So interesting: Arabic dialects.

Like a month ago I was at a public park in the city, and as I was washing my hands in the restroom adjoining the pavilion that’s rented out for weddings, I was looking at all this crap that the wedding party had put in the public restroom for their guests: nice soaps, a few starlight mints and packs of gum, and even 2 high school graduation pictures (presumably of the bride and groom).

As I was stepping out of the restroom, this older (brown-skinned) man asked me in French if I spoke French, and when I said (in French) “a little”, he proceeded to ask me who the pictures were of, and I tried my best to explain that the hall was rented out for weddings and that I thought they were pictures of the bride and groom, though I kept mixing in Spanish words and the whole thing was just halting and atrocious.

Then, I talked with the man a bit more (in French), and it turns out that he was Moroccan and visiting his daughter and son-in-law, and when I explained that I had been to Morocco once, he asked where, and it turns out that he has a little shopping stall just a few storefronts off the main square in Marakesh, and he insisted that I take down the address so we could have tea if I ever came back.

So, I walked back down to where I had my stuff out, and since I had been hanging out with my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend, I mentioned that my friend was born in the Sudan and spoke Arabic, which made the Moroccan light up, and as soon as we got over by my stuff, he started speaking in Arabic to my friend – though I noticed that they quickly started speaking French.

After the guy was gone, I asked my friend what was up with that, and he said it’s so hard to understand the Moroccan dialect because of the heavy accent and all the Berber words thrown in, that it’s just easier to speak French sometimes, and that when he lived in Paris, he’d do that all the time when speaking with North African immigrants who tried speaking to him in Arabic.

“Did you hear that?”, my friend was like.  “He kept saying chelaphon.”

“What’s that?”, I was like.

“Telephone,” he was like.  “Between that and how they leave out so many vowels, it can be very hard to understand.”

Later, I spoke with his sister about this, and she agreed.