Modern Standard Arabic: MSA or Fus7a (pronounced like fus-haa) is one of Morocco's prestige languages. Prestige describes the level of respect a language is accorded when compared to other languages in the same community. It is the language of the Qu'ran (Islam's holy book), public school education, administration, and the media. Though most Moroccans understand MSA, not all of them speak MSA fluently and it is rarely used in conversation outside the work place. In public schools, the teacher will often explain Darija, but the textbooks are in MSA.
Moroccan Arabic (Darija): Darija is the lingua-franca--the language of the street, the home, and in my opinion, the heart. It is only spoken and written very informally, using the French alphabet with letters to express sounds that do not exist in French. For instance, 7 is a special h sound which is made in the back of your throat. There are some words borrowed from French, Spanish, and Berber. Darija belongs to the Maghrebi (Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco) Arabic dialect area--a group of dialects that very slightly between neighboring communities, but at as you travel in one direction, the differences accumulate and the dialects are no longer mutually intelligible.
A map of Arabic dialects across the Middle East and North Africa. The more similar the color, the more mutually intelligible the language.
Tamazight: Tamazight, also called Berber or Shliha, is the language of the native people of Morocco (pre-Arab). Tamazight, along with Darija, is spoken in the home and on the street. However, not all types of Tamazight are mutually intelligible. My host family comes from a village in the south of Morocco, and when Tamazight from the Rif region is spoken on television, they don't understand any of it. Because of this, Tamazight speakers learn Darija as a second language. Technically, Tamazight is the second official langauge of Morocco, and recently a writing system for it was introduced. (But from what I've heard, nobody knows how to write it)
French: French is often used in business, diplomacy, and government. Universities are taught in French, which poses significant difficulty for public school graduates, who come from 16+ years of instruction in MSA. My peers, students at a private school where the language of instruction is French, will already be at a great advantage when they enter university. The degree of French depends on the level of education and socio economic background. The higher the level of education or wealth, the more likely it is that the speaker will use French and Darija alternatively. For instance, my classmates are completely bilingual with French and Darija and thus will often switch back and forth in conversation.
Spanish: About 5 million Moroccans speak Spanish, particularly in the North and the Spanish Sahara, regions that used to be controlled by Spain. In these regions, there is Spanish TV. The role of Spanish declined after independence, when French and Arabic became Morocco's main languages.
English: Especially among young people, English is their preferred second language. In a survey during the early 2000s, over 50% of respondents cited English as their favorite foreign language because it is the primary international prestige language. English instruction begins in 7th grade, and it is the language of many movies and music. It seems that everyone is scrambling to learn English.
Is your head spinning? (Mine is). Speaking multiple languages a necessity for survival. Multilingualism can make focusing on a single language difficult, because you are never completely immersed in a single tongue, but it affords you the opportunity to learn several languages at once. I'll leave you with this quote I saw on Tumblr:
"If learning a language hasn’t brought you joy, you’re doing it wrong. And if it hasn’t brought you despair, you’re not far enough along yet."
Truer words were never spoken.
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