A Moroccan accent in Dutch: A sociocultural style restricted to the Moroccan community?

Abstract

In the major cities in the Western part of The Netherlands, a general “ethnic” accent is developing, which has characteristics of Moroccan languages (Moroccan, Arabic, and Berber). This accent is mainly used by young people in specific in-group situations. It is slightly different from the accent used by adult first generation learners of Dutch as a second language with a Moroccan background. Not only young people from Moroccan descent, but also young people with other ethnic backgrounds (both native Dutch and others) use this accent which will be abbreviated to MFD (Moroccan flavored Dutch) in the remainder of this article. We will address the following questions:

• What are the characteristics of MFD?

• Why is MFD based on Moroccan languages, rather than on any other language?

• In what situations is MFD used? And how does the use of MFD interact with other group defining factors such as music, religion or clothing?

• How does MFD interact with larger dynamic social developments such as politics and with other languages and dialects?

Keywords

act of identity ethnic background Moroccan accent

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