Scottish English. One is that there is no distinction between the vowel in “put” and the vowel in “boot.” Instead, it is pronounced a bit like the sound halfway between the vowels in “bit” and “boot” (this is known as a close central rounded vowel). Other features include the use of a glottal stop (the catch in your throat when you say uh-oh) in place of “t” in the middle and end of words and the guttural “ch,” as in Loch Ness. To make this sound, say the letter “k”, but instead of releasing the air quickly, exhale with your tongue in the same position (like in the letters “f” and “s”). If you want to hear some Scottish English, take a listen to James McAvoy in this video for an extremely over-the-top accent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4zupuXPjos. For more subdued versions, you could watch some videos of Andy Murray or Karen Gillan.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Finally, we travel to Wales, in the southwest part of Great Britain. This variety, in my opinion, is more similar to RP than Scottish or Irish English, but there still are noticeable differences. One feature that Welsh English takes specifically from the Welsh language is that unstressed vowels at the ends of words tend to sound more like the vowel in “bed.” Multisyllabic Welsh words do not have schwas (neutral vowels, as in “the” or “above”), so this has carried over to Welsh English. Furthermore, Welsh English has more contrast with vowel length than most other varieties of English. In this context, vowel length simply means the amount of time the vowel is spoken for. For example, the words “cat” (using a vowel like “ahh”) and “cart” sound the same, except that the vowel in “cart” takes a bit more time to say. The longer vowel length of Welsh English is especially prominent in words that end in a long “e” sound, like “happy” or “city.” In those words, the vowel of the final syllable is drawn out longer than in other accents. This video of the actor Luke Evans presents a good example of a Welsh accent (plus Welsh slang!), and some other people you could listen to are Catherine Zeta-Jones or Tom Jones (when he isn’t singing).

There are many, many other accents of the British Isles to explore, and there could be a lot more said about Irish, Scottish, and Welsh English varieties of English. From Scouse and Geordie in the north of England, to Cockney and Cornish in the south, and even subvarieties of Scottish and Irish English, there is an impressive amount of diversity in a relatively compact geographical area. If you would like to hear more examples of accents, this website has sound clips of accents arranged by location on an interactive map. Also, for a more general look at accents, Wired’s YouTube series Technique Critic has some interesting videos breaking down a number of accents used by actors in movies. Happy listening!

References

Scobbie, James M, Gordeeva, Olga B, Matthews, Benjamin. “Acquisition of Scottish English phonology: an overview.” QMU Speech Science Research Centre Working Papers, WP-7, 2006.

Hickey, Raymond. “The Phonology of Irish English.” Handbook of Varieties of English, Volume 1: Phonology, edited by Bernd Kortman, Mouton De Gruyter, 2004, pp. 68–97.

Núñez Busto, Maite. “Welsh English: A ‘Mystery’ for the Kingdom.” Universidad del País Vasco, Departamento De Filología Inglesa y Alemana, 2016, pp. 1–35.

Lilts, Brogues, and Llanfairpwll: The ‘Englishes’ of the British Isles

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