Mouh has come down to al-Ksour from his douar (a cluster of houses composing a tiny village) in the High Atlas Mountains to live with his Uncle Khalid in order to attend the town school. At 8 years of age, he is legally a year too old to enter primary school, but his uncle, who works as a guard at the caid's (mayor's) office, knows someone who can adjust Mouh's birth certificate so that enrollment can take place. Mouh's uncle is married to an Arab woman whom he met while stationed as a soldier in the coastal plains near Rabat, the capital. While in the army, Uncle Khalid learned to speak Moroccan Arabic with “Arab soldiers.”

In Uncle Khalid's household, Moroccan Arabic is the dominant language. Due to harvesting and household chores in his mountain douar home, Mouh has arrived only the week before classes begin in October. He quickly realizes, to his surprise, that all the teachers will speak only in Arabic, using either Moroccan or Standard dialect, neither of which Mouh can speak. Most of his classmates seem to understand what is going on. They can understand the teacher s commands and even know something about the strange-looking writing the teacher is putting on an equally strange black sheet of wood attached to the front wall of the classroom.

Mouh is one of many thousands of monolingual Berber-speaking youngsters who have, before formal schooling, little or no mastery of the Arabic language. […]