Masculine and Feminine Nouns

Lesson objective

In this lesson, you will learn how masculine and feminine nouns work in Darija.

Gender of nouns

In Darija, every noun is either masculine or feminine.

Feminine nouns ending in “a”

In general, nouns that end with an a sound are feminine.

English	Darija
Name	smiya
City	mdina
One chicken	djaja
Television	tlfaza

Forming a feminine noun

For words that describe professions or people doing an activity, the feminine form is often made by adding a to the masculine form.

Masculine	Feminine
Male teacher — ustad	Female teacher — ustada
Working — xddam	Working — xddama

Feminine words without “a”

Some feminine words do not end in a. There are three groups to be aware of.

1. Words that are naturally feminine

These words are feminine because of their meaning — for example om (mother) and amal (a girl’s name).

2. Most body parts that come in pairs

English	Darija
An eye	3in
A hand	yd
A foot	rjl
An ear	udn

3. Other feminine nouns

Some nouns are feminine even though they do not follow one of the previous patterns — for example ḍ-ḍar (the house) and š-šms (the sun).

Transcription reminder

• j — the sound heard in the English word pleasure
• 3 — a deep throat sound introduced in the pronunciation lessons

Doubled letters

When the same character appears twice, the consonant has a shedda and must be pronounced longer.