Hassaniya

[adventrue]

Hello,
I wonder if anyone knows Hassaniya, or has tried learning it, and can tell me some things about it.
Really curious to meet you!

For one, I heard it is relatively close to MSA... How could that possibly be?

[eskandar]

For one, I heard it is relatively close to MSA... How could that possibly be?

Speakers of literally every dialect of colloquial Arabic in existence have, at various times, claimed that their dialect is "relatively close" to MSA (or "closer than the others," or similarly silly claims). Every dialect has its own set of conservative features that are more like MSA than others, along with its own set of innovative features that are less like MSA than others; Hasaniyya is no exception, but in my opinion it's not much closer to nor further from MSA than Egyptian, Iraqi, or whatever other dialect you want to compare it to.