What do common Moroccan signs / words mean?

Reading the everyday words on signs and doorways transforms how you move through Morocco — suddenly the medina goes from a baffling maze to something you can half-navigate. Most public signage is in Arabic and French together, so French does a lot of the heavy lifting: sortie (exit), entrée (entrance), toilettes or WC (toilet), pharmacie (pharmacy, marked by a green cross), banque (bank), poste (post office) and gare (station).

Then there are the Arabic-rooted place words baked into addresses and maps, and these are the ones that unlock the medina. Bab (باب) means 'gate' — the old cities have grand named gates like Bab Boujloud in Fes that are your key landmarks. Derb is a small alley or dead-end lane, so a riad address like 'Derb el-Hara' is telling you which little lane to find. Zankat or rue means street, and saha or place means square.

A cluster of words describe the buildings and spaces themselves: medina (the old walled city), souk (market, often subdivided — souk Smarine, souk of the dyers, and so on), riad (a traditional house built around a courtyard garden), dar (house), kasbah (a fortified citadel or quarter), funduq (an old merchants' inn) and mellah (the historic Jewish quarter). Hammam means the public steam bath, and madrasa an old Quranic school — many are now stunning visitor sites.

My tip: screenshot or jot down a dozen of these before you go, and pay attention to the green pharmacy crosses, the blue-and-white street tiles in cities like Fes, and the named babs as your anchors. You won't read fluent Arabic, but recognising bab, derb, souk and riad means you can follow a handwritten riad direction, ask for the right gate, and feel oriented rather than lost. That small literacy is quietly one of the most useful things you can carry into a Moroccan city.