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Originally Posted by ward
Dom I just did not like the statement and I know you know better. It was more fun to yank your chain. I speak excellent timonium maryland arabic. Ok it is a mixture of mainly modern arabic mixed with various north african dialects and some berber mixed in better in the souq than any where else. I took 3 years of modern arabic at night school college when I was in my early 40's and picked up some in various north african countries. People from the Saudi pennisuala cringe when they hear me. My spoken french is so bad that most moroccans beg me to speak arabic so I do not assault their ears. If it spoken french I must have my wife speak for me, but I translate what they say so my wife can respond. In all seriousness it depends on the city and social strata what language the local population are most comfortable with. I had a long email conversation with a gentlman in tiznet in his horrible french for months untill he finally told me his written german was much better. I was ready to kill him sitting for a 1/2 hr or more trying to puzzle out his poorly written french with my poor understanding of the language. I understand a lot more than I can speak of most languages. I am much better with male voices then female differnt inflections to me. The moroccans get picked on a lot like the american hillbillys alot so I tend to defend them the local berbers have shown me more courtesy than any other people I have met. That is a general statement maybe I have just meet good people in this particular country.
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ward, everything you wrote is very true, I am convinced
in my words, there was nothing that could offend the susceptibility of someone,
I never would put any personal feelings in my comments,
it was a statement of facts collected over many years in these countries
if I gave that impression, it's due to my very average English expression
I apologize to have created an misunderstanding
here it is not me who says
extracted from "wikipedia"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroccan_Arabic
Relationship with other languages
Moroccan Arabic has a distinct pronunciation and is nearly unintelligible to other Arabic speakers, but is generally mutually intelligible with other Maghrebi Arabic dialects with which it forms a dialect continuum.
It is grammatically simpler, and has a less voluminous vocabulary than Classical Arabic. It has also integrated many Berber, French and Spanish words.
There is a relatively clear-cut division between Moroccan Arabic and Standard Arabic, and most uneducated Moroccans do not understand Modern Standard Arabic.
Depending on cultural background and degree of literacy, those who do speak Modern Standard Arabic may prefer to use Arabic words instead of their French or Spanish borrowed counterparts, while others often adopt code-switching between French and Moroccan Arabic.
As elsewhere in the world, how someone speaks and what words or language they use is often an indicator of their social class.
with my best regards
à +
Dom