Sometime in the beginning of 2016 I was at the airport in Casablanca (Mohammad V) and was in line trying to transfer to another flight that would take me home to Canada. While in line one of the security guys took my passport and asked me: feen 9eddem mnin nta. In my mind I thought he was asking me where are you from. It sounded really close to min ayna anta, which is the arabic translation for where are you from. So I answered Canada. He asked me again and thinking he may of not heard me correctly I answered Canada. This time he got really angry at me and I asked me (very loudly in English), where are you coming from and I told him Marrakech. It was kind of embarrassing, after all there was like 30 people behind me looking at me. The funny part was the woman who was just after told the man point blank that she only speaks English. As I think about this incident that happened, the one word that I completely forgot to take into account is 9eddem. The word in arabic roughly translates to 9dm قدم. For me this word always meant foot but when translating the arabic word into english it also 3 other noun meanings and 20 verb definitions. Fortunately in Darija there isn’t over 20 different definitions but there are several which are listed below:
near |
beside |
ahead |
before |
in front of |
in the presence of |
the front |
(up) ahead |
When 9eddem is used with mn or mnin, it will convey the meaning of coming from, like the sentence feen 9eddem mnin nta – where are you coming from. There is one last meaning I found which is a movement in Moroccan Andalusian music. I have no idea what Andalusian music is but if you want to learn more about it you can click here
In summary 9eddem seems to have the meanings related to proximity, specifically towards the front of you.
Word list
bddl | to change |
khtar | to choose |
n99a | to clean |
sdd | to close |
msht | to comb |
ja | to come |
rkkz | to concentrate |
barak | to congratulate |
k7b | to cough |
7sb | to count |
bka | to cry |
n3l | to curse |
9t3 | to cut |
sht7 | to dance |
tjrr2 | to dare |
9rr | to decide |
nkr | to deny |
sta79 | to deserve |
mat | to die |
nww3 | to diversify |
shkk | to doubt |
rsm | to draw |