The numbers are the hard part, not the grammar

French grammar is famously unforgiving in France. In Morocco, where it is a second language for nearly everyone you will speak to, it is held much more loosely: a wrong gender or a missed agreement goes unremarked, and simple sentences are entirely normal. What will genuinely trip you up is not grammar at all. It is money, and how it is counted aloud.

French counts awkwardly from seventy up, and the souk counts fast. Seventy is soixante-dix, sixty-ten. Eighty is quatre-vingts, four twenties. Ninety is quatre-vingt-dix, four twenties and ten, so ninety-nine arrives as quatre-vingt-dix-neuf — five words for one price. Those are exactly the numbers you will hear in a carpet shop, said quickly, and it pays to drill them before you need them. When in doubt, ask for it written down; every seller has a pen or a calculator.

Some prices are not quoted in dirhams at all. Older vendors, and many Moroccans talking about larger sums, still count in centimes, a hundred to the dirham, so a figure that sounds ten or a hundred times too high may be perfectly fair. In traditional markets you may also hear prices in rials, twenty to the dirham. If a number sounds absurd, ask simply: en dirhams ? Nobody minds, and it is far better than paying a hundred times over.

Darija is written several ways at once. It has no single standard spelling. You will see it in Arabic script, in French-style Latin letters like the ones in this kit, and on shopfronts, phones and posters in a mix of Latin letters and numerals, where 3 stands for an Arabic throat sound and 7 for a breathy h — so 3afak is please and 7anout is a corner shop. Once you know the trick, a surprising number of signs become readable.

French, with Arabic all around it

This kit teaches French because it is the language a visitor can actually use in Morocco — with the riad, the taxi, the menu, the pharmacy and almost every sign. But it is rarely anyone's first language. At home and in the street most Moroccans speak Darija, Moroccan Arabic, or one of the Amazigh languages of the mountains and the south, and the French you hear has been shaped by them. Many Moroccans tap the r on the tip of the tongue the Arabic way rather than scraping it at the back like a Parisian; you will hear both, and either is understood. Sentences also change language halfway through without anyone noticing: a single remark can start in Darija, borrow a French word for the car or the fridge, and end with wakha, okay.

So listen for the Arabic layer inside the French. A handful of Darija words turn up in nearly every exchange, and recognising them makes what you hear much less mysterious. Wakha is okay. Safi is that's it, enough, done — the word to say when the tea glass is full or the haggle is finished. Afak is please, choukran thank you, bslama goodbye and mzyan good. Say any one of them in the middle of your French and watch the conversation warm up.

Six things that catch visitors out

The street is closed only to sell you a detour. In the medinas of Fes and Marrakech a friendly stranger may tell you the road ahead is closed, the square is the other way, or the tannery is shut today, and offer to take you round. That is the first line of an unofficial guide's pitch. A smile, la, choukran, and walking on in the direction you were going is the answer; if you want a guide, the licensed ones carry an official badge and can be booked through your riad.

Taxis come in two kinds and many colours. A petit taxi works within one city, carries up to three passengers and should run its meter, the compteur — ask for it as you get in. Each city paints its own: red in Casablanca and Fes, beige in Marrakech, blue in Rabat. A grand taxi, usually an old saloon, runs between towns and leaves when its seats are full, with six passengers squeezed in; buy two seats if you want room, or the whole car if you want to leave now.

Friday is the holy day, and lunch is couscous. The midday prayer on Friday is the most important of the week, and many shops close for it and families gather afterwards for couscous, the dish traditionally saved for that day. Some restaurants serve it only on Fridays. The weekend is still Saturday and Sunday for offices and banks, but Friday afternoon belongs to family.

Dress for the country, not for the resort. In Agadir's beach hotels or a Marrakech pool anything goes, but in the medina, in villages and in the smaller cities, covered shoulders and knees for everyone draw far less attention, and for women a light scarf in the bag is useful for a shrine or a conservative village. Men in shorts are not offensive, merely obvious.

A public hammam has its own rules. The neighbourhood hammam is a weekly ritual, not a spa: men and women go at separate times or to separate doors, everyone keeps their underwear on, and you bring your own towel, the olive-oil black soap called savon beldi and a rough mitt, the kessa, for scrubbing. An attendant will scrub you for a small fee if you ask. The spa hammams in hotels are lovely; the local one is where you see the real thing.

Bring something sweet if you are invited home. An invitation into a Moroccan home is generous and meant. Pastries, fruit or a box of tea and sugar are the traditional gift; shoes come off at the door; and the host will keep filling your plate and your glass. The way to stop is to say safi, choukran with a hand on your heart — and to have left a little on the plate, because an empty one is simply refilled.

Four languages on one street

Morocco is layered, and so is its speech. Darija is the language of homes, cafés and the street. Amazigh, the language of Morocco's oldest inhabitants, has been an official language since 2011, spoken in its main forms in the Rif, the Middle Atlas and the Souss; its own alphabet, Tifinagh, now appears on government buildings beside Arabic, so many official signs carry three scripts at once. Standard Arabic is the language of the news, the mosque and the state. French runs business, banking, universities and most menus. Spanish is common in the north, and English is growing fast among the young.

How far English gets you depends on where you stand. In a Marrakech riad, with a licensed guide in Fes, or among students in Rabat, it is fine. With a petit taxi driver, in a small-town café, at a pharmacy or in an Atlas village, it is French or nothing — and in the villages, sometimes only Darija or Amazigh. In the souk, sellers have a sentence in every language you could name, and the French in this kit is still what lets you slow the conversation down to your own speed.

The kit's own advice is to open with salam alaikoum and then carry on in French, and that is the whole strategy in one line. French is the practical tool; a word of Darija is the warmth. A visitor who says choukran instead of merci is still understood perfectly, and is remembered.

Greetings take time, and refusals take a hand on the heart

A Moroccan greeting is not a formality to get through. Between acquaintances it is a small exchange of good wishes — how are you, how is the family, all is well, praise God — and the reply to labas ?, all well?, is labas, hamdoullah, fine, thanks be to God. Going straight from hello to business, the efficient English way, comes across as abrupt. Even with a stranger in a shop, a greeting and a moment's patience before the question changes the tone of everything that follows.

Respect has its own words. An older man is addressed as Sidi and an older woman as Lalla, and someone well on in years — especially one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca — may be called Hajj or Hajja as a mark of esteem. Among the young, khoya, my brother, and khti, my sister, are everywhere. Sellers will call you mon ami or my friend; that is salesmanship, and it is fine to smile at it.

Saying no is a skill, and the hand on the heart is half of it. In the medina you will be offered things constantly — directions, a guide, a shop, a cousin's carpet. The polite and effective answer is la, choukran, no thank you, with a smile and the right hand laid flat on your chest, and then to keep walking. You do not need to explain, and an explanation is usually the opening of a negotiation. The same hand on the heart accompanies thanks, a greeting across a street, or a refusal of more food.

Men and women greet differently. A man should not offer his hand first to a Moroccan woman; if she offers hers, shake it, and if she does not, a nod and a hand on the heart is the respectful greeting. Between women, and between men who know each other, kisses on the cheek are common — sometimes two, sometimes four or more between friends who have not met for a while.

From the Rif to the Sahara

The north looks across the strait at Europe and spent the first half of the twentieth century under a Spanish protectorate. In Tangier, Tetouan and the blue-washed mountain town of Chefchaouen, Spanish is often more useful than English and sometimes more useful than French, and the Rif mountains behind them speak their own Amazigh language, Tarifit. Tangier in particular has a long, cosmopolitan history as a port that belonged to everyone and no one.

The imperial cities of the interior each have a character. Fes has the oldest and most bewildering medina, a cuisine Moroccans themselves regard as the finest, and al-Qarawiyyin, founded in 859 and often described as the oldest continuously operating university in the world. Meknes is quieter, Rabat is the calm, orderly capital, and Marrakech is the busiest, the most visited and the most persistent in its salesmanship. Casablanca, the economic capital, is the most modern and the most French-speaking of all.

South of the High Atlas the country becomes Amazigh in language and look: earth-built ksour and kasbahs, terraced valleys and, in the Souss around Agadir, the argan trees whose oil is pressed by women's cooperatives. Their language there is Tachelhit. Further south, in the desert regions, Hassaniya Arabic takes over, and the dunes at Merzouga and Mhamid are the Sahara of everyone's imagination.

The food changes with the map. Fes is known for pastilla, pigeon or chicken in flaky pastry dusted with cinnamon and sugar. Marrakech has tanjia, beef slow-cooked in a clay urn buried for hours in the ashes of a hammam furnace. Essaouira, on the Atlantic, grills its sardines straight off the boats, and the north shares dishes, and words for them, with Andalusia across the strait.

Morocco, in sixty small pieces

Everything the card at the top of Start draws from — one a day, and here is the whole file. Read it on the plane.

• Rabat is named after a ribat, the fortified religious outpost that once guarded the river mouth; the twelfth-century name in full was Ribat al-Fath, the stronghold of victory.
• Ask a café for a nous nous and you get a glass that is half coffee and half hot milk; the name is Darija for half half, and it is the standard order between breakfast and lunch.
• Ras el hanout means head of the shop: it is not a fixed recipe but the blend a spice merchant makes from the best of what he has, and no two shops mix it the same way.
• The Amazigh people's own name for themselves is usually translated as free people, and its plural, Imazighen, is the word you will hear far more often than Berber.
• The chergui is a hot, dry wind that arrives off the Sahara from the east, pushing temperatures up sharply in cities that are otherwise kept mild by the Atlantic.
• Ifrane in the Middle Atlas has pitched roofs, cedar forests and ski slopes, and holds the record for the lowest temperature ever measured in Africa, minus 23.9 degrees Celsius in 1935.
• Opposite the Bou Inania madrasa in Fès hangs the Dar al-Magana, a water clock of 1357 with a row of brass bowls beneath thirteen windows; how it actually worked is still argued over.
• The Draa is the longest river in the country, running out of the High Atlas and down a long ribbon of palm groves before soaking away into the desert; only after heavy rain does any of it reach the Atlantic.
• English got the name Morocco from Marrakesh: European traders called the whole country after the southern capital they dealt with, and the word reached them through Spanish as Marruecos.
• Morocco leather, the soft goatskin that binds fine books, is named after the country: it was tanned in Fès and shipped to European binderies for centuries.
• Friday is couscous day in most households. The grain is steamed over the broth two or three times in a couscoussier rather than boiled, which is why it comes out light instead of claggy.
• Many neighbourhoods still share a wood-fired oven called a ferran, where families send their own trays of dough and mark each loaf so it comes home to the right kitchen.
• Gnawa music is built on the guembri, a three-stringed bass lute with a camel-skin face, and the qraqeb, iron castanets whose clatter drives ceremonies that run all night.
• At Merzouga the flat stony desert stops and the dunes of Erg Chebbi begin, a single field of orange sand standing like a wall above the plain with no gradual build-up at all.
• The country's name in Arabic is al-Maghrib, meaning the west, or the place where the sun sets, the far edge of the Arabic-speaking world as medieval geographers knew it.
• Whole towns are named after the day their weekly souk is held: Souk El Arbaa is Wednesday market, Khemis Zemamra takes its name from khemis, Thursday, and Had Soualem from had, Sunday.
• Moroccan Arabic, called Darija, drops so many short vowels that words pile up into consonant clusters, which is why Arabic speakers from further east often need a moment to catch up.
• Sijilmassa, on the edge of the Sahara in the Tafilalt, was the northern end of the caravan roads: gold came up from West Africa and slabs of quarried salt went south in exchange.
• Volubilis, near Meknès, was a Roman provincial town whose mosaic floors and olive presses are still in place, proof that the plain around it was pressing oil two thousand years ago.
• Chefchaouen, tucked into the Rif mountains, paints its lanes, doorframes and stairs in dozens of shades of blue, and repaints them regularly to keep the colour fresh.
• Tanjia is a Marrakech speciality named after the clay urn it cooks in, with beef, preserved lemon and cumin sealed inside and buried for hours in the ashes of the bathhouse furnace.
• Moulay Ismail's granary at Meknès was built with walls metres thick and its own underground water supply, so that stored grain and stabled horses stayed cool through the hottest summers.
• Three minarets raised by the same twelfth-century Moroccan dynasty are still standing: the Koutoubia in Marrakech, the unfinished Hassan Tower in Rabat, and the Giralda in Seville.
• Marrakech was founded by the Almoravids in the eleventh century as a camp at the desert's edge, and the vast palm grove on its outskirts was planted to feed and shade the new city.
• Football fills the streets on match nights, and in 2022 the national side became the first African and first Arab team to reach a World Cup semi-final.
• A visit to the hammam is a two-hour affair: black olive-paste soap called savon beldi, a scrub with a rough kessa glove, and rhassoul clay from the Moulouya valley for the hair.
• White storks nest on the walls and the ruined minaret of Chellah in Rabat, a Roman town later turned into a royal burial ground, and the clattering of their bills carries across the whole garden.
• Andalusian music crossed the strait southward with families leaving Iberia after the fall of Granada in 1492, and its suites are still played by orchestras in Fès and Tétouan.
• Two seas meet here: the Atlantic runs down the west coast and the Mediterranean along the north, and at the Strait of Gibraltar only about fourteen kilometres of water separate Africa from Europe.
• During Ramadan the fast is broken with harira, a tomato, lentil and chickpea soup, alongside dates and chebakia, a sesame-coated pastry folded into a flower and dipped in warm honey.
• The University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fès was founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri, who spent an inheritance on it, and it is recognised as the oldest existing, continually operating educational institution in the world.
• Four mountain systems cross the country, the Rif along the north coast and then the Middle, High and Anti-Atlas, which is why you can drive from surf to snow in a single day.
• At a wedding the bride is carried in on an amaria, a decorated open chair lifted by four men, and she may change into five or six different regional outfits before the night is over.
• Two words will carry a visitor through half of daily life: wakha, meaning okay or fine, and safi, meaning that is enough, done, no more needed.
• Jemaa el-Fna in Marrakech empties of traffic each evening and fills with storytellers, musicians and food stalls; UNESCO named its oral tradition a masterpiece of world heritage in 2001.
• Souss-Massa on the Atlantic coast holds the last substantial wild colony of the northern bald ibis, a bare-faced, shaggy-necked bird that nests on sea cliffs and feeds in the fields behind them.
• Pastilla is a pie of spiced poultry and almonds wrapped in tissue-thin warqa pastry and finished with cinnamon and icing sugar, so the first bite is sweet and the second is savoury.
• Ibn Battuta set out from Tangier in 1325 meaning only to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and did not come home for twenty-four years, having crossed Asia and Africa and dictated it all into a book.
• Tamazight is written in Tifinagh, an angular script whose letters look like circles, crosses and chevrons, and it now stands beside Arabic on official signs across the country.
• Ports here were opened to American ships in 1777, and the treaty of friendship signed in 1786 is the longest unbroken treaty relationship the United States has; the old legation in Tangier is now a museum.
• The everyday greeting labas literally asks no harm?, and the answer is the same word, so two people meeting agree twice over that nothing bad has happened.
• Traditional houses show the street a blank wall and keep everything, the light, the water, the tiled colour and the good rooms, facing inward onto a courtyard nobody outside can see.
• Saffron is grown around Taliouine in the Anti-Atlas, where the purple crocus flowers are picked by hand at dawn through the autumn and each one gives up just three red threads.
• Zellige tiles are not printed. Each glazed square is chipped by hand into stars, chevrons and eight-pointed rosettes with a sharpened hammer, then laid glaze-down into a bed of plaster.
• The djellaba is a long hooded robe worn over other clothes by men and women alike, and its pointed hood, the qob, keeps the sun off in summer and the rain out in winter.
• In tbourida, a line of riders in full dress charges at a gallop and fires their muskets in one single crack; if the shots do not sound as one, the run does not count.
• Preserved lemons, packed in nothing but salt and their own juice until the skin turns soft, are the backbone of the cooking here; the peel is what gets used and the pulp is often discarded.
• The black marble quarried around Erfoud is packed with fossil sea creatures from a time when the Sahara was ocean floor, and it is polished into tabletops with the shells left showing.
• The film Casablanca was shot entirely on a studio lot in California, but Ouarzazate has since built a real industry out of standing in for the ancient world in one production after another.
• Amlou is a thick spread of toasted almonds, honey and argan oil, eaten on bread at breakfast in the Souss valley and often described as the local answer to peanut butter.
• Most of the world's remaining Barbary macaques live in the cedar forests of the Middle Atlas, the only wild monkeys anywhere in Africa north of the Sahara.
• A tagine is both the pot and what cooks in it: the tall conical lid catches rising steam, cools it and drips it back down, so meat and vegetables braise for hours on almost no added water.
• Beghrir are semolina pancakes raised with yeast so the surface opens into hundreds of tiny craters as they cook; they are called thousand-hole pancakes and drink up butter and honey.
• In the Todra Gorge the limestone walls climb around three hundred metres while the floor narrows to a slot barely ten metres wide, with a road and a stream sharing the gap.
• The argan tree grows wild almost nowhere but the southwest of the country, goats really do climb into its branches for the fruit, and the whole argan forest is a UNESCO biosphere reserve.
• Agadir is simply the Amazigh word for a fortified granary. Villages in the Anti-Atlas built these communal strongrooms into cliffs, each family renting a locked cell for grain, oil and documents.
• Mint tea is poured from as high as the arm will reach, partly to cool it on the way down and partly to raise a head of foam on each glass, which is the mark of a pour done properly.
• Msemen is folded rather than rolled: the dough is stretched to a translucent sheet, brushed with butter and fine semolina, then folded into a square and fried, which is what gives the flatbread its many separate layers.
• Jbel Toubkal, in the High Atlas south of Marrakech, rises to 4,167 metres and is the highest summit in North Africa.
• Every September the Aït Hdiddou hold a moussem at Imilchil high in the Atlas, a fair of livestock, music and betrothals that has been kept up for generations.