Learning Tash, March 2010

The atmosphere at our training school is a mixture of things. We get comfort from being around fellow Americans and speaking in English outside of class. At the same time, stress levels are high as we are all adjusting to this starkly different lifestyle and trying to learn a completely foreign language. Everyone deals with stress in different ways, but I believe we’ve attained a pretty thorough understanding of one another and we generally mesh well. I must say having a couple languages under my belt and especially knowing French is definitely a huge help in learning Tashlhit. I can always use it in a pinch when at the kiosk or souk, and many words in Arabic and Tash are actually French. Tashlhit is not a written language; it’s an ancient dialect that has been spoken by isolated groups of Berbers across Morocco and into Algeria. Each group developed its own variation of the language, so it’s difficult to create a standard learning guide for it. Moroccan Peace Corps trainers have however managed to create a Tash language book which I consider extremely useful.