More Darija!

I thought I would show you a little bit about verb conjugation in Moroccan Arabic so you can get an idea of how different it is from English. The verb we'll use is 3ta (to give). Remember I use '3' for the 'ayn' character of the Arabic alphabet. It sounds like the 'a' in 'fat' with the tongue held to the bottom of the mouth and the sound coming from as far back in the throat as possible. Also remember that when I use 'i' it is a hard 'e' sound like the e's in 'week'.

3ta (past tense) conjugated with pronouns:

ana 3tait = I gave
nta 3taiti = You(masc) gave
nti 3taiti = You(fem) gave
huwa 3ta = He gave (notice in the 'He' form the verb remains in its base form, no conjugation)
hiya 3tat = She gave
hna 3taina = We gave
ntuma 3taitu = You(plural) gave
huma 3taitu = They gave

Now if memorizing all those conjugations wasn't fun enough, let's add some more. In Darija it is possible to add conjugations on to another. I'm sure there's some technical language term for this but I'll just call it doubling. Let's take the past tense I (ana) form and say who we're giving stuff to. Remember I gave = ana 3tait

Some examples:

ana 3taitha= I gave her
ana 3taitu= I gave him
ana 3taithum= I gave them

What about the other past tenses? It's possible to do the same exact thing:
hna 3tainahum= We gave them
ntuma 3taituni= You(plural) gave me
hiya 3tatu= She gave him

Some 3ta commands:

3tini = give me
3tiha = give her
3tih = give him
3tina = give us
3tihum = give them


Hopefully as you can see the conjugations and verb forms differ greatly from English and other languages. It can be a task to understand exactly what and who people are talking about, not to mention conjugating the verbs in your head on the fly when you are the one doing the talking.