So a word like ‘balad’ (بلد) for example which sounds very much the same in most dialects sounds a bit like ‘bled’ in Moroccan. This is because of the odd consonant clusters you get due to short vowels actually dropping out of words altogether.
The issue with Moroccan does get a little more tricky than this though in my opinion. They’re the same consonants but the vowel change makes it sound like a very different word to a learner of English. Since Egyptian is my forté, when I meet a Levantine or Iraqi speaker I’ll usually have to make a mental adjustment at first to prepare myself for the many words they’ll use which have slightly different vowel sounds but the same consonants.Ĭonsider the way British and American people say the word ‘banana’: When you hear this spoken in a sentence at normal speed surrounded by other words, it can be very hard to hear if you’re not used to that particular vowel change. It’s the same word though if you look at the consonants – the only difference is that it’s undergone vowel changes over time in different places. Like every dialect variation of Arabic, there are significant vowel shifts that make a very common Arabic word totally unrecognizable at first sound.Īs a simple example, take the word for ‘dog’ ( كلب).Īcross dialects, you’ll hear this pronounced ‘kalb’, ‘kelb’, ‘kilb’ or even ‘keleb’. Some of the letters (in particular the strange gutturals!) just didn’t sound familiar either. Here and there a French word would jump out at me too but none of this was enough for me to decipher what was being said. I could recognize a few words and expressions here and there but they were lost in a sea of gibberish that I couldn’t understand. It just sounded like a totally foreign language. When I first sat down to start listening carefully to Moroccan material I was disheartened. Moroccan pronunciation takes getting used to I’m definitely no expert on Moroccan but some of the observations I’ve made here may help you if you’re in a similar situation or considering which dialect to learn. In this post, I’ll share with you just a few observations I’ve made about Moroccan from the perspective of someone with over a decade learning other dialects ( Egyptian, Levantine and Iraqi). I’m personally undecided as to how I’d classify it. The easiest way to understand this argument is to compare it to Portuguese and Spanish which are very similar and yet two completely different languages. This is probably why it’s one of the least desirable dialects to learn since it’s the most geographically limiting variety of Arabic.īecause of this, many argue that it shouldn’t even be classified as a dialect. The common argument – Moroccan Arabic is like another language!Īsk anybody with even a rudimentary knowledge of Arabic about Moroccan and they’ll tell you it’s like a totally different language.Įven native Arabic speakers from the Middle East and Egypt can seriously struggle to understand a speaker from North West Africa. Note: While I usually recommend this resource and this for learning Arabic online, I’ve found that ArabicPod101 is the most comprehensive tool for Moroccan specifically. Since Moroccans can generally understand Egyptian Arabic because of the media, my main priority has simply been to make sure that I can understand them when they answer me. What’s important to me however are my listening comprehension skills – to understand what I hear. Honestly I have no desire to speak Moroccan Arabic.
Therefore I saw a real need to start spending some serious time focusing on Maghrebi Arabic ( Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian mainly) to get it up to a more competent level since a lot of the work I do these days requires me to speak with people from these places. Usually this would entail me speaking Egyptian and them replying to me in their dialect or a slightly ‘Egyptianized’ version of their dialect to make it easier. Spending a lot of time in the Gulf this past year especially, I’ve met a LOT of Moroccans and Tunisians living there for work and interacting with them has taught me heaps about the differences and various strategies for communicating. Regular readers of this blog know that my background for the last 12 or so years has been in Egyptian Arabic (and to a lesser extent Levantine and Iraqi).īut Moroccan has always been a challenge of mine. A while ago I mentioned my plan to drastically improve my Moroccan Arabic.