Moroccan Arabic ( ), also known as Darija ( or ), is the dialectal, vernacular form or forms of Arabic spoken in Morocco. 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 91.9% of the population of Morocco, with 80.6% of Moroccans considering it their native language.
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 metropolitan cities, such as Casablanca, Rabat, Meknes, Marrakesh, and Fez. Therefore, the metropolitan dialects dominate the media and eclipse most of the other regional accents.
Dialects
Moroccan Arabic was formed by two dialects of Arabic belonging to two genetically different groups: pre-Hilalian and Hilalian dialects.A. Bernard & P. Moussard, « Arabophones et Amazighophones au Maroc », Annales de Géographie, no.183 (1924), pp.267-282.
There is a growing consensus that modern Moroccan Arabic is undergoing a process of koineization. This koine emerged in the past fifty years due to urbanization, increased mobility and the influence of radio and television and is based of the Bedouin dialects of the Atlantic coast. This new dialect is the one that is socially dominant and is used in popular singing, in theatre and cinema, in radio and TV announcements and most notably in publicity marketing. In the literature, this dialect has been named Average Moroccan Arabic, General Moroccan Arabic and Mainstream Moroccan Arabic but Moroccans only refer to it as Darija.
Pre-Hilalian dialects
Pre-Hilalian dialects are a result of early Arabization phases of the Maghreb, from the 7th to the 12th centuries, concerning the main urban settlements, the harbors, the religious centres (zaouias) as well as the main trade routes. The dialects are generally classified in three types: (old) urban, "village" and "mountain" sedentary and Jewish dialects.D. Caubet, Questionnaire de dialectologie du Maghreb , in: EDNA vol.5 (2000-2001), pp.73-92 In Morocco, several pre-Hilalian dialects are spoken: Urban dialects: Old dialects of Fez, Rabat, Salé, Taza, Tétouan, Ouazzane, Chefchaouen, Tangier, Asilah, Larache, Ksar el-Kebir, Meknes, and Marrakesh.The dialects of Ouezzane, Chefchaouen, Asilah, Larache, Ksar el-Kebir and Tangiers are influenced by the neighbouring mountain dialects. The dialects of Marrakesh and Meknes are influenced by Bedouin dialects. The old urban dialect formerly spoken in Azemmour is extinct.S. Levy, Repères pour une histoire linguistique du Maroc, in: EDNA no.1 (1996), pp.127-137L. Messaoudi, Variations linguistiques: images urbaines et sociales, in: Cahiers de Sociolinguistique, no.6 (2001), pp.87-98 Jebli Arabic: Dialect of northwestern Morocco, spoken by the Jebala people.A. Zouggari & J. Vignet-Zunz, Jbala: Histoire et société, dans Sciences Humaines, (1991) () Ceuta Arabic: The dialect is described as being almost similar to the dialect spoken on the Atlantic coast up to the city of Larache and the one spoken in the Yebala region (Jebli Arabic). The Ceuta dialect is also described as being influenced by Spanish and even Classical Arabic. Sedentary ("village") dialects of Zerhoun 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. Judeo-Moroccan, nearly extinct, formerly spoken by Moroccan Jews.
Hilalian dialects Hilalian dialects (Bedouin dialects) were introduced following the migration of Arab nomadic tribes to Morocco in the 11th century, particularly the Banu Hilal, which the Hilalian dialects are named after.François Decret, Les invasions hilaliennes en Ifrîqiya
The Hilalian dialects spoken in Morocco belong to the Maqil subgroup,K. Versteegh, Dialects of Arabic: Maghreb Dialects , teachmideast.org a family that includes three main dialectal areas:
'Aroubi Arabic (Western Moroccan Arabic): spoken in the western plains of Morocco by Doukkala, Abda, Tadla, Chaouia, Gharb, and Zaër, and in the area north of Fez by Hyayna, Cheraga, Awlad Jama', etc. Eastern Moroccan Arabic: spoken in Oujda and Taourirt, the Oriental region.J. Grand'Henry, Les parlers arabes de la région du Mzāb, Brill, 1976, pp.4-5 New urban dialects: predominantly Hilalian urban dialects, resulting from the migration movements from the countryside to cities in 20th century. Hassaniya Arabic: spoken in southern Morocco, Western Sahara, northwestern Mali, and Mauritania.M. El Himer, Zones linguistiques du Maroc arabophone: contacts et effets à Salé , in: Between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, Studies on Contemporary Arabic, 7th AIDA Conference, 2006, held in Vienna Among the dialects, Hassaniya is often considered as distinct from Moroccan Arabic.
Phonology
Vowels +Monophthong phonemes of Moroccan ArabicShortLongFrontBackFrontBackCloseOpen
One of the most notable features of Moroccan Arabic is the collapse of short vowels. Initially, short and were merged into a phoneme (however, some speakers maintain a difference between and when adjacent to pharyngeal and ). This phoneme () was then deleted entirely in most positions; for the most part, it is maintained only in the position /...CəC#/ or /...CəCC#/ (where C represents any consonant and # indicates a word boundary), i.e. when appearing as the last vowel of a word. When is not deleted, it is pronounced as a very short vowel, tending towards in the vicinity of emphatic consonants, in the vicinity of pharyngeal and (for speakers who have merged /a/ and in this environment), and elsewhere. Original short usually merges with except in the vicinity of a labial or velar consonant. In positions where was deleted, /u/ was also deleted, and is maintained only as labialization of the adjacent labial or velar consonant; where is maintained, surfaces as . This deletion of short vowels can result in long strings of consonants (a feature shared with Amazigh and certainly derived from it). These clusters are never simplified; instead, consonants occurring between other consonants tend to syllabify, according to a sonorance hierarchy. Similarly, and unlike most other Arabic dialects, doubled consonants are never simplified to a single consonant, even when at the end of a word or preceding another consonant.
Some dialects are more conservative in their treatment of short vowels. For example, some dialects allow in more positions. Dialects of the Sahara, and eastern dialects near the border of Algeria, preserve a distinction between and and allow to appear at the beginning of a word, e.g. "shorter" (standard ), "go up!" (standard or ), "friends" (standard ).
Long , and are maintained as semi-long vowels, which are substituted for both short and long vowels in most borrowings from Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Long and also have many more allophones than in most other dialects; in particular, appear as in the vicinity of emphatic consonants and , , , , but elsewhere. (Most other Arabic dialects only have a similar variation for the phoneme .) In some dialects, such as that of Marrakesh, front-rounded and other allophones also exist. Allophones in vowels usually do not exist in loanwords.
Emphatic spreading (i.e. the extent to which emphatic consonants affect nearby vowels) occurs much less than in Egyptian Arabic. Emphasis spreads fairly rigorously towards the beginning of a word and into prefixes, but much less so towards the end of a word. Emphasis spreads consistently from a consonant to a directly following vowel, and less strongly when separated by an intervening consonant, but generally does not spread rightwards past a full vowel. For example, "eggs" ( and both affected), "sparks" (rightmost not affected), "stairs" ( usually not affected), "she hit him" (with variable but tending to be in between and ; no effect on ), "student" ( affected but not ). Contrast, for example, Egyptian Arabic, where emphasis tends to spread forward and backward to both ends of a word, even through several syllables.
Emphasis is audible mostly through its effects on neighboring vowels or syllabic consonants, and through the differing pronunciation of and . Actual pharyngealization of "emphatic" consonants is weak and may be absent entirely. In contrast with some dialects, vowels adjacent to emphatic consonants are pure; there is no diphthong-like transition between emphatic consonants and adjacent front vowels.
Consonants
+ Consonant phonemes of Moroccan ArabicCaubet (2007), p. 3 Labial Dental-Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal plain emphatic plain emphatic Nasal Plosive voiceless () voiced Fricative voiceless () voiced () Tap Trill Approximant Phonetic notes: Non-emphatic in normal circumstances, is pronounced with noticeable affrication, , almost like (still distinguished from a sequence of + ), and hence is easily distinguishable from emphatic which can be pronounced as . However, in some recent loanwords from European languages, a non-affricated, non-emphatic appears, distinguished from emphatic primarily by its lack of effect on adjacent vowels (see above; an alternative analysis is possible). /, , / 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 , , (which appear frequently in diminutives, for example). However, a few lexical items appear to have independent occurrences of these phonemes, e.g. "mother" (with attached possessive, e.g. "your mother"). and occur mostly in recent borrowings from European languages, and may be assimilated to or in some speakers. Unlike in most other Arabic dialects (but, again, similar to Amazigh), non-emphatic and emphatic are two entirely separate phonemes, almost never contrasting in related forms of a word. 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 , , , or . 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. Original splits lexically into and in many dialects (such as in Casablanca) but is preserved all the time in most big cities such as Rabat, Fez, Marrakesh, etc. and all of northern Morocco (Tangier, Tetouan, Chefchaouen, etc.); for all words, both alternatives exist. Original normally appears as , but as (sometimes ) if a sibilant, lateral or rhotic consonant appears later in the same stem: "he sat" (MSA ), "butcher" (MSA ), "go past" (MSA ) like in western Algerian dialects. Original is converted to if occurs elsewhere in the same stem, and is similarly converted to as a result of a following : "sun" vs. MSA , "two" vs. MSA "pair", "glass" vs. MSA , etc. This does not apply to recent borrowings from MSA (e.g. "disposition"), nor as a result of the negative suffix or . The gemination of the flap results in a trill .
Writing