World Language Map

Where is Moroccan Arabic spoken?

Moroccan Arabic (الداريجة) is an Afro-Asiatic language, spoken in Morocco, Algeria and Western Sahara. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
  • Austroasiatic
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  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where Moroccan Arabic is spoken

Moroccan Arabic is spoken in 3 countries: Morocco, Algeria and Western Sahara. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
Morocco87%32,527,212
AlgeriaNot givenNot given
Western SaharaNot givenNot given

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

Moroccan Arabic has no area on the map because no open area map covers it. The ringed point is the position Glottolog gives for the language.

How many people speak Moroccan Arabic?

Wikidata gives about 27.5 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where Moroccan Arabic sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Moroccan Arabic as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Afro-Asiatic
  2. Semitic
  3. West Semitic
  4. Central Semitic
  5. Arabian
  6. Arabic
  7. North African Arabic
  8. Western Middle Arabic
  9. Maghrebi
  10. Moroccan Arabic

Related languages

Other languages in the Maghrebi group:

More about Moroccan Arabic

Codes: ISO 639-3 ary, Glottolog moro1292. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Moroccan Arabic

Where is Moroccan Arabic spoken?

Moroccan Arabic is spoken in Morocco, Algeria and Western Sahara. Unicode CLDR puts it at 87% of the population of Morocco, which is about 32,527,212 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Moroccan Arabic?

Wikidata gives about 27.5 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.

Which language family is Moroccan Arabic in?

Glottolog places Moroccan Arabic in the Afro-Asiatic family, in the branch Semitic, West Semitic, Central Semitic, Arabian, Arabic, North African Arabic, Western Middle Arabic and Maghrebi.

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