Moroccan Arabic - Vocabulary

Vocabulary

Moroccan Arabic is grammatically simpler and has a less voluminous vocabulary than Classical Arabic. It has also integrated many Berber, French and Spanish words. Spanish words typically entered Moroccan Arabic earlier than French ones. Some words might have been brought by Moriscos who spoke Andalusi Arabic which was influenced by Spanish (Castilian), an example being the typical Andalusian dish Pastilla. Other influences have been the result of the Spanish protectorate in Spanish Morocco. French words came with the French protectorate (1912–1956). Recently, young Moroccans have started to use English words in their dialects.

There are noticeable lexical differences between Moroccan Arabic and most other dialects. Some words are essentially unique to Moroccan Arabic: e.g. daba "now". Many others, however, are characteristic of Maghrebi Arabic as a whole, including both innovations and unusual retentions of Classical vocabulary that has disappeared elsewhere such as hbeṭ' "go down" from Classical habaṭ. Others distinctives are shared with Algerian Arabic such as hḍeṛ "talk", from Classical hadhar "babble" and temma "there" from Classical thamma.

There are a number of Moroccan Arabic dictionaries in existence, including (in chronological order):

• A Dictionary of Moroccan Arabic: Moroccan-English, ed. Richard S. Harrell & Harvey Sobelman. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1963 (reprinted 2004.)
• Mu`jam al-fuṣḥā fil-`āmmiyyah al-maghribiyyah معجم الفصحى في العامية المغربية, Muhammad Hulwi, Rabat: al-Madaris 1988.
• Dictionnaire Colin d'arabe dialectal marocain (Rabat, éditions Al Manahil, ministère des Affaires Culturelles), by a Frenchman named Georges Séraphin Colin, who devoted nearly all his life to it from 1921 to 1977. The dictionary contains 60 000 entries and was published in 1993, after Colin's death.