The Fessi dialect () is a dialect of
Moroccan vernacular Arabic, or Darija, associated with the city of
Fes
Fez or Fes (; ar, فاس, fās; zgh, ⴼⵉⵣⴰⵣ, fizaz; french: Fès) is a city in northern inland Morocco and the capital of the Fès-Meknès administrative region. It is the second largest city in Morocco, with a population of 1.11 mi ...
, especially with the old elite families of the city.
It has traditionally been regarded as a
prestige dialect over other forms of Moroccan Darija—particularly those seen as rural or ''
'arūbi'' ( "of the rural Arabs")—due to its "association with the socio-economic power and dominance that its speakers enjoy at the national level," in the words of
Mohammed Errihani
Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monothe ...
.
Like other urban Moroccan dialects, it is considered "pre-Hilalian," as the dialect predates the migration of the
Banu Hilal and their settlement in the Maghreb.
It has traditionally had distinctive linguistic features, many of which were shared with other "pre-Hilalian" dialects in the region:
on the
phonological level, these include the stereotypical use of a
postalveolar approximant (like the American pronunciation of /ɹ/ in the word "red") in the place of a
trilled for /
ر/, or a
pharyngealized glottal stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
or
voiceless uvular plosive in the place of a
voiced velar plosive (
g">G_(IPA).html" ;"title="nowiki/>
g for /Qoph">ق/.
On the morphosyntactic">G (IPA)">g">G_(IPA).html" ;"title="nowiki/>G (IPA)">g for /
ق/.
On the
inflections is neutralized in the second Grammatical person">person singular.
Due to social and demographic changes that started in the 20th century such as mass rural migration into the city and the departure of most of the city's old urban elites to Casablanca, these old linguistic features are no longer dominant in the speech of Arabic speakers in Fes today.
Prior to the departure of most Jewish residents in the second half of the 20th century, the
Jewish community in Fes also spoke Judeo-Moroccan Arabic">an Arabic dialect similar to the rest of city.
Notes
References
{{Arabic-lang-stub
Moroccan Arabic
Fez, Morocco