In arabic the way you denote “the” in sentences is by prefixing the al in front of the word. In arabic text this would using the letters ال in front of the word. For example if you wanted to say the book you would say al kitab (الكتاب). This was actually the first lesson taught to me when I started learning arabic. That was 10 years ago and it’s been a lesson I never forgot. Well just like in Arabic, Darija works the same way. It prefixes to the word. However, the difference is that the “a” is dropped. So, in our previous example al kitab becomes l kitab. All languages go through some sort of morphology of the language throughout time and Arabic/Darija is no different, however I found myself pondering why did it happen this way. After all, not all Arab countries morphed this way. I do have a theory about why “al” morphed into “l”.
The theory is told fold, the first is that removing the “a” makes speaking faster. In all languages, we find ways to make the language easier and faster to speak. I know, when I’m in Morocco and I try to speak, I can see some people just hoping I can finish my sentence because I speak so slowly. Imagine if I had to tell a story to a bunch of kids. They would be fast asleep before I finished the 3rd sentence.
This is the reason why so many Arab’s speak quickly. They would like to get their point across before the listener loses interest. This makes sense as morphology helps to communicate easily.
The other part of the theory is that removing the “a” gives the word a similar sound to the french word “le”. If you think about it you can see l kitab sounds very familiar to le kitab. It’s well known that the French influence is felt throughout the Darija speaking world. There have been french words that have been incorporated into Darija (fromage, Kamyo, telephone, etc…) so it makes sense (at least to me) that al would be changed to l to give it a french sound.
Whatever the reason, the word has changed from Arabic to Darija. There are other words that have gone through morphology as well. I’ll post some more transformations and their history/theories but if you do know of some of these words that morphed into Darija, I would love to hear about them. Please share with us in the comments.