This community is for people who are actively trying to learn Arabic, in its standard form and dialects. يهدف المنتدى إلى معاونة الدارس للغة العربية في تطوير مهاراته اللغوية سواء كانت بالعربية الفصحى أو العامية الدارجة
Maghrebi
Salam 3likom, mari mari y'all :) Hope everyone is doing well, I wanted to make a post about the kinds of resources I've been using to study Moroccan Darija. This is probably a good stop for folks who are interested in getting involved in scholarship programs like NSLI-Y, CLS, Boren, etc., or just to get started in the basics!
Why should I study Darija?
Mamnhach jouj! Darija is at the crossroads of the histories and cultures of Africa, Europe, and Asia and reflects this even in its modern form. Past studies in Spanish, French, Tamazight, and MSA will yield greatly to your understanding of Darija. For heritage speakers of Spanish, you'll find great familiarity in speaking Darija (especially with the use of "dyal" for posession).
Darija is essential if you plan to stay for longer than a week in Morocco (between Essaouira, Marrakech, Casablanca, Rabat, Fes, Tangier, etc.) -- it is an excellent way of learning more about Maghrebi culture from the people you'll be meeting. Darija will help you buy the right produce at the souq, make friendly conversation with taxi drivers and your local moul hanout, and meet new friends.
As an important note: not all Moroccans speak the same Darija, and not all Moroccans know Darija. You'll find that Rbati is different from Mrrakchi, which is way different from the Jebli spoken near Chefchaouen, which doesn't compare to the Hassaniyya spoken in the Sahara. Additionally, you'll hear different varieties of Tamazight across the country: Tarifit in the north, Central Atlas in the interior mountains, Tasusit/Tachelhit in southern Souss (just to name a few).
All of this is to say that Darija is a beautiful and complex way of getting to know the Maghreb, and I highly recommend it to supplement any language you know when travelling to Morocco - but it isn't all there is! That being said, please make use of some of the resources linked below:
SOME RESOURCES TO LEARN COLLOQUIAL MOROCCAN ARABIC
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Video-based resources:
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Painless Arabic (YouTube): helped me a TON to practice my accent, lots of content from linguistics experts and native/proficient speakers of Darija. Explains grammar, vocab, and has subtitles!
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@englishdarijalifestyle (YouTube): excellent channel which explains grammatical concepts, shows multilingual stories in Darija, and vlog-style content to help you understand Darija in context. They are active in this subreddit (u/Perseverance_100) and are very kind and helpful!
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Five Colleges' LangMedia: great videos of varying topics (which are conveniently sorted) recorded in various dialects of Darija. These videos have accompanying transcripts which you can download to study written/spoken Darija.
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Text-based resources:
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Peace Corps Moroccan Arabic Textbook (2011): ask any English speaker learning Darija - at some point, they've almost certainly used this book. The PCV textbook offers both Latin and Arabic writing of Darija so that you can get your essential phrases down. There's dialogue, vocab lists, grammar examples, and more which will all help you understand simple to more complex Darija.
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Speak Moroccan forum: this is useful if you have a specific question about a word in Darija that you can't translate, and there are years of questions and answers to look through that may help!
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Other than these, I recommend watching Darija-based cooking videos and vlogs to train your ear. Moroccan accents have a reputation for being "unintelligible", but I think that mindset ignores the rich influence of Tamazight on Darija. It's an incredibly interesting language and it can help you connect to and appreciate other African cultures which are all intertwined with Morocco's.
Remember: there's always more to learn, Darija is always changing and there's no singular "right" way to speak it, and that you cannot separate language from culture! Respect and grace is essential, especially when you are learning as a guest. All that said, best of luck in your learning y'all!
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Q&A
I'm Moroccan and a native speaker of darija and speak Al-lahja al-chamalia اللهجة الشمالية (northern dialect spoken in Tangier/Tetouan/Larache). Our dialect is different from the dialect of Casa Blanca because of Spanish, Andalusian influence and little french due its usage in companies, education and media.
The differences between Casa Blanca and tangier's dialect are lying down in vocabulary, tone and speed. We as chamaliyeen (people from chamal) speak in general slowly, little melodic and have unique characters compared to the dakhiliwa dialect! The dialect of casa Blanca can be received as harsh, "rude" and direct, while our dialect is received as romantic, indirect and polite. This doesn't mean that the other dialects are less romantic, but if you listen to Moroccan content creators or even on TV, you will notice the differences between us and them.
Here some examples of Lahjah chamalia compared to the one of Casa: | Tanger's dialect | Casa's dialect | Meaning | |-------------------------------|-------------------------|---------| | Kolshi_labas? Saha_Labas? | Ki dayr? cava? | How are you? how is your health? | | Kant7am9ini | Kat7amman9ni | You make me crazy | | Bghit nemshi nel so9! | Ana bghit nemshi nel supermarche | I want to go to the market | | Kont mashi fel chanti | Kont machi fel tri9 | I was walking on the road |
and there more examples than this of course!
When it comes to understanding, yeah that takes time friend. And where's a will there's a way. It's not true at all that people of ME don't understand us. That is BS, because I spoke to a lot of people from ME with my Moroccan dialect, and they understand to. Of course not 100% and some words needed explanation but I as a Moroccan I'm proud of my dialect and hate to rotate my mouth to please other people. Even some Moroccan will say to you that Darija has no value and that you can better learn al-fosha were no one Arab country speak it. If you're really want to learn something, you have to put effort and time on it, and visit Morocco and meet Moroccan people and expose you're self to it! I don't underestimate the value of alfosha, but learning darija is not a waste of time either!
Here some Youtube channels with Moroccan northern dialect:
https://www.youtube.com/@HassanMohsine
https://www.youtube.com/@MuslimProdOfficial/about
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us4KsgkmVLc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4cEQ6SiSP0
Allah y3anek khay/khti!
If you need something or want to something, you can send a pm ;)
Thanks for the info and for those links! I’ve been wanting to learn more Darija from northern Morocco, but it’s hard to find specific resources for it. This is super helpful! شكرًا بزاف
You're welcome bro. Merhba beek a khay :) It's true, because Lahya chamalia is less present than the Casawiya due media influence and even people from Chamal (north) when they met people from other places especially from Casa or Rbat they try to imitate them which I don't like and lower our beautiful dialect. The same mgharba do when they meet someone from ME, they flip their tongue because of "lack of understanding" or shame, which I never will understand and something I hate being Moroccan for lowering our own dialect and Moroccan culture in front of Al berrani (foreign people). Some people receive layhja chamalia as "soft, cute, romantic and polite" and others label it as "g*y, feminine or feshkel (weird)" but I'm very proud of my lahjah in Morocco and outside and I'm different from others and don't follow the herd like most people will do!!
But sometimes is funny too, because when some people like of chamali, they think of words like "ntina" (feminine you), al3ayla (girl), pardido (football match, borrowed from Spanish) or Tellaja (fridge).
So true. There's a dutch expression: "waar een wil is, is er een weg" Where's a will, there's a way. ما دام كاين اﻹرادة, فتما كاين الطريق. The problem is that Moroccan people are ashamed for their own dialect especially when the audience are from ME and that a lot of people find it difficult, is because if that open-minded arrogant and superior people who think of themselves better than other places, while Moroccans, Algerian, Tunisian are exposed for years to the ME media, culture etc... It's now time that we as Moroccans have proud of be our darija, esp the Arabic and Tamazight which makes our darija unique and now we have internet, AI an social media. But even then a lot of Moroccan content creators "flip their tongues". تعويج الفم مع اﻷسف
You can watch comedy youtube channels like: url
there’s also a youtube channel called ProviSound that has Moroccan movies and music, it helps me with listening skills for darija
thank you so much for these!!
These are some nice resources you've listed there. I would add the Moroccan Darija Dictionary App www.ferhana.de the great thing about it that it has audio recordings for all the Darija words. Also many example sentences and use cases for many words.
https://youtube.com/@learndarijawithkawtar4075
This sub has become to a nejis state from sll the dialect stuff
"مَنْ كَانَ يُؤْمِنُ بِاَللَّهِ وَالْيَوْمِ الْآخِرِ فَلْيَقُلْ خَيْرًا أَوْ لِيَصْمُتْ"
جخهخجخهخههه
ما افصح كلامك 😒
و ما أقبح السخرية..
I'm curious, how similar is Moroccan Darija to the dialects spoken in Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya?
There’s a great website that offers videos in Darija with subtitles and translations. You can click on the words in the subtitles, and it’ll give you the definition with some background info: https://playaling.com
Hi y'all, does anyone know which dialect is spoken in Agadir? :)