Mary Copeland

Category: Darija Vocabulary

  • Never have I ever

    During a recent Darija lesson, I learned the construction “ما عمّرني” meaning “I have never….” It uses the base word عمّر meaning to fill, with a suffix in agreement with the person (thus, for “I” (first person singular) the suffix is “ني”). Sentences are then constructed by adding the verb you have never done in…

  • Typical Greetings, as found in “Sarah entre France et Maroc”

    A major part of speaking any language is knowing the greeting rituals. If you’re just a tourist, just the usual السلام عليكم\و عليكم السلام should be more than sufficient, with perhaps the occasional لا باس (literally “no problems” — it’s used a bit like ça va? in French) thrown in by people excited to hear…

  • Colors

    Moroccan Arabic being “non-standard” and non-standardized has a certain amount of variation in its lexicon. Here you can find a table containing different translations for the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, black, and white from five different Darija books in their masculine, singular form, as well as the MSA (Modern Standard…

  • سلوى و الزبير “Am I pretty without makeup?” “انا زْوْينَة بْلَا المَكِيّاج؟”

    As I wrote yesterday, I really enjoy the series, Salwa w Zoubir (سلوى و الزبير), produced by 2M. Today, I have taken a short clip from the first episode, added English subtitles and written out the Arabic below. The English translation is not word-to-word. Give it a listen and see what you can understand! سلوى…