WEBVTT

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My name is Jamal I was born in Morocco,

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I came to the US to further my education

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I came here when I was about 24.

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To be honest when I first came here I was so scared

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because back then I didn’t know anything about the US.

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Anyway I came for educational purposes, I got married here, I met my wife here, started my career

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and now every summer I go to Morocco

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I have sisters that live in Austria

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They are married there and live there

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I am currently in a city called pensacola in florida,

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the beach is not that far.

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This town is small and beautiful and good for those who want to raise a family, those who don’t like crowded places and places with a tons of traffic

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A lot of people know about the existence Berbers, or Amazigh,We call, them Amazigh in our language. Berbers exist a lot in Morocco, we have Chelouh people, Rifi people,

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they also exist in Algeria, Tunisia and even Libya,

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you find them mostly in Morocco

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you find them mostly in Morocco

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Some of them only speak Berber.

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Many people when they hear about Morocco they think it is an Arab country,

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but those who speak Berber outnumber those who speak Arabic

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Morocco doesn’t really have Arabs but rather Berbers who became Arabized and forgot their identity , those who basically forgot their history after the coming of Islam

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Many of those Berbers, forgot the Berber language and started using Moroccan Derija

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but the number of Berbers is very large, the number of those who speak Tachelhit is estimated to be more than 10 millions in Morocco

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but they now have a big issue which the arabization of Morocco

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the government doesn’t do much for Berbers because it only encourages arabic but Berbers

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and their language is not very well taken care of

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When I have kids I will teach them Berber in order to speak it because it is who we are, it is our identity ,

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it is not only a language, it is our origins, our culture, our traditions

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It is who we are, If you don't speak Berber anymore, then you have nothing left

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Many people tell me that Berber sounds like German or polish or even Russian to them sometimes

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the RIFI Berber is a bit different from Tachelhit though