Maghrebi Arabic is a cover term for the dialects of Arabic spoken in the Maghreb, including Western Sahara, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya. Speakers of Maghrebi Arabic call their language Derija or Darija, which means "popular." It is primarily used as a spoken language; written communication is primarily done in Modern Standard Arabic, along with news broadcasting. Derija is used for almost all spoken communication, as well as in TV dramas and on advertising boards in Morocco and Tunisia. Derija is characterized by many borrowings from the languages of the colonizers of North Africa, including France and Spain, as well as independent developments, some of which are most probably due to a Berber substratum. Maghrebi dialects all use n- as the first person singular prefix on verbs, distinguishing them from Middle Eastern dialects and Standard Arabic. They frequently borrow words from French (in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia), Spanish (in Morocco) and Italian (in Libya and and to a lesser extent Tunisia) and conjugate them accourding to the rules of Arabic. Since it is rarely written, there is no standard and it is free to change quickly and to pick up new vocabulary from neighboring languages. This is somewhat similar to what happened to Middle English after the Norman conquest. The Arabic language is classified as a Semitic language. ... Arabic ( or just ) is the largest living member of the Semitic language family in terms of speakers. ... The Algerian bay (view from the west). ... ... Modern Standard Arabic is the form of Arabic currently used in Arabic books, newspapers and nearly all written media. ... The Berber languages (or Tamazight) are a group of closely related languages mainly spoken in Morocco and Algeria. ... In linguistics, a substratum (lat. ... Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to the participant role of a referent, such as the speaker, the addressee, and others. ... The word singular may refer to one of several concepts. ... In linguistics, a prefix is a type of affix that precedes the morphemes to which it can attach. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Modern Standard Arabic is the dialect of Arabic used in almost all writing and in formal spoken contexts. ... Conjugation may refer to: Grammatical conjugation, the modification of runnign a verb from its basic form Latin conjugation, Spanish conjugation and The English verb, each with complex conjugation forms Marriage, relationship between two individuals In mathematics: Complex conjugation, the operation which multiplies the imaginary part of a complex number by... Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of 1066 and the mid-to-late 15th century, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the... Bayeux Tapestry depicting events leading to the Battle of Hastings The Norman Conquest of England was the conquest of the Kingdom of England by William the Conqueror (Duke of Normandy), in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings and the subsequent Norman control of England. ...

For several centuries after the Islamic conquest, Arabic was spoken only in cities in the Maghreb. It was only hundreds of years later that it entered the countryside and nomadic areas at the expense of the Berber languages, but these languages coexist to this day. The Berber languages (or Tamazight) are a group of closely related languages mainly spoken in Morocco and Algeria. ...

See also

• Varieties of Arabic
• Koines:
  • Algerian Arabic
  • Moroccan Arabic
  • Tunisian Arabic
• Fully pre-Hilalian:
  • Jebli Arabic
  • Jijel Arabic
  • Maltese language
  • Siculo-Arabic (extinct)

• Bedouin:
  • Hassaniya Arabic
  • Libyan Arabic
  • Saharan Arabic

• Pidgin:
  • Lingua Franca

• • Andalusi Arabic

• sidi, a Maghreb title of respect for males (an equivalent of Sir in English).

The Arabic language is classified as a Semitic language. ... The literal meaning of the Greek word koine (κοινή) is common. It is used in several senses: Koiné Greek (Κοινή Ἑλληνική), a Greek dialect that developed from the Attic dialect (of Athens) and became the spoken language of Greece at the time of the Empire of Alexander the Great. ... Algerian Arabic is the dialect or dialects of Arabic native to Algeria. ... Moroccan Arabic, also known as Darija, is the language spoken in the Arabic-speaking areas of Morocco, as opposed to the official communications of governmental and other public bodies which use Modern Standard Arabic, as is the case in most Arabic-speaking countries, while a mixture of French and Moroccan... Tunisian Arabic is a Maghrebi dialect of the Arabic language, spoken by some 9 million people. ... The Banu Hilal were an Arab tribe that migrated from Arabia into North Africa in the 11th century, having been sent by the Fatimids to punish the Zirids for abandoning Shiism. ... Maltese is the national language of Malta, and an official language of the European Union. ... Siculo-Arabic was a dialect of Arabic spoken in Sicily between the ninth and the fourteenth centuries. ... A Bedouin man resting on a hillside at Mount Sinai Bedouin, derived from the Arabic ( ‎), a generic name for a desert-dweller, is a term generally applied to Arab nomadic pastoralist groups, who are found throughout most of the desert belt extending from the Atlantic coast of the Sahara via... Hassaniya is a dialect of Arabic derived from the Arabic spoken by the Beni Hassan tribe, who extended their authority over most of the Mauritanian Sahara between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. ... Libyan Arabic is a collective term for the closely related spoken varieties of Arabic as spoken in Libya. ... A pidgin, or contact language, is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out of a mixture of other languages as a means of communication between speakers of different tongues. ... Lingua franca, literally Frankish language in Italian, was originally a mixed language consisting largely of Italian plus a vocabulary drawn from Turkish, Persian, French, Greek and Arabic and used for communication throughout the Middle East. ... Andalusi Arabic was a dialect of the Arabic language spoken in Al-Andalus, the regions of Spain under Muslim rule. ... Sidi is a title of respect in Western Arabic language (sayyid in other dialects) equivalent to Mr. ... Look up sir in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Further reading

• Singer, Hans-Rudolf (1980) “Das Westarabische oder Maghribinische” in Wolfdietrich Fischer and Otto Jastrow (eds.) Handbuch der arabischen Dialekte. Otto Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden. 249-76.

External links

• Chapter on Maghreb dialects from The Arabic Language by Kees Versteegh