Judeo-Moroccan Arabic

Judeo-Moroccan Arabic
A 1922 issue of the newspaper El Horria with Judeo-Moroccan Arabic (Darija) in Hebrew script.
Native toMorocco
EthnicityMoroccan Jews
Native speakers
66,000 (2000–2018)[1]
Hebrew alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3aju
Glottologjude1265
ELPJudeo-Moroccan Arabic

Judeo-Moroccan Arabic is the variety or the varieties of the Moroccan vernacular Arabic spoken by Moroccan Jews living or formerly living in Morocco.[2][3] Historically, the majority of Moroccan Jews spoke Moroccan vernacular Arabic, or Darija, as their first language, even in Amazigh areas, which was facilitated by their literacy in Hebrew script.[4]: 59  The Darija spoken by Moroccan Jews, which they referred to as al-‘arabiya diyalna ("our Arabic") as opposed to ‘arabiya diyal l-məslimīn (Arabic of the Muslims), typically had distinct features,[4]: 59  such as š>s and ž>z "lisping," some lexical borrowings from Hebrew, and in some regions Hispanic features from the migration of Sephardi Jews following the Alhambra Decree.[3] The Jewish dialects of Darija spoken in different parts of Morocco had more in common with the local Moroccan Arabic dialects than they did with each other.[5]: 64 

Nowadays, speakers of the language are usually older adults.[6] The young generation of the Jews of Morocco who studied at schools of the Alliance Israelite Universelle under the French protectorate made French their mother tongue.

After 1948, the vast majority of Moroccan Jews migrated to Israel and have switched to using Hebrew as their native language. Those who immigrated to metropolitan France typically use French as their first language, while the few still left in Morocco tend to use either French, Moroccan or Judeo-Moroccan Arabic in their everyday lives.

  1. ^ Judeo-Moroccan Arabic at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. ^ Sibony, Jonas (September 2019). "Curses and profanity in Moroccan Jewish-Arabic and what's left of it in the Hebrew sociolect of Israelis from Moroccan origins". Romano-Arabica. XIX.
  3. ^ a b Levy, Simon (2013). "Les parlers arabes des juifs du Maroc". Langage et société. 143 (1): 41. doi:10.3917/ls.143.0041. ISSN 0181-4095.
  4. ^ a b Gottreich, Emily (2020). Jewish Morocco. I.B. Tauris. doi:10.5040/9781838603601. ISBN 978-1-78076-849-6. S2CID 213996367.
  5. ^ Bensimon-Choukroun, Georgette. Langues en contact dans le judéo-arabe de Fès : le système consonantique. OCLC 1201718554.
  6. ^ Raymond G. Gordon Jr., ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.