I arrived with French, discovered Darija, and learned that in a souk the negotiation is the relationship.
Draft — sample text, not yet Fatma's own account
I landed thinking my French would carry me, and in most places it did. French opens plenty of doors in Morocco. It just does not open the same door as Darija.
Darija is Moroccan Arabic, and it is its own thing — fast, clipped, with French and Amazigh threaded through it. Nothing I had studied prepared my ear for it.
In the souk I got the real lesson. I asked a price in French, got a number, said no thank you, and walked. Perfectly efficient. Also, I now understand, slightly rude.
The next day I tried it in Darija. Salam. Bshhal? And the whole shape of the exchange changed. Tea appeared. The number moved. The conversation lasted twenty minutes and I bought nothing, and it was still a good exchange.
That is the part travellers miss. The haggling is not a fight over money, it is a short relationship with a beginning, a middle and an ending, and the price is only the record of how it went.
"La, shukran" — no, thank you — turned out to be the single most useful sentence I owned. Said warmly, it ends things with everyone's day intact.
I use Morocco constantly in lessons now, because it is the clearest example of a place where five words in the local language buy you something that fluency in a colonial language cannot.
Five things to say, and when to say them.
Salam
in Darija
Hello
Short for "salam alaikum", and the right way to start anything.
Shukran
in Darija
Thank you
Understood everywhere, and always worth saying.
Bshhal?
in Darija
How much?
French works widely too, but Darija changes the price and the mood.
La, shukran
in Darija
No, thank you
The most useful sentence in any souk.
Inshallah
in Darija
God willing
Sincere, and also a soft way of saying "we'll see".