Moroccan Arabic

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. It is within the Maghreb Arabic dialect group.

Overview

According to linguistics classification, Moroccan Arabic is considered a dialect because it is not a literary language and because it lacks prestige among its speakers compared to Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. Its vocabulary and pronounciation are substantially different from Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic as it has been influenced by Berber, French and Spanish. Its grammar is also simpler than Classical or Modern Standard Arabic.

Nowadays, Moroccan Arabic continues to evolve by integrating new French words notably in technical fields or by replacing French and Spanish ones with Modern Standard Arabic words within some circles.

Integration 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 dialects which compose the Maghreb Arabic, together they form 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 Modern Standard Arabic, most Moroccans would more or less understand the Modern Standard Arabic spoken on Satellite TV channels like Al Jazeera. 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 they use is often a very good indicator of their Social class and even religious opinion in Morocco.

Pronunciation

Moroccan Arabic has a distinct pronunciation and is nearly unintelligible to other Arabic speakers apart, to a certain degree, from those from other Maghreb countries

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.

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 borrowed words are probably older in Moroccan Arabic than the French ones, some words might have been brought by Moriscos who spoke Andalusi Arabic which has been influenced by Spanish (Castilian), others might have been brought in because of commercial contacts with Spain. French words came with the French Protectorate (1912,1956).

There are noticeable lexical differences between Moroccan Arabic and most other dialects. Some are innovations (/ʒuʒ/ "two", from Classical zawj "pair"); others are unusual retentions of Classical vocabulary that has disappeared elsewhere (hDeR "talk", from Classical hadhar "babble"; temma "there" from Classical thamma; hbeT' "go down" from Classical habaT).

The only Moroccan Arabic dictionnary Dictionnaire Colin d'arabe dialectal marocain, (Rabat, éditions Al Manahil, ministère des Affaires Culturelles), was written by a Frenchman named Georges Séraphin Colin, and to which he devoted nearly all his life from 1921 to 1977. The dictionnary contains 60 000 entries and was published in 1993, after Colin's death.

Some words borrowed from Berber

Mouch : cat (orig. Amouch)
Khizzou : carrots
Meziane : good (orig. Ameziane)
Yekh : onomatopoeia expressing disgust (orig. Ikhan)
Goumri : horse (orig. Agmar)
Tcher : zone
Iyeh : yes

Some words borrowed from French

tomobile : automobile (car)
telfaza : television
radio : radio
bartma : appartement (apartment)
tobis : autobus (bus)
forchita : fourchette (fork)
carrossa : caroussel

Some words borrowed from Spanish

coche : coche (car)
roueda : rueda (wheel)
cuzina : cocina (kitchen)
simana : semana (week)
manta or malta : manta (cover)
rial : real sp? (five centimes, but that might be the other way around and could be traced to traced back to the Moorish occupation, as the term is also used in Saudi Arabia and Iran).
fundo : fondo (bottom of the sea or the swimming pool)

Grammar

The grammar of Moroccan Arabic is much simpler than the Arabic grammar, since it is not concerned with the accuracy of verbe tenses and correct spelling of names, adjectives and adverbs. It is also heavily influenced by the Berber grammar, and in fact, even though many parallels can be drawn with classical Arabic, the majority of the expressions used in everyday life in Morocco are direct translations from Berber.

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 in Technology, 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.

While rarely written Moroccan Arabic is currently undergoing an unexpected and pragmatic revival, it's now the prefered language in Moroccan chat rooms or for sending SMS, using a modified latin script 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 dialects 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 absolete.

Diglossia and social prestige

While being a natural localisation of Classical Arabic due to geographic and historical reasons, as French evolved from Vulgar Latin, Moroccan Arabic is considered as a language of low prestige and suffers from the fact that Arabic is the language of the Quran which serves as a reference. While being the mother tongue of nearly twenty million people in Morocco it is rarely written, and 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, were two (often) closely-related languages, 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.

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. Generraly, Moroccan Arabic remains the prefered language of Moroccan singers.

References

Lonely Planet Moroccan Arabic Phrasebook ISBN 0864425864

External links