dyalna ديالنا
Moroccan Darija · pronoun
“dyalna” (ديالنا) is a pronoun in Moroccan Darija meaning our.
Meanings
- our
- ours, belonging to us
- our people, our own
Usage
Dyalna is dyal followed by the first person plural suffix. After a definite noun it is equivalent to "our": "ddar dyalna" (our house). On its own it means "ours" or "belonging to us": "hadchi dyalna". It can also mean "our own", that is, family, people from home, or the team one supports. Pitfall for an English speaker: the preceding noun takes the article, whereas English puts none before "our". The synthetic form with the suffix -na also exists (darna), especially for kinship terms and close objects.
Example
هادشي ماشي ديالنا
hadchi machi dyalna
“That's not ours.”
How to write it in Latin letters
In Arabizi, Darija written in Latin letters, you will find “dyalna” but also “dialna”, “diyalna”, “dyalena” and “dyelna”. No spelling is official: people write the sounds as they hear them.