mahrajen مهرجان
Tunisian Derja · noun
“mahrajen” (مهرجان) is a noun in Tunisian Derja meaning festival.
Meanings
- festival
- public celebration
Usage
Mahrajen means a cultural or artistic festival; the plural is mahrajenet. In Tunisia the word mainly evokes summer festivals with their open-air concert evenings (sahriyet), but also film and theatre festivals and regional fairs built around a local product. One says mchina lel mahrajen (we went to the festival), sahriya fel mahrajen. The word is used in everyday speech with no change of register. Ironically, it can describe a chaotic or noisy situation: 3amlin mahrajen (they're making a whole circus of it).
Example
البارح مشينا لسهرية في المهرجان
lbare7 mchina l sahriya fel mahrajen
“Yesterday we went to an evening show at the festival.”
How to write it in Latin letters
In Arabizi, Darija written in Latin letters, you will find “mahrajen” but also “mahrajan”, “mahragen” and “mehrjen”. No spelling is official: people write the sounds as they hear them.
Type “mahrajen” on the Arabic keyboard
In Moroccan Darija
Spelt the same way in Arabic, the word also exists in Moroccan Darija, where it means “festival (music, film, culture)”; “big celebration, public festivities”: mihrajan in Moroccan.
In Algerian Darja
Spelt the same way in Arabic, the word also exists in Algerian Darja, where it means “festival, cultural event”; “celebration, large public festivity”: mahrajane in Algerian.