Abstract
In Sudan, where the state promotes and enforces Arabic monolingualism, alternative forms of language and literacy are evidence of the problems with this policy. In this context a small piece of writing and how people engage with it tells us about how the national language policy is critiqued, but the order of iconicity is confirmed through the standardisation of " the Moro language ". The text below is taken from a page in a young Moro woman's school notebook in Abulella village in the Nuba Mountains. The first line in her notebook is written in Moro script, the second in English.