Dar what does it really mean?

Today we will have a look at one of the most commonly used words in Darija. Whether you are in Morocco or you hear a conversation between Moroccans in your own country. Chances are you will here this word. The word I’m referring to is dar. For some of you who are starting your journey into learning Darija or Moroccan Arabic, you may be saying, “hey, I’ve never heard this word before or the word is not that common”. I suspect, if you’re a beginner or even an intermediate learner of Darija you probably heard this word but in a form that you didn’t recognize. For some of you that are learning, you may have heard the word but it being used for two completely different definitions. Don’t worry. I’m going to explain this a little later on. This article will go through the various forms of dar. By the end of this article, you should be able to recognize the various forms or dar, be able to conjugate, and be aware of the common phrases using dar. Here are the topics we will cover in this article.

• Defininition of dar
• dar vs Dar
• Verb conjugation
• Verbal nouns
• Common phrases

Let’s start by providing the definition of the Darija word dar.

Definition of dar

The definition is to do. That’s it. The word is basically the equivalent to the English word do. If we look at the definition of the word do we find the following:

verb (used with object), present singular 1st person do,2nd do or (Archaic) do·est or dost,3rd does or (Archaic) do·eth or doth,present plural do;past singular 1st person did,2nd did or (Archaic) didst,3rd did,past plural did;past participle done;present participle do·ing.

to perform (an act, duty, role, etc.):Do nothing until you hear the bell.

to execute (a piece or amount of work):to do a hauling job.

Definition taken from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/do

Looking at the long winded explanation I get to definitions. Perform and execute. These are two common actions that would need to be expressed in any language and Darija is not different. In addition to the English word do, dar can also mean to put or to make. Here is a quick table to see the definitions

Translations of the word dar

To Do

To Perform

To Execute

To Put

To Make

Seems straight forward, right? Well, remember at the beginning when I mentioned that some people may recognize this word but associate it with a different definition. The definition they are thinking about is: to turn. Using this definition, we can see the following translations.

Translation of Dar

To turn

To take a walk

To take a ride

To wander around

To roam

Technically these two are completely different words. Let’s explore this further.

dar vs Dar

I understand the confusion. Using Latin letters, it’s easy to get lost between the two different words. Sometimes when I listen to conversations, I can get confused as well. If you have read my article on Moroccan Arabic, you will be aware of the the letters. د and ض. Both of them sort sound similar but they are in fact two different letters. An example in English would be cat and Kat. One is an animal and the other is a short form of the name Katherine. The is the same concept with dar. For the remainder of the article I will use d and D to distinguish the words. Hopefully you understand the differences between the two words because we will now delve into conjugating the verbs for each word.

Verb conjugation

Let’s start with the conjugation to the past. Just remember, the verb for both words has a week letter so the conjugation will be slightly modified to handle the week letter. If you’re confused please refer to the Moroccan Arabic guide article.

Past

dar – to do

Pronoun	Conjugated verb
He	dar
she	dart
You (Masculine)	dirta
You (Feminine)	dirti
I	dirt
We	dirna
You (Plural)	dirtu
They	diru

Dar – to turn

Pronoun	Conjugated verb
He	Dar
she	Dart
You (Masculine)	Durta
You (Feminine)	Durti
I	Durt
We	Durna
You (Plural)	Durtu
They	Duru

Let’s now look at the present tense

Pronoun	Conjugated verb
He	ydir or kaydir
she	tdir or katdir
You (Masculine)	tdir or katdir
You (Feminine)	tdiri or katdiri
I	ndir or kandir
We	ndiru or kandiru
You (Plural)	tdiru or katdiru
They	ydiru or kaydiru

Pronoun	Conjugated verb
He	yDur or kayDur
she	tDur or katDur
You (Masculine)	tDur or katDur
You (Feminine)	tDuri or katDuri
I	nDur or kanDur
We	nDuru or kanDuru
You (Plural)	tDuru or katDuru
They	yDuru or kayDuru

For future tense follow the guide Moroccan Arabic the definitive guide.

Verbal nouns

When I was learning Arabic years ago, I came across a grammatical concept called the Masdar. When I asked what that meant I was told it is the gerund in English. I was even more confused than with the Arabic word. It wasn’t until later when I understood the concept that I figured out that it was actually the verbal noun. Here are the verbal nouns for both words:

Word	Masculine	Feminine	Plural
dar	diran dayr	dirana dayra	diranin dayrin
Dur	Duran	Durana	Duranin

In addition to the verbal nouns of dar, it also has another definition. It can also be defined as house or home

Common Phrases

Finally let’s go through some common phrases with these two words. One of the most fascinating things with Darija is that a preposition added to a word can change the meaning of it. We are going to find this with these two words.