Arabic, Moroccan Spoken

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A language of Morocco

ISO 639-3
ary
Alternate Names
Colloquial Arabic, Maghrebi Arabic, Maghribi, Moroccan Arabic, Moroccan Colloquial Arabic, Moroccan Dareja, Moroccan Darija, Moroccan Dereja
Autonym
الدارجة‎ (Darija)
Population

24,800,000 in Morocco, all users. L1 users: 19,800,000 (2014 J. Leclerc). L2 users: 5,000,000. Total users in all countries: 28,421,200 (as L1: 23,301,200; as L2: 5,120,000).

Location

Widespread, south of Atlas Mountains, including Sahara port cities.

Language Maps
Language Status

3 (Wider communication). De facto national working language.

Classification
Afro-Asiatic, Semitic, Central, South, Arabic
Dialects

Rabat-Casablanca Arabic, Fez, Meknes, Tangier, Oujda, Jebli (Jbala, Jebelia), Southern Morocco Arabic, Marrakech. A member of macrolanguage Arabic [ara].

Typology

SVO; prepositions; genitives, adjectives, relatives after noun heads; articles and numerals before noun heads; question word initial; prefixes 3. suffixes 4; word order distinguishes subjects, objects, indirect objects, topic and comment; affixes do not indicate case of noun phrase; verb affixes mark person, number, gender of subject, object-obligatory; CCVCC; nontonal.

Language Use

Some also use Spanish [spa], in the north. Used as L2 by Central Atlas Tamazight [tzm], Ghomara [gho], Tachelhit [shi].

Language Development
Bible: 1963–1973.
Language Resources
OLAC resources in and about Arabic, Moroccan Spoken
Writing

Arabic script, Naskh variant [Arab].

Other Comments

Muslim.

Also spoken in:

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