Hearing Darija

 From my recollections of the reading, Anne Rasmussen talked about the questions about how to display culturally the Qu'ran-- as an institutionalized form to be reverent of, or as a festivalized form to be put to music (even if not termed as such) in a distinctly Indonesian way. This question, of the validity of "Indonesianized" Islam, almost mirrors questions about language in Morocco, where I am going to next semester. Its linguistic situation is complicated, but I will attempt to summarize it briefly here. It has two official languages now: Modern Standard Arabic, and Tamazight, a standardized form of the indigenous languages of Morocco, which roughly one third of the population speak some form of. (The country's population is comprised of Arabs and the indigenous Amazigh people, who also have significant overlap). However, the majority spoken language is neither of these two languages, but the local dialect of Arabic, known as Darija. 

                                                                    Flag of Morocco

Darija is known in Arab culture as the least intelligible dialect, for many reasons. It both contains many loanwords from Tamazight and other Amazigh languages, and holdover vocabulary from French and Spanish colonial influence. But, most distinct of all, is its discarding of vowels. Tamazight is known for its consonant clusters and dropping of vowels (like Welsh, more well-known to English speakers), and Darija has picked up this habit. It frequently has discarded many of the vowels that standard Arabic vocabulary has, and switches others. As I am attempting to learn both Fusha and Darija, this makes it especially difficult, yet also shows the diversity in linguistic expression across the Arab world and provides speakers links to the indigenous Tamazight culture of Morocco, as well as provides Moroccan Arabs a diverse and rich cultural expression unique to that country.

Examples:  "Woman" in Fusha (The term for Standard Arabic) is "imra'a". Darija has dropped the first and last letter and the Darija form of the word is, simply, "mra".  "My name" in Fusha is "ismi", while in Darija it is "smiti"-- the vowels had been switched. More separately, "cat" in Fusha is "qita" or "hurayah", usually referring to cat versus kitten. In Darija, cat is "mch", which doesn't have any vowels at all. These all show the unique listening experience of Darija, which often sounds strange to those who cannot speak it. 

                                                                     An example of mch :)