Basically, I want to be able to converse at a basic level, but I'm not sure which dialect to learn. I've got a course in Gulf Arabic, Egyptian Arabic and Eastern Arabic, which dialect would be mostly understood in Tunisia?
Hmm, so Maghrebi is pretty much the North African dialect, correct?
Also, would any of those other dialects be understood in North African countries?
Yeh most should be understood in N.Africa, my friends are from Algeria, also maghrebi and they have no problem understanding people from the Gulf or Syria etc.
I think you should learn MSA (modern standard arabic) understood everywhere.
That said, the local dialects of Arabic can be quite different from place to place, country to country.
The Arabic spoken in;
Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia – the Maghrebi dialect – is heavily influenced by French and Berber.
Egyptian dialect is quite distinct, but is widely understood since Cairo is home to the major Arabic film and television studios.
Syrians, Palestinians and Lebanese speak the Levantine dialect, which is markedly softer than the guttural sounds of the Gulf Arabic.
Unless people from one end of the Arab speaking world converse in Modern Standard Arabic (the written language), they run the risk of being either misunderstood or not understood at all.
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