Darija Words of the Day/Week/Month/Next Two Years of My Life!

Sooo I thought it be fun to give some insight in to the key vocab that I have been surviving on in Morocco.

First to give some background let me start by saying that Darija is the spoken language of Morocco, technically it is a dialect of Arabic however, it is nothing like the “Arabic” that Americans are learning in college or from Rosetta Stone, which is Modern Standard Arabic and is taken from the language of the Koran. It is also nothing like the Arabic that is spoken in the other Arab countries of the world, each of which have their own different dialect of Arabic. Darija is what Moroccans speak, but not what they learn to write in, the learn to write in Modern Standard, because they is no official written version of Darija, thus when trying to learn it you’ll quickly discover that your text book, language teacher and Lonely Planet vocab book all have a different way of spelling the words that you are trying to learn.

Despite this complexity a few words have quickly become my key words that make up 90% of every conversation I am able to have. Not surprisingly they are those words that you normally learn when you are first learning to speak, thus when mixed with the fact that we basically don’t know how to do anything the Moroccan way (i.e. use the Turkish toilet, use money correctly or hail a cab and ensure it’ll get us to the right place) the PCVs and I have officially embraced the fact that we are all currently at preschool level. We have also dubbed our Madrasa (school), that we spend about 9 hrs a day at learning Darija and about Morocco, as “Little America.”

So for all you back home, here are my first words:

Shweeya: literally means little, can be used in key phases like shweeya afak – slow down please, shweeya b shweeya – little by little (I am learning darija), I am a little tired etc.
Zueena/zueen: literally means pretty, can be used to describe anything as being pretty, really good, or that you like a lot such as a women’s kaftan, saying a kid is cute, the food is good. Negative is mazueensh as in I don’t like something.
Muzyn: literally means good, as in I am good, it is good, my day was good, good job, I am okay with this etc.
Bzzzzaf: literally means a lot, can be used to describe anything that is a lot, i.e. you can say something is zueena bzzzaf or that you are muzyn bzzzaf
Fin: where
Shnu: what
Elas: why
Foquash: when
Shnu hadda: what is that?
Brit: I want
Bit: room, example Bit L Ma is literally the water room, or in Moroccan it’s the toilet room.
Shuma: is shame, or what we say when someone does a faux pas, like eating with your left hand.
Etani: give me, for example etani flus means give me money
Zuk: is a “bad” word and means ass, we all learned not to say this when we got excited about our vegetable vendor having zucchinis and screaming out the word.
Shukran: thank you, a word that currently is making up at least 50% of my vocab.

Also fun fact, last night I churned butter from milk from our cows with my host family.