ABSTRACT
Hassaniyya, a Mauritanian Arabic dialect, tends to become the main lingua franca, if not of the whole country, at least in the large urban centers such as Nouakchott, the capital, where all ethnolinguistic components of the Mauritanian population live side by side. The prevalence of Hassaniyya is due to several factors. The first factor is demographic. The native speakers of the language, the Bidhan (white Moors, Bidhani in the local singular form) and the Haratin (descendants of black slaves, Hartani in the local singular form), actually make up the majority of the population. In addition, the Bidhan hold most of the political and economic power. Another significant factor has been the government’s determination to implement an Arabization policy at all levels since the early years of independence. Such partisan policy however, viewed by black Africans, correctly or incorrectly, as an obvious assimilation policy, also hampered the greater expansion of Hassaniyya. In fact, it created a form of resistance among black Africans which implies that Hassaniyya, despite its many resources, could never become the only true and indisputable vernacular, or even lingua franca. TaineCheikh (1997: 74) describes it well when she writes:
rare are those among them [black Africans] who recognize Arabic as their own language and consider it a fundamental element of their cultural identity. In actual fact, the pragmatic acceptance of Arabic has improved following the repression of the Liberation Forces of Africans in Mauritania (F.L.A.M.) and the events of 1989.
