Hello everyone, welcome to the Lang Focus Channel and my name is Paul. Today's topic is Moroccan
Darija, Morocco's Arabic dialect or is it?
Moroccan Darija is normally considered to belong to the Meghrebi Arabic dialect group which includes not only Moroccan Arabic but also
Algerian, Tunisian and Hassaniyan Arabic.
Moroccan Darija is also known as the Arabic dialect which is the most difficult for speakers of other dialects to understand.
And the further you travel east away from Morocco the more difficult it becomes.
Some Arabic speakers say that hearing Moroccan Darija is like hearing a different language,
and some Moroccans insists that Darija is actually a different language because it's influenced by the Amazigh language
Still other Moroccans insist that Darija is indeed Arabic and is closely connected with Classical Arabic
In the 7th century CE, the Islamic conquest of the Maghreb region brought both Islam and the Arabic language to Morocco
But before that Morocco's population consisted mostly of Berber people
The term Berber actually refers to Amazigh people,
a North African ethnic group that speaks Amazigh languages.
When these Amazigh speakers learned Arabic, the language of the new rulers,
Their native Amazigh languages naturally influenced the way they spoke Arabic.
And this is the source of some of Darija's unique features.
The Iberian Peninsula also came under Muslim control.
This resulted in significant interaction between Morocco and Spanish and Portuguese speakers from the nearby peninsula.
In the 19th century, French economic interest in Morocco brought French influence to the country
and in 1912 Morocco was divided into French and Spanish Protectorates.
The Spanish Protectorate occupied a strip of the northern coast,
as well as a strip of land called Cape Juby next to the Spanish Sahara.
The French protectorate occupied all the land in between.
This colonial presence had an influence on Moroccan Darija,
in particular in the form of French and Spanish loanwords
These protectorates came to an end in 1956 when Morocco gained independence
Western Sahara remained a Spanish protectorate until
1975 when it was annexed by Morocco.
Upon independence
Morocco's official language became Arabic.
And in 2011, Amazigh was also made an official language
But French continues to be a prestige language alongside modern Standard Arabic until this day.
Many Moroccans are fluent in French,
especially in the major city and it's commonly used in business and in government and it's the main language of university instruction.
This has resulted in the continuous influence of French on Moroccan Darija,
in particular, academic vocabulary and words related to modern innovations.
And there's also an element of code switching of
impulsively including French words and expressions in Darija off-the-cuff.
Currently in Morocco about 65% of the population
Speaks Darija as a first language.
Around 30% speaks in Amazigh dialect as a first language.
But the vast majority of them speak Darija as a second language as well.
Modern Standard Arabic and French are learned at school
Modern Standard Arabic is limited to certain formal situations media and writing
whereas Darija is used for daily communication
rather than modern Standard Arabic.
Now, let's take a look at Moroccan. Darija
Moroccan Darija differs from modern Standard Arabic and from other Arabic dialects in a number of ways
Vocabulary
As I mentioned before, there are many French loanwords in Moroccan Darija
For example the word for table "Tabla", which comes from French "table",
or as in Standard Arabic. It's Taawila
"hospital"
"sbitar" from French "hôpital",
though I suspect it shares a double etymology with Spanish because of the "s" in the word.
In Spanish, it's "hospital".
In Standard Arabic, it's "mustashfaa"
"apartment"
"barTmah" from French "appartement",
In Standard Arabic, it's "shaqa"
To a lesser extent there is also Spanish vocabulary.
The word for "kitchen", "kuziina", from Spanish "cocina".
In Standard Arabic, it's "maTbakh"
"week", "simana" from Spanish "semana".
In Standard Arabic, it's "usbuu3"
Some words come from Amazigh.
The word meaning how much, "shHal"
"shHal fi 3omrak?" this means "how old are you".
In Standard Arabic, It's "kam".
The word for "tea", "atay". The Arabic word is "shay"
And some words are of Arabic origin, but have changed or are used differently.
The Moroccan word for "a lot" is "bzzaf".
This is the equivalent of "kathiir" in standard Arabic
It comes from Classical Arabic "bijuzaf", which means "a lot" or "without measure".
The Darija word for "who" is "shkun". This probably comes from the classical Arabic. I "Aya shay ykunn",
which means "anything is" or "whichever is", but its meaning has evolved to mean "who".
The Darija word for the number two is "juj", whereas in Standard Arabic, it's "ithnaan".
"Juj" comes from the Arabic word "zawj", meaning "pair" or "couple"
Pronunciation
One of the most important features of Moroccan Darija and the one that makes it the most difficult for speakers of other dialects to
understand is vowel reduction.
Short vowels are often reduced to a schwa sound or dropped entirely
resulting in new consonant clusters and sometimes in syllables that consists of only consonants
This is because of the influence of a Amazigh phonology on Darija.
For example, "balad" meaning "country" or "city" in Moroccan Darija. It's pronounced "bled".
Another example, "katab". This is the past tense verb stem of the verb meaning "to write".
But in Moroccan pronunciation, it's like this: "ktib".
"huna" means "here", but in Morocco it's "h'naa".
In all of these examples,
the Arabic word has stress on the first syllable
but in the Darija word, the stress moves to the final vowel
and the earlier vowel is reduced or dropped.
This tendency becomes a bit more important with multiple words.
"anta taktubu" This means "you write" but in Morocco, it's pronounced "nta ktktb"
"anta taktubu" - "nta ktktb"
Grammar
I would say that Moroccan Darija grammar is not radically different from other Arabic dialects,
which share a lot in common with each other and which differ from modern Standard Arabic in similar ways
But the influence of Amazigh grammar is indeed obvious in a number of different structures
One example is the lack of a dual form in Darija.
In Standard Arabic, there are singular, plural and dual forms. Dual being used when there are two of something.
In Standard Arabic, we have "kitaabaan",
but in Darija, it's "juj ktuba".
Another example is the passive form in Moroccan Darija.
In Standard Arabic, the passive is formed by changing the vowels of the verb.
"katab al-kitaab" means "he wrote the book" -> "kutiba al-kitaab"
In Moroccan Darija, you formed the passive by simply inserting "t" before an active verb.
"ktb Iktab" means "he wrote the book" and
"I ktab tktb" means the book was written
Another example is a pattern of forming abstract nouns from other nouns by prefixing "ta" and adding "t" as a suffix.
"kəddab" means "liar" and
"takəddabət" means "habitual lying".
This same pattern is found in Amazigh.
This particular word is not used in all local dialects, but there are lots of other similarly formed words often related to occupations
Also, the reflexive in Darija directly mirrors the Amazigh reflexive.
"Ayoub shaf rasu flmraya"
This means "Ayoub saw himself in the mirror"
The way "himself" is expressed literally means "his head".
In Standard Arabic, the sentence would be
"ra'a Ayoub nasfu fi l-mar'at".
In Standard Arabic, a different word "nafs" is used instead of "ras".
One extra thing to notice here is that the Standard Arabic sentence is VSO
The verb comes at the beginning.
But the Darija sentence is SVO with the subject before the verb
Now, let's look at a few Moroccan Darija sentences and break them down
This sentence means "I ride the bus to school every day".
"kanrakab ttobis lmdrasa kul nhar"
word for word is, "I ride the bus the school every day".
In Standard Arabic, it would be
"ana arkab al-Hafila ila al-madrasa kulu yawm."
First, notice that the Standard Arabic sentence has a subject pronoun,
while the Darija just sentence doesn't
Actually, it's optional in Standard Arabic as well.
So with that optional pronoun aside, notice that the first word of the sentence is different
The Moroccan word has a prefix "ka" to indicate present tense, while the Standard Arabic sentence does not
Also, the standard Arabic word has the first person singular prefix "a",
while the Moroccan word has "n". In Standard Arabic the prefix "n" would indicate first person plural.
You may have also noticed that the vowel patterns of these two words are different
Next, notice this word "tobis" which comes from the French word "autobus". The Standard Arabic word is "Hafila"
Both before "tobis" and before the next word "mdrasa" we see the definite article.
In Standard Arabic, it's "al" but in Darija it's reduced to "l".
In "mdrasa", notice that the vowel pattern and stress are different,
with the Darija word losing its first vowel or it becomes a very short schwa sound
Next, we see "kul nhar" and in Standard Arabic we see "kulu yawn"
"nhar" and "yawn" are both Standard Arabic words and both exist in Darija with slightly different pronunciation.
This is simply a matter of dialectal word choice.
You could also say "kul yuum" in Moroccan Darija.
Another sentence. This means "I don't have any cats, but I have nine fish."
"ma3andish shi mush, wa lakin 3andi tes3a dial hutat."
Word for word, it's "not I have negative any cat, but I have nine of fish
In Standard Arabic, it would be
"Laysa 3andi 'aya qaTaT, wa lakin 3andi tis3 'asmaak."
Your first impression might be that these two sentences are quite different
First the way of expressing the negative is different.
"3andi" is actually not a verb but a preposition meaning "with" plus the pronominal suffix "i" meaning me.
In Standard Arabic you make this sentence negative using "Laysa",
while in Moroccan Darija you make it negative by prefixing "ma" and suffixing "sh".
This is a double negative like in French. "No" plus "pas".
This is not exclusively Moroccan and a similar form is used generally in North African dialects and sometimes in Palestinian as well
"shi" means thing but is used with the negative to mean "any" or "anything".
The Standard Arabic equivalent is "'aya".
Next we see that the word for "cat" is different.
"mush" is the Darija word for "cat" and was borrowed from Amazigh.
The word for "9" is "tes3a", which is similar to the standard Arabic word
There's also another word for "9" which is often used in Morocco "ts3ud".
This depends on where you are in Morocco
Next in Darija, we see "dial" meaning "of" this is not present in Standard Arabic
Then we have the word "hutat" which is the Darija word for "fish".
In Standard Arabic and in most other dialects it would be "'asmaak" or something similar
Another sentence. "waash bghiti kas d l-ma?"
This means "do you want a glass of water?"
Word for word it's "question marker", "you want" "glass" "of" "the" "water".
In Standard Arabic it would be "hal turiid kas min al-ma'".
The first word here "waash" is used as a marker foryes-or-no questions.
In Standard Arabic "hal" or "a" are used .
The next word "bghiti" is actually the past tense form of a verb meaning "to like"
but in the past tense form like this it's similar to "would like".
In the present tense it means "like".
This form with the suffix "t" is the second person singular form for both masculine and feminine in
In Standard Arabic, there are separate forms for masculine singular and feminine singular.
But in Moroccan Darija, there is no difference.
In the Standard Arabic sentence,
We see a different word "turiid" which is in the regular present tense form.
This is the second person singular masculine and there's a different feminine form turiidiin(a) or turiidiin. next
Next, we see the phrase for glass of water
the main difference here lies in the prepositions.
Standard Arabic uses "min", which means "from" and
Darija uses "d" which I suspect comes from the French preposition "de".
And one more sentence. This sentence means "yesterday, we ate chicken, but today we'll eat beef"
"IbaraH klina djaj, wlakin lyum ghadi kanaklu lbgree."
Word for word, it's "yesterday"
"we ate", "chicken", "but", "today", future marker
"we eat", "beef". And in Standard Arabic,
"al-baraHa 'akalna al-dijaaj, wa lakin al-yawm sa-nakuul lahm al-baqar."
First, we see basically the same words meaning yesterday.
But Darija, the definite article is reduced and the final vowel is missing.
There's another word for yesterday in Standard Arabic, "al-'ams", which is perhaps more common,
but this one, "al-baraHa", is also Standard Arabic
Next we see that Standard Arabic and Darija have very different forms of the same verb.
Notice that the root letters "k", "l" are the same, but the Darija word is missing the first root letter "'aalif",
and the vowel patterns are very different yet
Both of these are the first-person plural past tense form of the verb "to eat".
Here we see "wa lakin" is the same except that the vowels are shortened in Darija
And here we have "lyum" which is "al- yawm" in Standard Arabic.
Remember that in a previous sentence we saw "nhar" instead of "lyum" both are possible even though "nhar" tends to be common.
Next we see the future tense.
In Standard Arabic, the future tense is formed by adding the prefix "sa" to the present tense form, or
alternatively another pre verb sawfa is used.
But in Moroccan Darija, you add the pre verb "ghadi" to the present tense form.
Notice again that the present tense form has the prefix "ka" and "naklu".
This is equivalent to "nakuul" in Standard Arabic.
But in Darija, the "uu" vowel here is shortened and we add a suffix "u"
to indicate that this is first-person plural not first-person singular, since both of them have the prefix "n".
In Darija, the first person singular resembles the first person plural in standard Arabic.
So this vowel suffix is added to indicate plural.
As you can see Moroccan Darija differs quite a lot from Standard Arabic.
But is it different enough to be considered a different language?
Well, that's debatable
all Arabic dialects differ from Standard Arabic in ways similar to those seen in this video.
The exact words and constructions aren't the same,
but the same types of differences are prominent in most dialects.
As Arabic expanded into new lands and was adopted by speakers of other languages
well over 1200 years ago, new Arabic speakers in each community
developed their own variety of Arabic that was influenced by their previous native language
So while Moroccan Arabic shows the influence of Amazigh languages,
Egyptian Arabic shows the influence of the Coptic language.
And the dialects of the Levant region show the influence of Aramaic etc.
From my point of view, the one thing that makes Moroccan Arabic
less intelligible for speakers of other dialects
is its phonology specifically its stress and the reduction of vowels.
But it seems to me that this problem can be overcome through
exposure and by the Moroccan speaker slowing down a little bit
For an English speaker maybe it's comparable to say rural Scottish English spoken very quickly
on first listen, it may sound to you like a different language.
But if they slow down for you
you might be able to understand it makes sense of all those different vowel sounds
And assuming both of us have been to school and are literate
We can adjust our speech a little bit to make it more like a book.
And speakers of Moroccan Darija can do the same thing by including some elements of Standard Arabic into their speech
or by using some elements of Syrian and Egyptian dialects.
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