You all probably know the first big trick with learning arabic which is that you have at least two languages going.

The written fusha (pure, classical) arabic which was revived as the language of pan-arabism by Lebanese christians at the end of the 19th Century. They wanted to assert ethnic identity in the midst of the Ottoman empire, which defined itself by the milet system where people were governed in terms of religion. And the Lebanese Christians wanted to flip the script and get more concessions for Arabs. Now the formal language of radio, tv and writing, it ironically (given that it was revived by Christians as means of asserting ethnic Arab identity) has been claimed by some muslim extremists as the proper way to speak.

And then you there are the colloquiall dialects, which is where the music is at, and everyday passions of life and all. Don't get me wrong, Fusha is beautiful, a truly elegant poetic language developed by bedouin poets, used in the Qur'an, and used in great Arabic litterature, but when I was in Morocco, I found that sometimes if you were speaking Fusha to everyday people you might as well be speaking Chinese.

As for me I know a little bit of a couple of dialects of Arabic. I used to be an ethnomusicologist specializing in North African music, so I studied a bit in Morocco and later in France. i also learned some Levantine Arabic: Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian dialects, and picked up some Egyption, meen ma bithabbish ba'ad el-musi'a misria? I also studied some Gulf Arabic and even know a teeny bit of 'Iraqi Arabic.

I hope I don't seem to pedantic, I guess I had an itch to scratch linguistically! I would be happy to help out with handy Moroccan phrases for you all. and would be grateful to try to chat with someone who speaks it better than I. I tend to mix colloquiallisms with Fusha, and would love to learn more darija as Moroccans call it.

la bes 'alaikum. sahha! had-il-qabila fikra mezyana bi-zaff!

yeah, shukran is fuller, but not snobby.
yislamu (thank your hands) is often said. actually, it's said in conjunction w/ shukran, so who knew?
that's sweet you have the arabic lettering. show off ;).

Hey there, how Did you type in the arabic script?

Has anyone here taken classes at the University in Irfane? I hear the skiing nearby is good :)

shukran,
mo