After 45 Years in Italy, This Moroccan Man Still Speaks Italian in the Streets of Casablanca
Mohamed learned Italian through work. After 45 years in the country, this 75-year-old Moroccan sometimes speaks Italian even in the streets of Casablanca, although his grandchildren still correct his words. His daughter, journalist Karima Moual, recounts his journey as Rome prepares new measures on language at school.
“Dad, we’re in Casablanca and you’re speaking Italian!” The scene amuses Karima Moual. In La Stampa, she recounts how her father addressed someone in Italian in Morocco, out of habit.
Mohamed has lived in Italy for 45 years. He worked there, raised his children and watched his grandchildren be born. He follows the country’s politics and reads the newspapers, but retains an accent and turns of phrase that his seven-year-old grandson sometimes corrects.
His daughter arrived in Italy at the age of nine, in 1990. She remembers parents busy supporting their family. Mohamed had attended school through the end of primary school; his wife Khadija could then neither read nor write in Arabic. Neither of them took Italian classes. They learned the language from their colleagues, in shops and with their neighbors.
A Story at the Heart of the Debate on Italian Schools
The testimony comes as the Italian government prepares a decree on language proficiency at school. Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara has proposed limiting to 30% per class the proportion of students who do not know Italian sufficiently well. The plan also provides for mandatory language courses for certain parents of foreign students experiencing academic difficulties, reports ANSA.
Karima Moual challenges the idea that a parent who speaks imperfect Italian lacks the desire to integrate. Her father learned the words he needed wherever he spent his days: at work. She asks that the children of these families, for their part, be able to grow up and study in Italy without being judged through the difficulties faced by their parents.
