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 …
Tag archives: learning
Is it Jooj or Zhuuzh?
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 …
Negation – flipping that sentence upside down
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 …
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Common Phrases 1 – Darija expressions
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 …
bgha – the “two face” darija word
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 …
The use of shi
One word that I found very interesting was the word “shi”. As I am in the early stages of learning Darija I find myself trying to literally trying to translate every word to an English equivalent. The problem is that not every word translates to an English counterpart. Some words even multiple meanings. The word …
Possession – dyal
When it comes to expressing possession Darija uses an interesting method. Take this picture as an example. If we wanted to build a sentence using possession we could say something like: The book of the girl or The girl’s book. In Arabic we would say kitab al bint (كتاب البنت). Arabic uses the grammatical concept …
Can someone buy me a vowel?
As I delve into the vocabulary tonight I notice something quite different about Darija. They do not really like to use vowels. Now for those of you who do not know, vowels are what connect the letters together to form a word. In English, they are needed otherwise the word doesn’t make sense. It’s not …
How I plan to succeed with online resources
I figured I should explain how I plan to achieve fluency in Darija. Especially since the readers of this site are most likely looking to achieve similar results. The tough part of Darija is that there isn’t many resources out there and trying to learn in an English speaking country makes it even more difficult. …
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