Moroccan dialect

Question

How does Moroccan dialect differ from other Arabic dialects ?

Answer 1

There are a few ways. One of them is verb conjugation in the present tense. In standard Arabic and most dialects, first person singular verbs (the "I" form) begin with the prefix a-, and first person plural verbs (the "we" form) begin with the prefix n-. In Moroccan Arabic (and in all of North Africa other than Egypt), the first-person singular begins with n- (like the first person plural in other dialects!) and the first person plural has n- at the beginning and -u at the end. Also, in Morocco, but not in the rest of North Africa, present tense verbs have a prefix ka- before the person marker (in the cases mentioned above, it would be before the n-). So with both of those changes, the standard Arabic word for "I read," "aktub," becomes "kanktub" in Moroccan.

Another difference is in the syllable stress. In Moroccan Arabic, words are usually stressed on the second syllable from the beginning. In two-syllable words, this often results in the final syllable being accented. In most other Arabic dialects, stress is counted from the end, and is usually placed on the second or third syllable from the end. This leads to the same word often sounding quite different in Moroccan Arabic versus other dialects.

Finally, the vocabulary of Moroccan Arabic differs in many ways from that of eastern Arabic dialects. Many people think that this is because of the fact that Moroccan Arabic has borrowed many words from French. It has borrowed many words from French, but so has Levantine Arabic. And other dialects have also borrowed many words from foreign languages---for example, Egyptian Arabic contains many words from Greek and Italian. Rather, at least from what I've seen, the reason why Moroccan Arabic vocabulary differs so much from that of the other Arabic dialects is because it preserved different words from Classical Arabic. For example, in Levantine Arabic, the word for "bottle" is 2innine, which in standard Arabic means a bottle or vial. However, in Moroccan Arabic, the word used is qar3a, which in standard Arabic means a gourd. Sometimes Moroccan Arabic has even preserved a word from standard Arabic that was lost in the other dialects---for example, the standard Arabic word for "tomorrow" is ghadan. In Moroccan Arabic, the word is ghdda, whereas in Levantine and Egyptian, the word is the very different bukra.