Wiktionary talk:About Arabic/Moroccan
Latest comment: 6 years ago by Aryamanarora in topic Maybe useful
Vowels[edit]
@Wikitiki89, Metaknowledge How should vowels be rendered? Long with macrons, as in fuṣḥā? I've added a small number of entries or translations, like مݣانة but I've got a lot of uncertainty ,especially because Moroccan Arabic spellings are unattestable and the spellings are unregulated. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:14, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
- I think vowels should be written as I described here (unsurprisingly). Given that Moroccan has most eliminated short vowels and then reïntroduced them only as marginal phonemes, it makes intuitive sense to make long vowels the default, unlike in MSA. As for the spellings, it's a real problem — the paucity of written material means that people aren't likely to look them up anyway, and it's part of why I think we're better off presenting this information first and foremost in Arabic pronunciation sections. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 03:37, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
- It's OK to add regional pronunciations for the shared terms but they may also be spelled differently. In the case of مݣانة (magana), the spelling was suggested by a native speaker after I presented a few options and there is no common Arabic cognate to my knowledge. This option doesn't explain why the first and the second "a" are the same, in fuṣḥā, they would be "a" and "ā". The table doesn't describe /ɪ/, as in شرجم (šeṛžem, “window”) /ʃɐrʒɪm/. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 04:26, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
- I wasn't sure about the phonetic reality of that sound, and so I was considering it as /ə/. The romanisation šeṛžem follows this table. As for why your informant spelled that word that way, I don't know — spellings can be ridiculously different from one person to another, which is well described in the Hooglund reference on this page. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 05:06, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
- It's OK to add regional pronunciations for the shared terms but they may also be spelled differently. In the case of مݣانة (magana), the spelling was suggested by a native speaker after I presented a few options and there is no common Arabic cognate to my knowledge. This option doesn't explain why the first and the second "a" are the same, in fuṣḥā, they would be "a" and "ā". The table doesn't describe /ɪ/, as in شرجم (šeṛžem, “window”) /ʃɐrʒɪm/. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 04:26, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
- After reading the phonology section and some of the verb morphology sections of Harrell's A Short Reference Grammar of Moroccan Arabic (and also listening to the provided sound recordings and to videos of speakers on YouTube), I have a lot of thoughts about these issues and will post them here later. --WikiTiki89 15:48, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
Maybe useful[edit]
There seems to be a translation of the Bible into Moroccan Arabic here... Is this legit? The same website has Chadian and Tunisian Arabic as well. There's also an interesting project on Reddit translating a story into various dialects (and some sociolects as well). —Aryaman (मुझसे बात करो) 00:08, 5 October 2017 (UTC)