To shop effectively at the souk, you need to know Darija

If, like me, you live in Morocco (as you can tell from my recipes), you’ve no doubt noticed that, to shop in the souk or in the hanouts, you need at least a basic grasp of Moroccan. And I do mean Moroccan – that is, Darija – not Standard Arabic.

Vocabulary lists are just the start

There are lots of lists doing the rounds on the inter­net, pro­vid­ing trans­la­tions of the names of spices, fruit, veg­eta­bles and oth­er ingredients…

For exam­ple, we learn that ‘toma­to’ is matisha, where­as in Standard Arabic it is toma­ta. We also learn that ‘basil’ is lehbak or hbak (with or with­out the arti­cle), where­as in Standard Arabic it is rayhan. 

Vocabulary is essen­tial, of course. But learn­ing lists of hun­dreds of words, with­out prac­tis­ing or using them in sen­tences, is off-putting. It reminds me of learn­ing irreg­u­lar English verbs, or German prepo­si­tion­al verbs… 

What’s more, these lists have two shortcomings:

• They just give the words, with­out the pro­nun­ci­a­tion. Without the ‘gram­mar’ (gen­der, plural);
• some mix Darija and Standard Arabic

Which language? Arabic, Darija, Berber, Southern Berber, Northern Berber?

For me, it was all the more com­pli­cat­ed because my in-laws speak Berber. So I learnt a few words in Berber. 

For exam­ple, bread is called ‘khobz’ (  خُبْز  ) in Darija and Classical Arabic (or ‘khobza’ in Darija). But in Amazigh, it is ‘aghroum’ (ⴰⵖⵔⵓⵎ).

How would you describe your meat?

In Standard Arabic, ‘meat’ is ‘Lham’ ( لحم ), and in Darija it looks sim­i­lar but is pro­nounced dif­fer­ent­ly: ‘Lehm’; in Amazigh, it is tech­ni­cal­ly ‘aksoum’ (ⴰⴽⵙⵓⵎ). But my in-laws used to say ‘tifiyi’.

Next, what sort of meat? In Morocco, you’ll be offered meat for a tajine, kebabs or minced meat (kef­ta). In Europe, you’ve got the skirt steak, flank steak, shank, chuck, neck, spi­der steak, pear steak, fil­let and sir­loin, flank steak, rib­eye, rib of beef, shank, and macreuse… I don’t claim to know exact­ly where all these cuts are on the ani­mal, but when I read a recipe that calls for ‘macreuse’ or ‘aloy­au’, how do I ask my butch­er for them? 

When it comes to fish, it’s even more complicated. 

In many lan­guages, there is some ‘ambi­gu­i­ty’ in the names of fish, which may refer to one or more species. In Morocco, it is even worse. Of course, there is the sar­dine (sardin (سَرْدِين) in Standard Arabic, serdin in Darija, sserdin or tildut in Amazigh), and the mack­er­el, lsqum­rī (إِسْقُمْرِي) in Standard Arabic, kabayra in Moroccan Darija (كَبَايْلَة) but skom­bri in Algeria and Tunisia, asawru in Tamazight (ⴰⵙⴰⵡⵔⵓ), the skate… However, oth­er names may refer to dif­fer­ent species, depend­ing on the region, such as cod. 

Why? No doubt because fish was trans­port­ed over short­er dis­tances than meat, due to the dif­fi­cul­ties involved in pre­serv­ing it. There was there­fore no pres­sure to stan­dard­ise the names. 

Furthermore, in Morocco, the names of fish in the south have been heav­i­ly influ­enced by Spanish, due to coloni­sa­tion in areas where fish are plentiful. 

In short, even vocab­u­lary lists can be mis­lead­ing. 

Buying isn’t just about saying the name of an ingredient

"I’d like to order a kilo of lamb chops for Saturday."

"I’d like four bunch­es of basil, but I think they’re a bit pricey – can you give me a discount?"

"The pome­gran­ates I bought last time were deli­cious – are these ones just as good?"…

That’s what nor­mal inter­ac­tion is like when you’re doing your shop­ping, and as you can see, a list of ingre­di­ents is nowhere near enough! Just one word from the sen­tence each time, and you’ve got to under­stand the reply as well!

And, no, no – not all shop­keep­ers speak French, and even a few­er English. In shops in big cities, yes, ‘a few’ do, but not all of them, nor in the hanouts (the lit­tle shops).

Understanding the recipes

I don’t know if you’ve heard of Choumicha? She’s a very well-known celebri­ty chef whose YouTube chan­nel fea­tures some won­der­ful Moroccan recipes. She’s a bit like the Moroccan, female equiv­a­lent of Gordon Ramsay or Jammie Oliver. But her recipes are in Moroccan! 

And ‘auto­mat­ed’ sub­ti­tling and trans­la­tion of Darija – and even Standard Arabic – isn’t quite the same thing. 

Once again, look­ing at a video alone isn’t enough. The ingre­di­ents, quan­ti­ties, cook­ing times… all of these are need­ed to under­stand a recipe. 

So, now I’ve learnt Darija

So I took mat­ters into my own hands and decid­ed to take some Darija lessons. I’m far from being bilin­gual (my brain’s a bit slow on the uptake, and I have major dif­fi­cul­ties with pro­nun­ci­a­tion), but things are going much bet­ter. I’m com­ing back to life – in the souk, in the hanouts and even else­where. I can make small talk with taxi dri­vers, under­stand con­ver­sa­tions on the tram, fol­low videos on Facebook – in short, take part in Moroccan life. 

And all that just because I was frus­trat­ed about my cooking!

Learning Darija is eas­i­er than learn­ing Standard Arabic. It is usu­al­ly writ­ten in the Latin alpha­bet, and its gram­mar is much sim­pler than that of Arabic (for exam­ple, there are no declen­sions). For prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es (shop­ping, cook­ing, tak­ing a taxi, etc.) it is more than ade­quate, espe­cial­ly as Standard Arabic alone won’t be enough to under­stand Moroccans.