Introduction
- Sounds that don’t exist in English. It takes lots of listening and practicing to be able to produce these sounds and it’s not surprising if you’re not always understood. Don’t be discouraged. It will get better with practice.
- There isn’t any standard rule for how to write Moroccan Arabic in latin letters. In different books/courses the sounds are sometimes represented by numbers or symbols that aren’t very intuitive. We have chosen a system of transcription that we hope you’ll find easier to understand.
- The Moroccan Arabic dialect (Darija) isn’t a written language. Even in Arabic script, there is no standard way to write the words and each Moroccan would write them as they hear them, which results in variations, especially with the vowels.
Click on the links below to see detailed explanations and examples of words for each sound :
Vowels – with audio
Consonants – with audio
Comparison of similar sounds – with audio
The system used to transcribe sounds in this dictionary
| Transcription | Arabic Letter | Phonetic Symbol |
|---|---|---|
| a | َ / ة | /a/ |
| aa | ى/ﺍ | /aː/ |
| b | ب | /b/ |
| d | د | /d/ |
| D | ﺽ | /dˤ/ |
| e | – | /ə/ | ee | ي | /iː/ |
| f | ف | /f/ |
| g | گ | /g/ |
| gh | ﻍ | /ɣ/ |
| h | ﻩ | /h/ |
| H | ﺡ | /ħ/ |
| i | ِ | /i/ |
| j | ج | /ʒ/ |
| k | ك | /k/ |
| kh | ﺥ | /x/ |
| l | ل | /l/ |
| m | م | /m/ |
| n | ن | /n/ |
| o | ُ | /u/ |
| oo | و | /uː/ |
| p | پ | /p/ |
| q | ﻕ | /q/ |
| r | ﺭ | /r/ |
| s | س | /s/ |
| S | ﺹ | /sˤ/ |
| sh | ش | /ʃ/ |
| t | ت (or sometimes ة) | /t/ |
| T | ﻁ | /tˤ/ |
| v | ڥ | /v/ |
| w | و | /w/ |
| y | ي | /j/ |
| 3 | ﻉ | /ʕ/ |
| ‘ | ء | /ʔ/ |
