If you’d like to learn Darija (which is the name for Moroccan Arabic), then you can do it the hard way or the easy way, or something in between.
The hardest way is to memorize complete phrases, like “How much does this cost?” without understanding what each individual word means or how they fit together. Not only does it tax your brain to do so much memorization, but you may never learn to speak or understand sentences which aren’t exactly the same.
In between, you can choose from various textbooks available. One designed by the Peace Corps is okay, while most others I’ve found are terribly frustrating, and make learning a difficult and unpleasant, discouraging process.
The easiest way is designed into the University of Life’s Learn Darija (Moroccan Arabic) Effortlessly!
Its 30 chapters explain key concepts you’ll need to understand, including the Arabic alphabet, pronouns, and verbs in simple terms. But then it employs the secret sauce which makes language learning easy! That secret is progressive sentences.
These sentences begin with one or two words (with both Arabic and Latin letters for pronunciation), followed by their translation. Then those words repeat, but add more to it, then they grow again until the sentence is complete. This way you’ll understand exactly what each word means and how everything fits together with no need for complex explanations. It’s the perfect balance between the most boring, analytic textbooks and apps like Duolingo, which in my opinion go too far in the “no explanations” direction.
Because you understand words and phrases thoroughly, it becomes simple swap out a word or two and generate new sentences which you’ve never even seen before! This is the quickest and easiest path to fluency and confidence.
This means you don’t necessarily need to buckle down, focus, and memorize charts and rules, you can simply review and repeat the progressive sentence examples until they naturally stick in your brain. Then, if you like, you can review the rules, which you already know by now, for an even more solid understanding of how everything works.
As an added bonus, Learn Darija (Moroccan Arabic) Effortlessly! costs about half as much as most books teaching Darija. Ready to begin your “effortless” journey to fluency in Darija? Terrific! Get your copy at https://amzn.to/4h8QVk9
Then return to this page where we’ll post helpful resources, like audio recordings of the words and sentences so you’ll know exactly how to pronounce them.
Chapter One Audio
Listen to the audio from Chapter One and pause any time to practice saying it yourself.
In case you’re interested, here’s another version but read in standard Arabic, with more vowels.
Chapter Three Audio
Chapter Four Audio
Listen to the verb conjugations and the first five practice sentences . You’ll quickly note how the Arabic letter often spelled with a K or GH sounds like a strong French R. Note that in a few cases, there’s one pronoun missing (not very important – you will still learn the pronunciation you need), and in one of the practice sentences, a different word is used – see if you can pick it out!
Chapter Five Audio
Listen to the practice sentences from Chapter Five. Not that the questions also add the word “wash” at the beginning, which isn’t required, but essentially means “do?” or “are?” to begin some questions, and which you will learn in future chapters. Also note that the full “ghadi” is read, rather than the more casual “gh”.
Chapter Eight Audio
Listen to the sentences from Chapter Eight – some spoken quickly, and some slowly.
