Here is a list of some Moroccan Arabic (Darija) guides and dictionaries that we have used and can recommend, together with a brief desciption and link to more information:
Books available on Amazon’s UK and USA sites
If you don’t have an account with amazon.co.uk or amazon.com but do have with another Amazon country site, you can still buy from these sites using your usual username and password but you’ll need to pay for postage from the UK or USA to your country (we have had books delivered to France from both sites).
Lonely Planet Moroccan Arabic Phasebook
We used an earlier version of this phrasebook during a first visit to Morocco many years ago. While it includes everything you would expect from a phrasebook, we found it difficult to make ourselves understood because we had received no lessons and there is no audio so hard to know how to pronounce the words. (We hope that our audio files that we are adding to the Talking Tagine site will help with that problem.) Very reasoably priced at only £5 / $8.
See description on amazon.co.uk
Moroccan Dialect Verbs, by Khalid Minejem
We used this book during our first year in Morocco, while studying Moroccan Arabic at a Language School. This book is excellent for beginners or intermediate students of the language who want to get their head around conjugating verbs in the past, present and future tenses. It includes clearly presented verb tables and verb lists, and uses the same basic transcription as the “Talking Tagine” website but doesn’t include any Arabic Script. Reasonably priced at £15.
See description on amazon.co.uk (Not currently available on amazon.com)
Moroccan Arabic: Shnoo the Hell is Going On H’naa?
A basic guide to Moroccan Arabic. We especially liked the helpful lists of vocabulary by topic. it uses the same basic transcription as the “Talking Tagine” website but doesn’t include any Arabic Script. Good for beginners or intermediate level students. Priced around £18 / $21.
See description on amazon.co.uk
A Dictionary of Moroccan Arabic by Richard S. Harrell
We have an earlier version of this dictionary. This is both an English-Moroccan Arabic and Moroccan-Arabic-English Dictionary. Extensive and complete, we would recommend it for more advanced students of the language. We found the transcription system a bit harder to get on with e.g. using “x” for the “kh” sound, etc. but you get used to it after a while. It doesn’t include any Arabic Script. One of the big advantages is being able to look up a Moroccan Arabic word you have heard to find the meaning in English. A bit more expensive at around £37 / $44.
See description on amazon.co.uk
Moroccan Arabic Verb Dictionary by El Haloui Abdnnebi & Steve Bowman
This isn’t just a dictionary of verbs because families of words are presented under their root verb which a good way to build up your vocabulary and better understand the language. We find this an excellent refernce especially beacause the words are written in Arabic script. There is no transcription into latin letters so you need to be able to read arabic script. While this is an extensive reference it isn’t a complete dictionary as you can’t search for all the nouns unless you can think of a verb that it might be connected to. A little expensive at around $48 but worth it if you prefer having the words in arabic script.
See description on amazon.com (Not currently available on amazon.co.uk but we had it shipped from the amazon.com site to France)
