Personal Pronouns

Subject personal pronouns are usually omitted due to context but it is not rare to see pronouns whether for emphasis or where confusion between conjugations would arise.

Personal Pronouns	Transliteration	English
أنا	ana	I
نتا	nta / ntaya	You (m)
نتي	nti / ntiya	You (f)
هو	huwa	He
هي	hiya	She
حنا	7na	We
نتوما	ntuma	You
هوما	huma	They

The verb To be in the simple present can be formed by these pronouns.
For example:
Ana mirikani = I'm American;
hiya fermliya = She is a nurse ;
nti mriDa / nta mriD = You are sick

Feminine Form

Words’ genders are usually learnt by heart and mastered by practice.

On the whole, feminine words in darija generally end with an (a).
There are, nonetheless, words that don’t end with (a) but that are still feminine, like the body parts that come in pairs: 3yn عين (eye), wdn ودن (ear), id/yed إيد (hand), rjl رجل (leg/foot)…Countries' names are mostly feminine.

To form a feminine word from a masculine one –especially adjectives- you just add (a).

Word	Masculin	Feminine
Beautiful	zwin	zwina
Doctor	Tbib	Tbiba
Big	kbir	kbira
Small	Sghir	Sghira
Teacher	ostad	ostada

When the word ends with (i) in its masculine form, it becomes (ya) in the feminine one.

Word	Masculin	Feminine
Policeman Policewoman	boulisi	boulisiya
American	mirikani	mirikaniya
Chinese	shinwi	shinwiya
Nurse	fermli	fermliya

Definite Articles

In Moroccan Darija there are two ways to make a word definite, it all depends on the first letter of that word.
When the word starts with a "moon letter" we simply add "L" and when it begins with a "sun letter", this very letter is doubled.

What are "moon letters" and "sun letters"?

These names of the letters refer to the words sun and moon in Arabic.

Moon is (qamar قمر), the moon is (Lqamar لقمر).
Sun, it’s (shms شمس), and the sun is (sh-shms الشمس).

Sun Letters are :

sh ش - t ت - T ط - d د - D ض - r ر - z ز - s س - S ص - l ل - n ن - j ج

Moon Letters are

The rest of the alphabet

Notification: There are no indefinite articles in Darija, such as (a) and (an) in English. The word said independently is considered as indefinite.

Examples

Exercise

Give the definite form of the following words (Do the translation when it's required) :

1. nemra (number)


2. kouzina (kitchen)


3. 7ayawan (animal)


4. SbiTar (hospital)


5. firma (farm)


6. mdina (city)


7. bab (door)


8. jrDa or jriDa (garden)


9. tlfaza (TV)


10. Dar (house)


11. khrif (autumn)

PS: There are no indefinite articles in Darija, such as (a) and (an) in English. The word said independently is considered as indefinite.

Alphabet

Special Characters

Here is the list of letters which do not exist in latin alphabet and are used in Darija, with the adopted transliteration for each one of them:

Arabic	Transliteration	Example	Pronounciation
ح	7	7anut (shop)	It’s the aspired sound of (H); a voiceless fricative sound made deep in the throat
ع	3	3yn (eye)	It’s the sound produced when you pull the back of your tongue back into your throat a bit.
ق	q	qamar (moon)	It’s the hard throatish equivalent of (K)
خ	kh	khaf (to be afraid)	Like Spanish(J)
غ	gh	ghnna (to sing)	Hard version of (KH) being voiced, it's like the French (R).
س	s	salam (hello/peace)	s like in (sweet)
ص	S	Sba7 (morning)	S emphatic sound of "s" like in (sour)
ت	t	telefon(phone)	t like in (team)
ط	T	Tbla (table)	Emphatic sound of (T), like in (Tall)
د	d	dar (To do)	d like in (dream)
ض	D	Dar (house)	D emphatic sound of "d" like in (door)

General Indications

• The rest of Moroccan Arabic consonants are exactly the same as those in English.


• All consonants must be pronounced.


• In classical Arabic there are two types of vowels, short and long ones but in Moroccan darija there's not much difference between both of them in term of length.


• We often omit vowels in the beggining of words.


• It’s very frequent to have words without any vowels at all.


• When you see a doubled letter in a word, it should mean that there is more stress on it.


• We might use an apostrophe(') or a dash (-) to avoid confusion when a letter belonging to two different sounds is repeated twice.Ex : sh-hr (month) or we can type sh'hr.


• This "code" is not universal, other people might use different characters for some of letters the above.