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Moroccan Arabic

Moroccan Arabic (Arabic: العربية المغربية الدارجة, romanized: al-ʻArabiyyah al-Maghribiyyah ad-Dārija[3] lit. 'Moroccan vernacular Arabic'), also known as Darija (الدارجة or الداريجة[3]), is the dialectal, vernacular form or forms of Arabic spoken in Morocco.[4][5] It is part of the Maghrebi Arabic dialect continuum and as such is mutually intelligible to some extent with Algerian Arabic and to a lesser extent with Tunisian Arabic. It is spoken by 90.9% of the population of Morocco.[6] While Modern Standard Arabic is used to varying degrees in formal situations such as religious sermons, books, newspapers, government communications, news broadcasts and political talk shows, Moroccan Arabic is the predominant spoken language of the country and has a strong presence in Moroccan television entertainment, cinema and commercial advertising. Moroccan Arabic has many regional dialects and accents as well, with its mainstream dialect being the one used in Casablanca, Rabat, Tangier, Marrakesh and Fez, and therefore it dominates the media and eclipses most of the other regional accents.

Moroccan Arabic

[ddæɾiʒæ]

Morocco

Western Maghreb

Moroccans

L1: 29 million (2020)[1]
L2: 9.6 million (2020)[1]
Total: 39 million (2020)[1]

Arabic alphabet

ary

moro1292

SIL International classifies Moroccan Arabic, Hassaniya Arabic and Judeo-Moroccan Arabic as different varieties of Arabic.

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Vocabulary[edit]

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: Old dialects of Fes, Rabat, Salé, Taza, Tétouan, Wezzan, Chefchaouen, Tangier, Asilah, Larache, Ksar el-Kebir, Meknes and Marrakesh.[11][9][12]

Urban dialects

: Dialects of northwestern Morocco, spoken by the Jebala people.[9][13]

Jebli dialects

Sedentary ("village") dialects of and Sefrou and their neighboring tribes (Zerahna tribe for Zerhoun; Kechtala, Behalil and Yazgha tribes for Sefrou), remnants of pre-Hilalian dialects that were more widely spoken before the 12th century.

Zerhoun

nearly extinct, formerly spoken by Moroccan Jews.[14]

Judeo-Moroccan

Non-emphatic /t/ In normal circumstances, is pronounced with noticeable , almost like [t͡s] (still distinguished from a sequence of /t/ + /s/), and hence is easily distinguishable from emphatic /tˤ/ which can be pronounced as [t]. However, in some recent loanwords from European languages, a non-affricated, non-emphatic [t] appears, distinguished from emphatic /tˤ/ primarily by its lack of effect on adjacent vowels (see above; an alternative analysis is possible).

affrication

/mˤʷ, bˤʷ, fˤʷ/ are very distinct consonants that only occur geminated, and almost always come at the beginning of a word. They function completely differently from other emphatic consonants: They are pronounced with heavy pharyngealization, affect adjacent short/unstable vowels but not full vowels, and are pronounced with a noticeable diphthongal off-glide between one of these consonants and a following front vowel. Most of their occurrences can be analyzed as underlying sequences of /mw/, /fw/, /bw/ (which appear frequently in diminutives, for example). However, a few lexical items appear to have independent occurrences of these phonemes, e.g. /mˤmˤʷ-/ "mother" (with attached possessive, e.g. /mˤmˤʷək/ "your mother").

// and /v/ occur mostly in recent borrowings from European languages, and may be assimilated to /b/ or /f/ in some speakers.

p

Unlike in most other Arabic dialects (but, again, similar to Amazigh), non-emphatic /r/ and emphatic /rˤ/ are two entirely separate phonemes, almost never contrasting in related forms of a word.

/lˤ/ is rare in native words; in nearly all cases of native words with vowels indicating the presence of a nearby emphatic consonant, there is a nearby triggering /tˤ/, /dˤ/, /sˤ/, /zˤ/ or /rˤ/. Many recent European borrowings appear to require () or some other unusual emphatic consonant in order to account for the proper vowel allophones; but an alternative analysis is possible for these words where the vowel allophones are considered to be (marginal) phonemes on their own.

lˤ

Original /q/ splits lexically into /q/ and /ɡ/ in many dialects (such as in ) but /q/ is preserved all the time in most big cities such as Rabat, Fes, Marrakech, etc. and all of northern Morocco (Tangier, Tetouan, Chefchaouen, etc.); for all words, both alternatives exist.

Casablanca

Original /dʒ/ normally appears as /ʒ/, but as /ɡ/ (sometimes /d/) if a sibilant, lateral or rhotic consonnant appears later in the same stem: /ɡləs/ "he sat" (MSA /dʒalas/), /ɡzzar/ "butcher" (MSA /dʒazzaːr/), /duz/ "go past" (MSA /dʒuːz/) like in western dialects.

Algerian

Original /s/ is converted to /ʃ/ if /ʃ/ occurs elsewhere in the same stem, and /z/ is similarly converted to /ʒ/ as a result of a following /ʒ/: /ʃəmʃ/ "sun" vs. MSA /ʃams/, /ʒuʒ/ "two" vs. MSA /zawdʒ/ "pair", /ʒaʒ/ "glass" vs. MSA /zudʒaːdʒ/, etc. This does not apply to recent borrowings from MSA (e.g. /mzaʒ/ "disposition"), nor as a result of the negative suffix /ʃ/ or /ʃi/.

The gemination of the flap /ɾ/ results in a trill /r/.

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Substrates[edit]

Moroccan Arabic is characterized by a strong Berber, as well as Latin (African Romance), substratum.[25]


Following the Arab conquest, Berber languages remained widely spoken. During their Arabisation, some Berber tribes became bilingual for generations before abandoning their language for Arabic; however, they kept a substantial Berber stratum that increases from the east to the west of the Maghreb, making Moroccan Arabic dialects the ones most influenced by Berber.


More recently, the influx of Andalusi people and Spanish-speaking–Moriscos (between the 15th and the 17th centuries) influenced urban dialects with Spanish substrate (and loanwords).

Vocabulary and loanwords[edit]

The vocabulary of Moroccan Arabic is mostly Semitic and derived from Classical Arabic.[26] It also contains many Berber loanwords which represent 10% to 15% of its vocabulary,[27] supplemented by French and Spanish loanwords.


There are noticeable lexical differences between Moroccan Arabic and most other Arabic languages. Some words are essentially unique to Moroccan Arabic: daba "now". Many others, however, are characteristic of Maghrebi Arabic as a whole including both innovations and unusual retentions of Classical vocabulary that disappeared elsewhere, such as hbeṭ' "go down" from Classical habaṭ. Others are shared with Algerian Arabic such as hḍeṛ "talk", from Classical hadhar "babble", and temma "there", from Classical thamma.


There are a number of Moroccan Arabic dictionaries in existence:

Past: /kteb/ "he wrote" /ma-kteb-ʃi/ "he did not write"

Present: /ka-j-kteb/ "he writes" /ma-ka-j-kteb-ʃi/ "he does not write"

Varieties of Arabic

Dialect continuum

Maghrebi Arabic

Algerian Arabic

Tunisian Arabic

Libyan Arabic

Fessi dialect

Tetuani

Ernest T. Abdel Massih. Introduction to Moroccan Arabic. Washington: Univ. of Michigan, 1982.

Jordi Aguadé. ‘Notes on the Arabic Dialect of Casablanca’, in: AIDA, 5th Conference Proceedings. Universidad de Cadiz, 2003, pp. 301–8.

Jordi Aguadé. ‘’, in Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, vol. 3, Brill, 2007, pp. 287–97.

Morocco (dialectological survey)

Bichr Andjar & Abdennabi Benchehda. Moroccan Arabic Phrasebook, Lonely Planet, 1999.

Louis Brunot. Introduction à l'arabe marocain. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1950.

Dominique Caubet. L'arabe marocain. Publ. Peeters, 1993.

Dominique Caubet. ‘’, in Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, vol. 3, Brill, 2007, pp. 274–287

Moroccan Arabic

Olivier Durand. L'arabo del Marocco: elementi di dialetto standard e mediano. Rome: Università degli Studi La Sapienza, 2004.

Richard S. Harrel. A short reference grammar of Moroccan Arabic. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univ. Press, 1962.

Richard S. Harrel. A Dictionary of Moroccan Arabic. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univ. Press, 1966.

Jeffrey Heath. Ablaut and Ambiguity: Phonology of a Moroccan Arabic Dialect. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1987.

Angela Daiana Langone. ‘Khbar Bladna, une expérience journalistique en arabe dialectal marocain’, in Estudios de dialectologia norteafricana y andalusi, no. 7, 2003, pp. 143–151.

Angela Daiana Langone. ‘Jeux linguistiques et nouveau style dans la masrahiyya en-Neqsha, Le déclic, écrite en dialecte marocain par Tayyeb Saddiqi’, in Actes d'AIDA 6. Tunis, 2006, pp. 243–261.

Francisco Moscoso García. Esbozo gramatical del árabe marroquí. Cuenca: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2004.

Abderrahim Youssi. ‘La triglossie dans la typologie linguistique’, in La Linguistique, no. 19, 1983, pp. 71–83.

Abderrahim Youssi. Grammaire et lexique de l'arabe marocain moderne. Casablanca: Wallada, 1992.

Annamaria Ventura & Olivier Durand. Grammatica di arabo marocchino: Lingua dārija. Milan: Hoepli, 2022.

Friends of Morocco

Mazyan Bizaf Show

Moroccan Arabic Guide

Moroccan Arabic Swadesh List

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