tomatich طوماطيش
Moroccan Darija · noun
“tomatich” (طوماطيش) is a noun in Moroccan Darija meaning tomatoes (collective).
Meanings
- tomatoes (collective)
Usage
Ṭumaṭiš is the usual collective noun for tomatoes, at the market as in the kitchen. It is used without a plural to talk about the produce: kilo d ṭumaṭiš, "a kilo of tomatoes". For a single tomato, say ṭumaṭiša. The word is part of the basic vocabulary of Moroccan cooking: salad, tajine, chakchouka, sauce. In some regions the shortened form maṭiša is also heard, with the same meaning. For an English speaker, the pitfall is to treat this collective as a plural: the produce is spoken of as a mass, grammatically singular.
Example
شري ليا كيلو ديال طوماطيش
chri liya kilo dyal tomatich
“Buy me a kilo of tomatoes.”
How to write it in Latin letters
In Arabizi, Darija written in Latin letters, you will find “tomatich” but also “tomatiche”, “toumatich”, “tomatech” and “tmatich”. No spelling is official: people write the sounds as they hear them.
Type “tomatich” on the Arabic keyboard
In Algerian Darja
Spelt the same way in Arabic, the word also exists in Algerian Darja, where it means “tomatoes”; “a tomato (singular: tomaticha)”: tomatich in Algerian.