Maghrebi
| Maghrebi Arabic | |
|---|---|
| Darija | |
| Region | Maghreb |
|
Afro-Asiatic
|
|
| Arabic alphabet, Latin alphabet | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | nort3191 |
Maghrebi Arabic (Western Arabic), or Maghrebi Darija, is an Arabic dialect spoken in the Maghreb region, in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. It includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Tunisian Arabic and Libyan Arabic. The variety is sometimes referred to as Western Arabic, as opposed to Eastern Arabic (Mashriqi Arabic). Speakers of Maghrebi Arabic call their language Derja, Derija or Darija (Arabic: الدارجة; meaning "to rise or advance step by step"), which alludes to colloquial spoken Arabic rather than Modern Standard Arabic.
Modern Standard Arabic (الفصحى (al-)fushā) is the primary language used in the government, legislation and judiciary of countries in the Maghreb. Maghrebi Arabic is mainly a spoken and vernacular language, although it occasionally appears in entertainment and advertising in urban areas of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. In Algeria, where Maghrebi Arabic was taught as a separate subject under French colonization, some textbooks in the language exist but they are no longer officially endorsed by the Algerian authorities. Maghrebi Arabic contains a Berber substratum, which represents the languages originally spoken by the native populations of the Maghreb prior to their adoption of Arabic. Maghrebi Arabic may also possess a Punic substrate.
The varieties of Maghrebi Arabic Darija have a significant degree of mutual intelligibility, especially between geographically adjacent ones (such as local dialects spoken in Eastern Morocco and Western Algeria or Eastern Algeria and North Tunisia or South Tunisia and Western Libya), but hardly between Moroccan and Tunisian Darija. Conversely, Moroccan Darija and particularly Algerian Derja cannot be understood by Eastern Arabic speakers (from Egypt, Sudan, Levant, Iraq, and Arabian peninsula) in general as they derive from different substratums and a mixture of many languages (Berber, Old Arabic, Turkish, French, Spanish, Italian, and Niger-Congo languages). Some linguists like Charles A. Ferguson, William Marçais and Abdou Elimam, tend to consider Maghrebi Arabic Darija as an independent language.
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