ing, absence of interest by the government in mother-tongue census and its focus on counting how many people speak French, and the difficulty or inability of census officers to distinguish between people who happen to master Moroccan Arabic as a second language and those who actually speak it as a mother tongue.
On the other hand, it is generally accepted that the numbers of Berber speakers in Morocco was, and possibly still is, on a sharp decline due to the anti-Berber government's policies in education and media the deprived Berber from development and flourishing in urban areas. These anti-Berber policies came to an end in 2011 after the February 20th popular protests that lead to, among many other things, the recognition of Berber as an official language of the country. Moreover, in the 20th century, mass migrations of Berber speakers occurred from the countryside to the cities where French and Arabic dominate and where Berber is not integrated in the economic and governmental institutions, forcing those migrants to learn another language and teach it to their children, who in turn would grow up in a city that doesn't speak Berber or doesn't encourage it.
Morocco's official languages are Arabic and the Berber. The country's distinctive group of Moroccan Arabic dialects is referred to as Darija. Approximately 89.84% of the whole population can communicate to some degree in Moroccan Arabic. The Berber language is spoken in three dialects (Tarifit, Tashelhit and Central Atlas Tamazight).
As it is in Algeria and Tunisia, the French language is widely used in governmental institutions, media, mid-size and large companies, international commerce with French speaking countries, and often in international diplomacy. French is taught as an obligatory language at all schools. It is the medium of education and the curriculum language of all science and economics programs at all universities except in the programs of Arabic language, law or theology. Al Akhawayn University is the only one that offers all programs in English.
Spanish is spoken by a very small population in the north of the country especially around the Spanish exclaves Melilla and Ceuta. While French language dominance in Morocco is a direct result of the French occupation, the Spanish occupation of large parts of Morocco for about half a century didn't result in any strong Spanish language presence. Spanish today is almost invisible in the mainstream media and in the educational system.
According to the 2004 census, 2.19 million Moroccans spoke a foreign language other than French.English, while far behind French in terms of number of speakers, is the first foreign language of choice, since French is obligatory, among educated youth and professionals. As a result of national education reforms entering into force in late 2002, English is taught in most public schools from the fourth grade on. French is still taught nationally from the earliest grades.
Below is the number of speakers of each Berber language, according to the 2004 census:
There are about 2 million Moroccan Berber-speakers living in Europe. They represent about 80% of all Moroccans in the Netherlands, about 70% of Moroccans in Belgium, about 50% of Moroccans in France, Germany, and Spain, and about 25% of all Moroccans in Italy.
Linguistically, Berber belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family, and has many accents and dialects. Berber is known by Arabic-speaking Moroccans as "Shelha", "Rifiya", or "Susiya". Classical Arabic of the Middle East had used the word "al-Barbariyya" (The equivalent of "Berber" in English) since the first contacts between Berbers and Arabs 14 centuries ago. Although, there is a dominating trend, that occurred in the first decade of the 21st century, among all Arabic-speaking media in both the Middle East and North Africa of using the word "al-Amazighiyya" to refer to the Berber language and "al-Amazigh" to refer to the Berbers, as the Arabic word "Barbari" means both "Berber" and "Barbaric"/"uncivilized". The strong campaigns and discourses of Berber cultural activists wh