deja ديجا
Tunisian Derja · adverb
“deja” (ديجا) is an adverb in Tunisian Derja meaning already.
Meanings
- already
Usage
Dija is the French "déjà", fully integrated into derja and very frequent in speech. It generally comes before the verb, as in dija klit, "I have already eaten", or at the start of a sentence. It coexists with 9bal, "before", and is also used to mean "anyway, from the start": dija ma 3andich wa9t, "basically I don't have time". The word is colloquial. In arabizi, it is most often written the French way, deja.
Example
ديجا خلّصت الكراء.
deja khallast el kre.
“I already paid the rent.”
How to write it in Latin letters
In Arabizi, Darija written in Latin letters, you will find “deja” but also “déjà”, “dija” and “deja2”. No spelling is official: people write the sounds as they hear them.
Digits stand in for Arabic letters that have no Latin equivalent: 2 is hamza (ء), a glottal stop.
Type “deja” on the Arabic keyboard
In Algerian Darja
Spelt the same way in Arabic, the word also exists in Algerian Darja, where it means “already”; “first of all, anyway”: dija in Algerian.