A week of my life in Morocco rarely goes by without a Moroccan asking me about how I have learned Moroccan Arabic. People are always surprised and awed that I have learned the local language here. In other countries, local people would perhaps not be as impressed that foreigners have learned the language, but in Morocco, people are always amazed and excited by this.

French is a mega-language that is an official language in 29 countries across several continents, and is used and spoken in 84 countries of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF). This truly global language is the 18th most natively spoken language in the world, the sixth most spoken language by the total number of speakers

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA or Fossha) is nobody's mother tongue, but it is the language that every educated Arab from Mauritania to Iraq understands. It is the language newspapers and books are written in across the Arab World and is used in most TV shows and radio broadcasts.

Understanding the Arabic dialect spoken in Morocco is a worthwhile challenge, but another challenge is understanding the many questions that arise out of these language studies. What is Darija? Why is Moroccan Arabic considered a dialect, and what is the difference between it and other Arabic languages?

Moroccans tend to speak and understand a variety of languages. Moroccan Arabic (Darija) is the most prevalent spoken language in Morocco, which is technically a dialect of the Arabic language. Modern Standard Arabic, or Fossha, is literary Arabic that is used in writing and in official communication. Hassaniya Arabic is the dialect spoken in the southern part of the county.