Moroccan Arabic - Writing

Writing

Moroccan Arabic is rarely written (most books and magazines are in French or Modern Standard Arabic), and there is no universally standard written system. There is also a loosely standardized Latin system used for writing Moroccan Arabic in electronic media, such as texting and chat, often based on sound-letter correspondences from French ('ch' for English 'sh', 'ou' for English 'u', etc.). It is extremely rare to find Moroccan Arabic written in the Arabic script, which is reserved for Standard Arabic. However, most systems used for writing Moroccan Arabic in linguistic works largely agree among each other, and such a system is used here.

Long (aka "stable") vowels /a/, /i/, /u/ are written a, i, u. e represents /ə/ and o represents /ŭ/ (see section on phonology, above). ă is used for /ă/ in speakers who still have this phoneme in the vicinity of pharyngeal /ʕ/ and /ħ/. ă, ĭ, and o are also used for ultra-short vowels used by educated speakers for the short vowels of some recent borrowings from MSA.

Note that in practice, /ə/ is usually deleted when not the last vowel of a word, and hence some authors prefer a transcription without this vowel, e.g. ka-t-ktb-u "You're (pl) writing" instead of ka-t-ketb-u. Others (like Richard Harrell in his reference grammar of Moroccan Arabic) maintain the e; but it never occur in an open syllable (followed by a single consonant and a vowel). Instead the e is transposed with the preceding (sometimes geminated) consonant, which ends up following the e; this is known as inversion.

y represents /j/.

ḥ and ` represent pharyngeal /ħ/ and /ʕ/.

ġ and x represent velar /ɣ/ and /x/.

ṭ, ḍ, ṣ, ẓ, ṛ, ḷ represent emphatic /tˤ, dˤ, sˤ, zˤ, rˤ, lˤ/.

š, ž represent hushing /ʃ, ʒ/.