North African Arabic
| Maghrebi Arabic | |
|---|---|
| Darija | |
| Region | Maghreb |
|
Afro-Asiatic
|
|
| Arabic alphabet, Latin alphabet | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | nort3191 |
Maghrebi Arabic, or Maghrebi Darija, is the principal spoken language in the Maghreb region, including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. It's also called Western Arabic (as opposed to the Eastern Arabic known as Mashriqi Arabic) that includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Tunisian Arabic along with Libyan Arabic. In Algeria, the Maghrebi as a colloquial language was taught as a separate subject under French colonization, and some textbooks exist. Speakers of Maghrebi call their language Derja, Derija or Darija. It is used as a spoken and sometimes as a written language for communication. Maghrebi Arabic is used as well in TV dramas and on advertising boards in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, but Modern Standard Arabic (الفصحى (al-)fushā) also remain used mainly by officials for written communication. Maghrebi is established on a Berber and possibly a Punicsubstratum, influenced by the languages of the people who lived or administered the countries of the region, during the course of history, such as Latin, Arabic, Turkish, Italian, Spanish, and French.
The varieties of Maghrebi Arabic Darija have a significant degree of mutual intelligibility, specially 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 the Moroccan and Tunisian Darija. Conversely, the Moroccan Darija, can not be understood by Eastern Arabic speakers (from Egypt, Sudan, Levant, Iraq, and Arabian peninsula) in general as it does derive from different substratums and a mixture of a many languages (Berber, Old Arabic, Turkish, French, Spanish, Italian, and sub-Saharan languages). A considerable number of linguists like Charles A. Ferguson, William Marçais and Abdou Elimam, tend to consider Maghrebi Arabic Darija (especially Moroccan Darija) as an independent language.
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