Moroccan phrase – sh7al hadi

A lot of times there are phrases that have 2 meanings. The first being the actual meaning of the phrase and the second having nothing to do with the literal meaning. In English the first phrase that comes to mind is “Bob’s your uncle“. The first meaning is pretty self explanatory, the person named Bob …

Daylight Savings

This coming Sunday many of us will be changing our clocks back 1 hour for daylight savings. For many of us, including myself, it means getting another hour of sleep. Although I generally enjoy this extra time, there was a period last year where I didn’t enjoy it at all. Most of you who have …

Why I use Latin letters instead of Arabic?

No one has asked me this question but it is something I would like to explain. The Darija dialect is mostly evolved from Arabic although there are some French and Berber influences. As such the majority of the words spoken have some connection to Arabic. Because of this, you could make the argument that we …

Morphology Al becomes L

  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 …

Moroccan Proverbs

Darija is a language that uses a lot of phrases. In my journey I’ve found that just learning vocabulary and sentence structure isn’t enough. Learning the Moroccan proverbs are just as important. Without learning the phrases some sentences just wont make sense. For example the phrase ‘3la ras w l3yn’ means ‘my pleasure’ but if …

My experience so far with iTalki

So if you have been following my journey, I have been trying to focus more on listening. I seem to be ok with reading, I have learnt a lot of vocabulary, and I can make simple sentences. However my listening skills are very poor. I’ve been trying to watch some TV, listen to the moroccan …

3nd – what does it really mean?

Today’s topic started with me trying to find the definition of to have. The word I ended up finding to meet my needs was 3nd. This word worked perfectly as a straight translation for the verb to have, helping me to describe things that I possess. There is another word in darija that can be …