What language should I speak?

Morocco's official languages are Arabic and Tamazight (Berber). The spoken vernacular is Darija — a Moroccan Arabic that's mutually unintelligible with Levantine or Gulf Arabic. French is the de facto second language: hotel staff, doctors, civil servants, anyone with a high-school education speaks it. English is now standard in tourism — riads, guides, upscale restaurants, the medina shopkeepers in Marrakech and Fes — but drops off sharply outside those circuits.

In the Rif (Chefchaouen, Tetouan, Tangier) Spanish persists from the colonial period and many people prefer it to French. In the Atlas and the south, Tashelhit and Tamazight are the home languages and French is sometimes weaker than English.

Five Darija words go a long way: salaam (hello), shukran (thank you — but read the unsolicited-help entry first), bsslama (goodbye), bzzaf (a lot, too much — useful in the souk), and la, shukran (no, thank you). "La" alone is short; "la, shukran" is the polite refusal.