Work, school and study in Algerian Darija

What do you do is asked of everybody, everywhere, within minutes. Being able to answer it, and to ask it back, and to follow up on the answer, is worth a disproportionate amount for the effort it costs.

This page has jobs, offices, classrooms, studying and the shape of an ordinary working day. A hundred and sixty four entries, and it includes the single most useful question a learner can own.

The most useful question in the library

كيفاش نقول, how do you say, is on this page. It turns every person you meet into a teacher and it turns not knowing a word from a dead end into a question. A learner who uses it ten times a day learns ten words a day from real people in real situations, which is worth more than any list. Learn it today, before anything else here.

Answer with more than a job title

Saying your profession is one word and it ends the exchange. Saying what you do, where, and something about it keeps it going. Build three sentences about your work and learn them properly. You will use them at every first meeting for the rest of your time speaking this language, so the hour spent getting them right is repaid many times over.

Study words are useful even if you do not study

The vocabulary here for reading, learning, being difficult, being easy is exactly the vocabulary you need to talk about learning Darija itself, which is a subject every Algerian you meet will want to discuss with you. صعيب, difficult, and نقرا, I read or I study, will come up in your first conversation about your own progress.

What to do with this page

Write your three sentences about your work. Then write two questions to ask somebody else about theirs. Learn all five. That is a complete, self contained conversation you can have with anybody, and unlike most textbook dialogues it is one you will actually be in this week.

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