I woke up this morning struck with the,
finally lucid, realisation that attempting to learn Derja or Kabyle
for a Francophone zmigré over 18 is
pointless. In a country where you would be justified to think the
last thing needed is another French speaker, it turns out that
irrationality, economics, and the neighbourhood's geopolitics will
largely forgive you, if not encourage you, to simply come settle, and
remain, on the strength of that ability alone: speaking French.
When do we need to learn a language, or
rather, when does a language become necessary to learn? The earliest
evidence of language writing found so far shows it is
economics that motivated writing, not the dire need to record love
songs, although that came later. Economics is probably the
preponderant factor that decides and motivates learning a language,
and ultimately keeping up with it. Learning a language for the love
of it, like setting poems in clay or stone, comes after. But the
economics of panegyrics should not escape us.
Since everything in Algeria works
pretty much in the negation of how everything works elsewhere, plus
it slants, the question as regards language learning shouldn't be:
when does it become necessary to learn Derja, Kabyle, Tachaouit, or
Tamasheq. We should ask: are they necessary to function here
outside of a working world whose full attention is turned north, towards the
centre of the universe, Paris?
Many economic migrants like me, but
much more in tune with what the country will indulge, already worked
out that coming into Algeria via the gap colonisation has left open,
entering DZ reality via the French language is much more
profitable than slowing the machine, and time-warping into the
seemingly distorted world that Algerians' tongues unveil.
Tongues here are found at their most active in the streets and who
wants to spend much time there? Most of us are happy to sip coffee on
the streets but that's as far as most northern economic
immigrants are willing to go, even to snear at hittists.
No, the chnawa economic immigrant wants to have a blast here, who
could blame our race for that, and you don't have a blast in Algerian
streets, not even in a metaphor. The real world, the world of
pay cheques, even from beyond DZ borders, shows that it is
with French one has better prospects, the best posts are
those where the requirements for recruitment are to lack skills, carry a EU/USA passport and speak French.
So, what am I doing attempting to learn
economically unprofitable languages at such an advanced age where
brain activity responds much better to a bank balance stimuli than
sentimentally seeking knowledge?
There are as many secondary motivations
than there are human beings I guess. For an economic immigrant from the
#firstworld, coming to a place like Algeria initially means moving
over to a better financial situation. That's the motivation to come.
The motivation to stay is a fabulously better financial
situation, as in the fabulous of fables, the sort of opportunities
you'd never get elsewhere. After that comes the wishywashy motives:
reconnecting with one's heritage, chilling in oases like spas,
mulling over God's eccentricities sitting on dunes watching the sun
go down, or is it it the sun go up...
My secondary motives for learning Derja and Kabyle, rooted in the
whims of childhood and in teenageromantics, are slowly moving into
third place. My frustration, reflected in my interlocutors' eyes –
or is it their amusement at my frustration that shows – is too
strong. A certain sentimentality over “origins” which
led me to conceive that communicating in Derja or Kabyle is vital to
figure out where I live, and where I'll end up living, has subsided. To
be unfair: most (of us) are busy living the past in the present and
vice versing it. Past that, no one can predict the future in
Algeria, not even super mega pro specialists who have successfully
turned the issuing of sociopolitical prophecies into paid employment.
Chawafas everywhere.
In a year and a half, only two people
have voicefully ordered me (a kind of encouragement here) to hang
in there and not speak like the Tchichi: a Taxieur in Bab El Oued
and my gran. Two unlikely allies who've never met whose advice I
am about to bin. The door to
the seemingly distorted world isn't
the one marked language because the seemingly distorted
world has no doors.
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