Dareeja

I came to Morocco expecting to be slightly confused by the Moroccan dialect, but it's entirely different. The vocab is different, the conjugation is different--it's like I learned Latin and am expected to understand French. That's what amazes me about the Moroccans. Not only do the speak Dareeja, their mother tongue, but they learn to read Fusha (Modern Standard Arabic--what I'm learning) and listen to it on TV. Then they know French (if they're educated) and usually one other language. And that's relatively normal, especially if you're less than 35 years old.