I have come to realize that I really like synonyms. I think it’s the fact that I can use one word for many different usages, which means there is less vocabulary to learn. This is why I really enjoy writing these types of articles. With a small amount of vocabulary you can build many …
Category archives: My Journey
Apartment vs Hotel and why I choose Air BnB
When I was first started travelling, especially on my own I always expected to stay in hotels. My assumption was that hotels were just better. I never thought once of using Air BnB or “Bed and Breakfast”. For some reason when I heard the term “Bed and Breakfast” I thought of staying in some creepy …
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Masculine and Feminine
For those of you who have only learned and studied English the concept of Masculine and Feminine words is a completely foreign concept. Strangely enough, many of the languages in the world use Masculine and Feminine words. When I began studying arabic this concept was introduced to me. At first it seemed daunting but by …
Feelings and expressing yourself
One of the things I am struggling with these days is expressing myself in Darija. I can say simple things like I am happy, I am tired or I am sick but these are relatively simple and don’t really express how I am feeling with these feelings, ailments etc.. I will introduce a few techniques …
9eddem what does it really mean
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 …
Think like an Arab
Several years back when I was starting to learn Arabic, my teacher would often say, the key to success in learning the Arabic language is to think like an Arab. He said you had to see sentences as arabs see the sentences and not as you normally see sentences. Why was that? Well he further …
Sun and Moon letters
As I continue through my journey, I find that I know a lot more than I originally thought. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a lot of learning to do get to where I would like to be but it’s nice to see things that I already know. As I explained in a previous …
3ammer – what does it really mean?
Here we go again with another word with several meanings. These are important as the more meanings they can convey the better odds that you will hear this word in conversation. We will be looking at the word 3ammer. In Darija this is a very frequently used word in conversations so it’s important to know …
Update on progress July 2017
So it’s the end of July and I thought I should share my experience so far and give myself a self assessment of my progress. Well it’s been tough to say the least. I underestimated how much time I would be able to give myself after work, not to mention the fact that I get …
Immersion – sink or swim
When speaking with others about your goals people (sometimes who have no knowledge) seem to always want to give you their “expert” opinion. I was telling my friends about my goals of learning Darija. Instantly they started telling me that the only way to learn Darija is to live in Morocco for a year. The …