Do they speak English in Marrakech?

Where English gets you by

Marrakech lives on tourism, so anyone whose work involves visitors — riad staff, licensed guides, waiters in well-known restaurants, shopkeepers in the main souks — will usually have functional to fluent English. You can plan a whole trip, book tours and eat out comfortably in English.

Step into a neighbourhood café, a local bus or a small shop off the tourist trail, though, and English thins out fast. There, French is the reliable second language and Moroccan Arabic (Darija) is the first.

A little effort goes far

You don't need to learn Arabic, but a handful of words earns real warmth: salam (hello), shukran (thank you), la shukran (no thank you — useful for polite refusals), bslama (goodbye) and bshhal? (how much?). Any French you have will also help. When language runs out, numbers on a phone screen and good humour close most gaps, especially when haggling.