Prepositions – the building blocks of sentences

As with other languages prepositions in Darija give information about nouns and pronouns with relation to the rest of the sentence. The following is a list of prepositions in Darija:

If you are familiar with arabic, you will notice a lot of similarities with some of these prepositions. There are a few observations that I would like to point out. The first is the prepositions “b” and “m3a”. They both have a meaning of with but the difference is that “b” has a meaning that is used with objects, like the sentence “nktub b stylo” – I am writing with a pen. “M3a” has a meaning which is used with people with the context of location. A good example of this is, “ana m3a Fatima” I am with Fatima. Here the with means that you and Fatima are together at some place. The preposition “b” also has a meaning of in like “f”. The difference between these two is “f” meaning means in like inside whereas “b” meaning would be used like the sentence “in the name of love”.  The last observation I saw was with the preposition “mn”. It looks straightforward to me until you try to translate the following sentences: “ana b3id mn lmadrasa” – I am far from the school and  “ana 9rib mn lmadrasa” – I am close to the school. Although we use the same word in both sentences, the translation to English produces two different words. It’s just one of those subtle things in Darija.