Maghrebi Arabic is a cover term for the
varieties of
Arabic spoken in the
Maghreb, including
Western Sahara,
Morocco,
Tunisia,
Algeria, and
Libya. Speakers of Maghrebi Arabic call their language
Derija or Darija, which means "dialect." It is primarily used as a spoken language; written communication is primarily done in
Modern Standard Arabic, along with news broadcasting. Derija is used for almost all spoken communication, as well as in TV dramas and on advertising boards in
Morocco and
Tunisia. Derija is characterized by many borrowings from the languages of the colonizers of North Africa, including France and Spain, as well as independent developments, some of which are most probably due to a
Berber substratum. Maghrebi dialects all use n- as the
first person singular prefix on
verbs, distinguishing them from Middle Eastern dialects and
Standard Arabic. They frequently borrow words from
French (in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia),
Spanish (in Morocco) and
Italian (in Libya and to a lesser extent Tunisia) and
conjugate them accourding to the rules of Arabic. Since it is rarely written, there is no standard and it is free to change quickly and to pick up new vocabulary from neighboring languages. This is somewhat similar to what happened to
Middle English after the
Norman conquest.
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