Moroccan Arabic
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Moroccan Arabic, also known as Darija, is the language spoken in the Arabic-speaking areas of Morocco, as opposed to the official communications of governmental and other public bodies which use Modern Standard Arabic, as is the case in most Arabic-speaking countries, while a mixture of French and Moroccan Arabic is used in Business. It is within the Maghreb Arabic dialect continuum.
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[edit] Overview
Native speakers typically consider Moroccan Arabic a dialect because it is not a literary language and because it lacks prestige compared to Standard Arabic (Fus'ha). Its vocabulary and pronunciation are somewhat different from Standard Arabic as it has been slightly influenced by Berber, French and Spanish. Its grammar is also simpler than Standard Arabic.
Nowadays, Moroccan Arabic continues to evolve by integrating new French or English words, notably in technical fields, or by replacing old French and Spanish ones with Standard Arabic words within some circles.
It is worth mentioning that Darija (which means dialect) can be divided into two groups:
- The pre-French protectorate: when Morocco was officially colonized by France in 1913, it had an accelerated French influence in aspects of everyday life. The pre-French Darija is one that is spoken by older and more conservative people. It is an Arabic dialect with some berber influences that can be found in texts and poems of Malhoun, and Andalusi music for example. Later, in the 1970's, traditionalist bands like Nass El Ghiwane and Jil Jilala followed this course, and only sang in "classical darija".
- The post-French protectorate: after the coming of the French, any word, whether a verb or a noun, could be thrown into a sentence. This was more a habit of the young educated generations of the cities.
A similar phenomenon can be observed in Algerian Arabic and Tunisian Arabic.
[edit] Relationship with other languages
Moroccan Arabic has a distinct pronunciation and is nearly unintelligible to other Arabic speakers, but is generally mutually intelligible with other Maghrebi Arabic dialects with which it forms a dialect continuum. It is grammatically simpler, and has a less voluminous vocabulary than Classical Arabic. It has also integrated many Berber, French and Spanish words. Other Moroccans speak Berber languages such as Tashelhit and Tarifit.
There is no clear cut division between Moroccan Arabic and Standard Arabic. Most Moroccans would more or less understand the Modern Standard Arabic. Depending on cultural background and degree of literacy, some will prefer to use Arabic words instead of their French or Spanich borrowed counterparts, while others often adopt code-switching between French and Moroccan Arabic. As everywhere in the world, how someone speaks, what words or language he uses is often an indicator of his social class.
[edit] Pronunciation
Moroccan Arabic has a distinct pronunciation and is nearly unintelligible to some Arabic speakers from the middle-east.
One of the most notable features of Moroccan Arabic is the collapse of short vowels. Short /a/ and /i/ are deleted entirely in most positions, and short /u/ is either deleted or maintained only as rounding on an adjacent labial consonant. This can result in long strings of consonants (a feature shared with Berber and almost certainly derived from it). These clusters are never simplified; instead, consonants occurring between other consonants tend to syllabify, according to a sonorance hierarchy.
Long /a/, /i/ and /u/ are maintained as semi-long vowels, which are substituted for both short and long vowels in borrowings from Modern Standard Arabic. Long /a/, /i/ and /u/ also have many more allophones than in most other dialects; in particular, /i/ and /u/ show up as /e/ and /o/ in the vicinity of emphatic consonants (emphatic spreading occurs much less than in dialects such as Egyptian Arabic, for example); in some dialects, such as that of Marrakesh, front-rounded and other allophones also exist.
Non-emphatic /t/ is pronounced with noticeable affrication, almost like /ts/ (although still distinguished from a sequence of /t/ + /s/), and hence is easily distinguishable from emphatic /T/. Unlike in most other Arabic dialects (but, again, similar to Berber), non-emphatic /r/ and emphatic /R/ are two entirely separate phonemes, almost never contrasting in related forms of a word. Original /q/ splits lexically into /q/ and /g/; for some words, both alternants exist.
[edit] Code switching
Many Moroccan Arabic speakers among the educated class also practise code-switching (moving from Moroccan Arabic to French and the other way around as can be seen in the movie Marock).
[edit] Vocabulary
Moroccan Arabic is grammatically simpler, and has a less voluminous vocabulary than Classical Arabic. It has also integrated many Berber, French and Spanish words. Spanish words typically entered Moroccan Arabic earlier than French ones. Some words might have been brought by Moriscos who spoke Andalusi Arabic which was influenced by Spanish (Castilian). Other influences have been the result of the Spanish protectorate in Spanish Morocco. French words came with the French protectorate (1912-1956).
There are noticeable lexical differences between Moroccan Arabic and most other dialects. Some words are essentially unique to Moroccan Arabic: e.g. daba "now". Many others, however, are characteristic of Maghreb Arabic as a whole, including both innovations and unusual retentions of Classical vocabulary that has disappeared elsewhere such as hbeT' "go down" from Classical habaT. Others distinctives are shared with Algerian Arabic such as hDeR "talk", from Classical hadhar "babble" and temma "there" from Classical thamma.
There are a number of Moroccan Arabic dictionaries in existence, including (in chronological order):
- A Dictionary of Moroccan Arabic: Moroccan-English, ed. Richard S. Harrell & Harvey Sobelman. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1963 (reprinted 2004.)
- Mu`jam al-fuṣḥâ fil-`âmmiyyah al-maghribiyyah معجم الفصحى في العامية المغربية, Muhammad Hulwi, Rabat: al-Madaris 1988.
- Dictionnaire Colin d'arabe dialectal marocain (Rabat, éditions Al Manahil, ministère des Affaires Culturelles), by a Frenchman named Georges Séraphin Colin, who devoted nearly all his life to it from 1921 to 1977. The dictionary contains 60 000 entries and was published in 1993, after Colin's death.
[edit] Some words borrowed from Berber
- Mouch or Mech : cat (orig. Amouch)
- Khizzou : carrots
- Meziane : good (orig. Ameziane)
- Yekh : onomatopoeia expressing disgust (orig. Ikhan)
- Yeh : yes
- Neggafa : wedding facilitator (orig. taneggaft)
- sifet : send
[edit] Some words borrowed from French
- forchita : fourchette (fork)
- tomobile : automobile (car)
- telfaza : television
- radio : radio
- bartma : appartement (apartment)
- tobis : autobus (bus)
[edit] Some words borrowed from Spanish
Some of those words might also have come through Andalusi Arabic brought by Moriscos when they were expelled from Spain following the Christian Reconquest.
- roueda : rueda (wheel)
- cuzina : cocina (kitchen)
- simana : semana (week)
- manta or malta : manta (cover)
- rial : real (five centimes; this term has also been borrowed into many other Arabic dialects)
- fundo : fondo (bottom of the sea or the swimming pool)
- carrossa : carrosse
[edit] Some useful sentences
| English: | Moroccan Arabic: |
|
How are you? |
la-bas? |
[edit] Grammar
The grammar of Moroccan Arabic is not always simpler than Classical Arabic grammar, but fortunately, as the language is never written, nobody is concerned about spelling.
The grammar, like the pronunciation, is heavily influenced by Berber.
The regular Moroccan verb conjugates with a series of prefixes and suffixes. The stem of the conjugated verb may change a bit depending on the conjugation. Example:
The stem of the Moroccan verb for "to write" is "kteb".
The present tense of this verb:
I write: Kanekteb
You (masculine) write: Katekteb
You (feminine) write: Katketbi
He/it writes: Kayekteb
She/it writes: Katekteb
We write: Kanketbu
You (pl) write: Katketbu
They write: Kayketbu
Note that the stem "kteb" turns into "ketb" before a vowel suffix. Between the prefix "kan, kat, kay" and the stem "kteb", an "e" vowel appears, but not between the prefix and the transformed stem "ketb"
In the North, you write is always katekteb, regardless of whom you are speaking to. Instead of the prefix "ka", some speakers prefer the use of "ta" (e.g.: tanekteb: I write). The co-existence of these two prefixes has historical reasons. In general "ka" is more used in the north and "ta" in the south.
The past tense of this verb:
I wrote: Ktebt
You wrote: Ktebti
He/it wrote: Kteb
She/it wrote: Ketbet
We wrote: Ktebna
You (pl) wrote: Ktebtuu
They wrote: Ketbuu
To form the future tense, just remove the "ka-" from the present and add "gha" or "ghad" or "ghadi" instead. For the subjunctive and infinitive, just remove the "ka-": bghit nékteb I want I write (I want to write), bghit tekteb I want you write (I want you to write).
[edit] Evolution
In general, Moroccan Arabic is one of the most innovative (in the technical sense of "least conservative") of all Arabic dialects. Nowadays Moroccan Arabic continues to integrate new French words, mainly technologic and modern words. However, in recent years constant exposure to revived classical forms on television and in print media and a certain desire among many Moroccans for a revitalization of their Arab and Islamic identities has inspired many Moroccans to integrate words from Standard Arabic, replacing their French or Spanish counterparts or even speaking in Modern Standard Arabic while keeping the Moroccan accent to sound less pedantic. This is a phenomenon mostly among literate people.
Though rarely written, Moroccan Arabic is currently undergoing an unexpected and pragmatic revival. It is now the preferred language in Moroccan chat rooms or for sending SMS, using Arabic Chat Alphabet composed of latin letters supplemented with the numbers 2, 3, 5, 7 and 9 for coding specific Arabic sounds as is the case with other Arabic speakers.
The language continues to evolve quickly as can be noted while consulting the Colin dictionary. Many words and idiomatic expressions integrated during its making from 1921 to 1977 are now obsolete.
[edit] Diglossia and social prestige
While being a natural localization of Classical Arabic for geographic and historical reasons, as French has evolved from Vulgar Latin, Moroccan Arabic is considered as a language of low prestige and suffers from the fact that Classical Arabic is the language of the Qur'an which serves as a reference. While being the mother tongue of nearly twenty million people in Morocco it is rarely written, this situation probably explains in part the high illiteracy rates in Morocco.
This situation is not specific to Morocco, but occurs in all Arabic speaking countries. The French Arabist William Marçais coined in 1930 the term diglossie (diglossia) to describe this situation, where two (often) closely-related languages co-exist, one of high prestige, which is generally used by the government and in formal texts, and one of low prestige, which is usually the spoken vernacular tongue. Oddly enough the situation in Morocco is also very similar to the one found in Brazilian Portuguese, although this can be explained by the similar historic and immigration patterns.
[edit] Artistic expression
There exists some poetry written in Moroccan Arabic like the Malhun. In the troubled and autocratic Morocco of the ’70s with no freedom of speech, The legendary Nass El Ghiwane band wrote beautiful and allusive lyrics in Moroccan Arabic which were very appealing to the youth even in other Maghreb countries.
Another interesting movement is the development of an original rap music scene which explores new and innovative usages of the language. Generally, Moroccan Arabic remains the preferred language of Moroccan singers.
[edit] Newspapers
There are now at least three Moroccan Arabic speaking newspapers, their aim is to bring information to people with a low level of education. Telquel Magazine, has now a Moroccan arabic edition Nichane.
[edit] See also
- Varieties of Arabic
- Dialect continuum
- Maghreb Arabic
- Algerian Arabic
- Tunisian Arabic
- The language of The Qur'an for the relationship between modern Arabic dialects and the Qur'an's Arabic
[edit] References
- Lonely Planet Moroccan Arabic Phrasebook ISBN 0-86442-586-4
[edit] External links
- Learning Moroccan Arabic
- Morocan Arabic/French Dictionnay
- A small online Moroccan Arabic/French Dictionnary
- History of le Colin Dictionnary (French)br:Arabeg Maroko
de:Marokkanisch-Arabisch es:Árabe marroquí fr:Marocain he:מרוקאית nl:Marokkaans-Arabisch wa:Arabe marokin
