Maghrebi Arabic
Sign in to saveAlso known as Darija, North African Arabic, Western Arabic
family of Arabic dialects spoken in the Maghreb
Key facts
- Region
- Maghreb
- Ethnicity
- Maghrebi Arabs , also used as a second language by other ethnic groups in the Maghreb
- Native speakers
- 88 million (2020–2022)
- Language family
- Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Maghrebi Arabic
- Dialects
- Algerian Arabic Moroccan Arabic Libyan Arabic Tunisian Arabic Hassaniya Arabic Saharan Arabic Siculo-Arabic (survives as Maltese ) Andalusi Arabic † Dialectal continuums: Hilalian dialects Pre-Hilalian dialects
- Writing system
- Arabic alphabet ( Maghrebi script ), Latin alphabet
- Iso 639 3
- Variously:, arq – Algerian Arabic , xaa – Andalusi Arabic , mey – Hassaniya Arabic , ayl – Libyan Arabic , mlt – Maltese , ary – Moroccan Arabic , aao – Saharan Arabic , sqr – Siculo-Arabic , aeb – Tunisian Arabic
- Glottolog
- nort3191
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- Arabic
- Has part
- Algerian Saharan Arabic
- Country
- Western Sahara
Show 3 more facts
- number of speakers, writers, or signers
- 73212000
- topic's main category
- Category:Maghrebi Arabic
- linguistic typology
- verb–subject–object
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~11 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Maghrebi Arabic, often known as ad-Dārija to differentiate it from Literary Arabic, is a vernacular Arabic dialect continuum spoken in the Maghreb. It includes the Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Libyan, Hassaniya and Saharan Arabic dialects.
Maghrebi Arabic has a predominantly Semitic and Arabic vocabulary, although it contains a significant number of Berber loanwords, which represent 10–15% of the vocabulary of Moroccan Arabic, 8–9% of Algerian and Tunisian Arabic, and 2–3% of Libyan Arabic. Maghrebi Arabic was formerly spoken in Sicily and Al-Andalus until the 13th and 17th centuries, respectively, in the extinct forms of Siculo-Arabic and Andalusi Arabic. The Maltese language is believed to have its source in a language spoken in Muslim Sicily that ultimately originates from Tunisia, as it contains some typical Maghrebi Arabic areal characteristics.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Maghrebi Arabic” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.