Moroccan Arabic (Darija) Alphabet

Moroccan Arabic, called Darija (الدارجة) by its speakers, is the everyday spoken language of Morocco. Written in Arabic script, it uses the 28 Arabic letters it shares with Standard Arabic, from ا (alif) and ب (ba) to و (waw) and ي (ya), written right to left and joined to each other, so most letters change shape at the start, middle and end of a word. The grid on this page shows each letter in its stand-alone form; your phone or computer joins them automatically when you paste them next to each other.

Darija has no official spelling. Schools, newspapers and the state write fusha, Modern Standard Arabic, which the 2011 constitution names as an official language of Morocco together with Tamazight. Darija is what people speak at home, in the market and on the street, and it is written more and more: in advertising, song lyrics, comics, social media and chats. Writers mostly spell words as they sound, so the same word can be written in more than one way, for example بزاف or بزّاف (bzzaf, a lot).

The extra forms come from Standard Arabic and are used the same way: the hamza ء and its seats أ إ آ ؤ ئ, the feminine ending ة (as in مدينة, mdina, town), and the final ى of words like على and حتى. Darija drops the glottal stop in much of its everyday speech, so hamza appears mainly in words taken from the standard language and in names.

The Moroccan letter for g: ڭ

The sound g is everywhere in Darija: ڭاع (gaʿ, at all, everything), ڭال (gal, he said), ڭلس (gles, he sat down) and the many words borrowed from Amazigh languages, French and Spanish. Standard Arabic has no letter for it, so Moroccan writers use ڭ, a kaf with three dots above. You will also see ݣ, a near-identical letter from Unicode's Arabic Supplement, on signs, packaging and some keyboards; both are read g and they sit next to ك in the grid. Many people simply write ك or ق instead and let the reader guess.

The vowel marks are rarely written, as in most Arabic text, but they can help a reader with Darija's long consonant clusters: َ fatha (a), ُ damma (u), ِ kasra (i), ْ sukun (no vowel) and ّ shadda (a doubled consonant). The double fatha ً shows up in words Darija shares with the standard language, such as شكراً (thank you) and مثلاً (for example). Textbooks and dictionaries for learners use them most.

Punctuation is the Arabic set, mirrored for right-to-left writing: the comma ،, the semicolon ؛ and the question mark ؟, as in كيداير؟ (kidayr?, how are you?). Quotations are put in angle quotes « », as in French and much printed Arabic. Morocco writes numbers with the digits 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9, not the Eastern Arabic ٠ ١ ٢ ٣ used in Egypt and the Gulf.

Darija letter numbers: what 3, 7, 9 and 2 mean

On phones and social media many Moroccans type Darija in Latin letters, and a few Arabic sounds that have no Latin letter are written with digits that look like the Arabic letter. 3 is ع (ʿayn), as in 3afak (عفاك, please); 7 is ح (the breathy ḥa), as in l7amdulillah (الحمد لله, thank God); 9 is ق (qaf), as in 9alb (قلب, heart); 2 marks the glottal stop ء. Other sounds use letter pairs: ch or sh for ش, kh for خ, gh for غ.

This chat alphabet is often called Arabizi. It is not standardised either, and spellings mix French habits (ou for u, ch for sh) with English ones, so chokran and shukran are the same word. When you switch a message to Arabic script, each of these numbers becomes its letter: 3afak → عفاك, 7ta → حتى.

How to type Darija in Arabic on a keyboard and phone

Windows: open Settings → Time & language → Language & region, add Arabic (Morocco), and switch keyboards with Windows + Space. Windows offers the Arabic 101, Arabic 102 and Arabic (102) AZERTY layouts; the AZERTY one matches the French-style keyboards common in Morocco. The standard layouts have no key for ڭ: copy it from this page, or in Microsoft Word type 06AD and press Alt + X (0763 for ݣ).

Mac: System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources → add Arabic, then switch with Control + Space or the globe key. Phones: add an Arabic keyboard in Gboard or in iPhone Settings → General → Keyboard; long-press alif for أ إ آ.

HTML: Arabic letters can be written as numeric references, for example ڭ for ڭ, ع for ع and ؟ for ؟. Mark Darija text with dir="rtl" and the language code lang="ary", so browsers lay it out right to left.

Where Moroccan Arabic is spoken

Darija is spoken across Morocco 🇲🇦: CLDR estimates about 32.5 million speakers there, and it is the common language between Arabic speakers and speakers of the Amazigh languages, Standard Moroccan Tamazight, Tachelhit, Central Atlas Tamazight and Riffian. Large Moroccan communities in France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy speak it too, and many young people there mix it with the local language.

It belongs to the Maghrebi Arabic family with Algerian Arabic and Tunisian Arabic; Darija is mutually intelligible to some extent with Algerian Arabic and to a lesser extent with Tunisian Arabic. Egyptian Arabic and Levantine Arabic, known from films, series and songs, sound further away. Its words come from Arabic, from the Amazigh languages, from French and from Spanish. For the full Standard Arabic set with all its vowel marks see the Arabic collection, and for the Tifinagh letters of Morocco's other official language see Standard Moroccan Tamazight; the Morocco collection has the flag, the food and the emoji of the country.