My personal journey into the Darija language and culture
I was coming across the word “fayn” bzaf (alot) and the more I came across it, the more it confused me because the translations kept changing the meaning of fayn. Finally I decided to search for a dictionary. Finding a moroccan-english dictionary is extremely hard, there are not too many copies out there. I did …
Continue reading “The word Fayn – what does it really mean?”
There have been a few tweaks to remove the duplicate images. I will continues to try to customize the site so that it has a better look and feel. I am also thinking about creating a members area, that you will be able to access complete word lists, mp3 files of conversations and maybe a …
I wanted to go over some of my thoughts of the conjugation of verbs in Darija. If you have some knowledge of the Arabic grammar, then you will find some similarities between conjugation basics of Arabic and Darija. For the past tense, you will be conjugating by changing the end of the verb. For instance …
Continue reading “Conjugation basics (past and present tense)”
I mentioned in a previous post that I would most likely be writing another article mentioning more Darija common phrases. After browsing over 117 Darija common phrases I have encountered (so far), I think that I may need to post recurring Darija common phrases articles just to keep up. We will see how it goes. …
Personal pronouns are fundamental in any language. I can’t really see anyone speaking in any language without words like I, you, him, her, he, she, us, and me. In Darija to speak about yourself you would use the word liya. For example the sentence “werri liya t-tman 3fak”, translates to “show me the price please”. …
I find myself repeatedly trying to translate Darija to English word for word. I know that in previous posts I have mentioned that not all concepts will easily have that 1 to 1 simple translation but I find when I don’t know something, I always try to translate to English to simplify. to me. For …
In all languages, there are going to be sounds that differ from each other. Darija is no exception. Although Darija is mostly derived from Arabic there are some sounds that are derived from french and i’m sure some sounds may even come from berber(the language of the native people from morocco) although I am not …
In Darija I found negating sentences really simple. When I say simple, i’m speaking only about the concept of negation because let’s face it, this language is really difficult to learn. In Darija there are only 3 forms I have come across so far. If being asked a yes or no question you can answer …
Continue reading “Negation – flipping that sentence upside down”
I find the Darija dialect to have many Darija expressions and sayings. Alot of the time when hearing these phrases by a native speaker, it is spoken so fast, You hardly have time to digest what was said. I guess the trick is to just memorize the phrase so that when you hear it you …
I don’t know why but this Darija word ‘bgha’ really annoys me. Well I do know why it’s annoying but I have no idea why it annoys me. This word bgha has two meanings. When I say two meanings I don’t mean two meaning that are similar like synonyms. The word can mean to want …
