What Languages Are Spoken In Morocco? What is the difference between Moroccan Arabic and Classical Arabic?
In this article we are going to share with you the differences between Moroccan and classical Arabic, it is first necessary to define what is classical Arabic and Moroccan Arabic.
First of all:
Classical Arabic and modern standard Arabic together constitute literal Arabic. The diglossia of the Arabic language provides two language registers, literal Arabic and dialectal Arabic. Classical Arabic evolves over time from Pre-Classical Arabic to Koranic Arabic, then to post-Koranic Arabic, to which the term “classical Arabic” is sometimes referred. The distinction is not a question of the level of education like the one that exists in French, for example, between popular and supported language.
The history of the Arabic language supports the establishment and evolution of language registers that are gradually diversified by the effect of diglossia. Linguistics distinguishes between a literary register of Arabic and a vernacular register containing many often unwritten Arabic dialects.
Secondly:
With regard to the Arabic dialect (darija) it’s a term that covers Arabic dialects, resulting from linguistic interference between the Arabic language and local or neighboring languages, as a result of a process of Arabization or any cultural influence due mainly to colonization, migration, trade, and more recently the media.
Moroccan Arabic is one of these Arabic dialects. Moroccan Arabic dialect, called darija in Morocco, is a language that brings together several varieties of Arabic dialect spoken in Morocco. It belongs to the Maghreb dialects group.
Finally, in the end:
The differences: One is used more for professional, academic, religious purposes or to communicate between Arabic speakers and the other is specific to a region of the Arab world.
In other words, Moroccan Arabic (darija) is specific to Morocco while classical Arabic is almost identical for everyone. Moroccan Arabic (darija) is an Arabic who has absorbed its Arab-Berber context and also its socio-cultural evolution. Classical Arabic is also evolving, but its connotation is more academic, formal and also very often linked to religious circles. The majority of cultural heritages and religious works are in post-Koranic literary Arabic so religious circles very often make use of this Arabic but also cultural circles.
