Wiktionary:About Arabic/Moroccan
Wiktionary uses the following system to transcribe Moroccan Arabic (Darija), based on the urban koine standard spoken in Casablanca.
| Letter | Romanization | IPA | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ا | Used as a silent carrier for vowels in initial position, and a elsewhere. The sound a is [æː] in most positions, but [ɑː] when subject to emphasis spreading. Used for initial [ʔ] when it carries a hamza. | |||
| أ | ʾa ʾo ʾ | ʔa ʔʊ ʔ | It is used to spell a combination of glottal stop and a vowel (ʔa, ʔu), elsewhere just a glottal stop (ʔ). Always transliterate the glottal stop, including in initial position (using the ʾ character, a half-ring; do not use an apostrophe). | |
| إ | ʾi | ʔiː | ||
| آ | ʾa | ʔaː | ||
| ب | b | b | Romanized as ḅ when used to write the emphatic form [bˤ], although some systems (e.g. Harrell's) do not mark it when there is another emphatic consonant in a word, because only the emphatic form can be found in that context. The marginal phoneme [bˤʷ] is romanized as ḅ̂, and unlike normal emphatics, is pronounced with strong pharyngealization and only affects the quality of neighboring short vowels. | |
| پ | p | p | A marginal phoneme only found in borrowings, often pronounced as [b] and written as ب. | |
| ت | t | tˢ | Romanized as t́ when used to write the plain form [t], a marginal phoneme only found in borrowings. | |
| ث | t | tˢ | ||
| ج | ž | ʒ | The sound represented by this letter in MSA can sometimes correspond to [ɡ] or occasionally [d] in stems where a sibilant, lateral, or rhotic consonant also occurs. Unlike in MSA, ج is a sun letter. | |
| ح | ḥ | ħ | Emphatic consonant. | |
| خ | ḵ | χ | Emphatic consonant. | |
| د | d | d | ||
| ذ | d | d | ||
| ر | r | ɾ | Romanized as ṛ when used to write the emphatic form [ɾˤ]. When geminated, it is pronounced as [r]. | |
| ز | z | z | In stems with a following ž, etymological z may harmonize to ž, in which case it may be written as ج. | |
| س | s | s | In stems with a following š, etymological s may harmonize to š, in which case it may be written as ش. | |
| ش | š | ʃ | ||
| ڜ | č | t͡ʃ | A marginal phoneme only found in borrowings, which may be written with a digraph, as تش. | |
| ص | ṣ | sˤ | Emphatic consonant. In stems with a following š, etymological ṣ may harmonize to š, in which case it may be written as ش. | |
| ض | ḍ | dˤ | Emphatic consonant. | |
| ط | ṭ | tˤ | Emphatic consonant. | |
| ظ | ḍ | dˤ | Emphatic consonant. | |
| ع | ʿ | ʕ | Emphatic consonant. | |
| غ | ḡ | ɣ | Emphatic consonant. | |
| ف | f | f | The marginal phoneme [fˤʷ] is romanized as f̣̂, and unlike normal emphatics, is pronounced with strong pharyngealization and only affects the quality of neighboring short vowels. | |
| ڥ | v | v | A marginal phoneme only found in borrowings, often pronounced as [f] and written as ف. | |
| ق | q or g | q or ɡ | Unpredictable; must be specified. The Casablanca standard tends toward exclusive use of [q], but [ɡ] has been introduced through the influence of Hilalian dialects. When pronounced as [q], it is an emphatic consonant. | |
| ك | k | k | ||
| ݣ/گ | g | ɡ | ||
| ل | l | l | Romanized as ḷ when used to write the emphatic form [lˤ]. | |
| م | m | m | Romanized as ṃ when used to write the emphatic form [mˤ], although some systems (e.g. Harrell's) do not mark it when there is another emphatic consonant in a word, because only the emphatic form can be found in that context. The marginal phoneme [mˤʷ] is romanized as ṃ̂, and unlike normal emphatics, is pronounced with strong pharyngealization and only affects the quality of neighboring short vowels. | |
| ن | n | n | ||
| ه | h | h | ||
| و | w | w | For vowel uses, see below. | |
| ي | y | j | For vowel uses, see below. | |
| ى | a | æː | For allophones, see below. | |
| ء | ʾ | ʔ | Etymological use is often silent. | |
| Diacritics | ||||
| ـَ | e or ă | ə or æ | e surfaces as [ɐ] near emphatic consonants and as [u] after w. The sound ă is used by many speakers, but only when adjacent to ḥ or ʿ, and may be replaced by e entirely for other speakers. | |
| ـُ | o | ʊ | ||
| ـِ | e or ĭ | ə or i | For the allophones of e, see above. ĭ is a marginal phoneme only found in borrowings from MSA. | |
| ـَو | ăw or u | aw or uː | ||
| ـُو | u | uː | u is [oː] when subject to emphasis spreading. | |
| ـَی | ăy or i | aj or iː | ||
| ـِی | i | iː | i is [eː ~ ɨː] when subject to emphasis spreading. | |
References
edit- Dominique Caubet (2007), "Moroccan Arabic" in Kees Verstegh (ed.), Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, Vol. 3. Brill, →ISBN.
- Richard Harrell (2004), A Dictionary of Moroccan Arabic: Moroccan-English. Georgetown University Press, →ISBN.
- Jan Hoogland (2013), "Towards a Standardized Orthography of Moroccan Arabic Based on Best Practices and Common Ground Among a Selection of Authors" in Paula Santillán, Luis Miguel Pérez, and Francisco Moscoso (eds.), Árabe marroquí: de la oralidad a la enseñanza. Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Cuenca.
- Janet Watson (2002), The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic. Oxford University Press, →ISBN.
Other Resources
edit- Richard S. Harrell, Mohammed Abu-Talib, William S. Carroll (2006), A Basic Course in Moroccan Arabic with MP3 Files.