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This article contains Arabic text, written from right to left in a cursive style with some letters joined. Without proper rendering support, you may see unjoined Arabic letters written left-to-right instead of right-to-left or other symbols instead of Arabic script.

Egyptian Arabic (اللغة المصرية الحديثة‎,^[3] IPA: [elˈloɣæ l.mɑsˤˈɾejjɑ l.ħæˈdiːsæ]^{[note A]} "The Modern Egyptian Language"; abbreviated: مصرى‎^[4] [ˈmɑsˤɾi]‎ "Egyptian") is the language spoken by contemporary Egyptians. It is more commonly known locally as the Egyptian colloquial language (اللغة المصرية العامية [elˈloɣæ l.mɑsˤˈɾejjɑ l.ʕæmˈmejjæ]^{[note B]}) or Egyptian dialect (اللهجة المصرية [elˈlæhɡæ l.mɑsˤˈɾejjɑ]^{[note C]}).

Egyptian Arabic is a variety of the Arabic languages of the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. It originated in the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt around the capital Cairo. Descended from the spoken Arabic brought to Egypt during the seventh-century AD Muslim conquest, its development was influenced by the indigenous Coptic of pre-Islamic Egypt,^[5][6][7] and later by other languages such as Turkish/Ottoman Turkish, Italian, French and English. The 80 million Egyptians speak a continuum of dialects, among which Cairene is the most prominent. It is also understood across most of the Arab World due to the predominance of Egyptian media, making it the most widely spoken and one of the most widely studied varieties of Arabic.^{[citation needed]}

The terms Egyptian Arabic and Masri are usually used synonymously with "Cairene Arabic", the dialect of the Egyptian capital. The country's native name, Maṣr, is used locally to refer to the capital Cairo itself. Similar to the role played by Parisian French, Masri is by far the most dominant in all areas of national life. While it is essentially a spoken language, it is encountered in written form in novels, plays, poems (vernacular literature) as well as in comics, advertising, some newspapers and transcriptions of popular songs. In most other written media and in TV news reporting, a standard register of Classical Arabic is used. The Egyptian vernacular is normally written in the Arabic alphabet for local consumption, although it is commonly transcribed into Latin letters or in the International Phonetic Alphabet in linguistics text and textbooks aimed at teaching non-native learners. Also, it is written in ASCII Latin alphabet mainly online & SMSs.

Geographic distribution[link]

Egyptian Arabic is spoken natively by more than 52 million Egyptians^[8] and as a second language by most of the remaining 24 million Egyptians^[9] in several regional dialects, as well as by immigrant Egyptian communities in the Middle east, Europe, North America, Australia and South East Asia. Among the spoken varieties of Arabic, standard Egyptian Arabic (based on the dialect of the Egyptian capital) is the only one to have become a lingua franca in other parts of the Arabic-speaking world for two main reasons^[10][11]: the proliferation and popularity of Egyptian films and other media in the region since the early 20th century; and the great number of Egyptian teachers and professors who were instrumental in setting up the education systems of various countries in the Arabian Peninsula and who also taught there and in other countries such as Algeria and Libya. Also many Lebanese artists choose to sing in Egyptian as well as Lebanese.

History[link]

The Egyptians slowly adopted the Arabic language as a written language following the Arab-Muslim conquest of Egypt in the 7th century AD. Up until then, they were speaking Egyptian in its Coptic form. For more than three centuries, there existed a period of Coptic-Arabic bilingualism in Lower Egypt. This trend would last for many more centuries in the south. Arabic may have been already familiar to Egyptians through pre-Islamic trade with Bedouin Arab tribes in the Sinai and the easternmost part of the Nile Delta. Egyptian Arabic seems to have begun taking shape in Fustat, the first Islamic capital of Egypt, and now part of modern-day Cairo.

One of the earliest linguistic sketches of Egyptian Arabic is a 16th century document entitled Daf` al-'iṣr `an kalām 'ahl Miṣr (دفع الإصر عن كلام أهل مصر, 'The Removal of the Burden from the Language of the People of Egypt') by Yūsuf al-Maġribi (يوسف المغربي). It contains key information on early Egyptian Arabic and the language situation in medieval Egypt. The main purpose of the document was to show that while the Egyptians' vernacular contained many critical "errors" vis-à-vis Classical Arabic, according to Maġribi, it was also related to Arabic in other respects. With the ongoing Islamization and Arabization of the country, Egyptian Arabic slowly supplanted spoken Egyptian. Local chroniclers mention the continued use of Coptic Egyptian as a spoken language until the 17th century AD by peasant women in Upper Egypt. Coptic is still the liturgical language of the Egyptian Coptic Church.

Official status[link]

Egyptian Arabic has no official status, and to date it is not officially recognized. Standard Arabic, a modernized form of Classical Arabic (Koranic Arabic), is the official language of Egypt (see diglossia). Interest in the local vernacular began in the 1800s as the Egyptian national movement for independence was taking shape. Questions about the reform and modernization of Arabic came to the fore, and for many decades to follow they were hotly debated in Egyptian intellectual circles. Proposals ranged from developing neologisms to replace archaic terminology in Standard Arabic; to the simplification of syntactical and morphological rules and the introduction of colloquialisms; to complete 'Egyptianization' (tamṣīr) by abandoning the so-called Standard Arabic in favor of Masri or Egyptian Arabic.^[12]

Proponents of language reform in Egypt included Qasim Amin, who also wrote the first Egyptian feminist treatise, former president of the Egyptian University, Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed, and noted intellectual Salama Moussa. They adopted a modernist, secular approach and disagreed with the assumption that Arabic was an immutable language because of its association with the Qur'an. For a while, Egyptian Arabic enjoyed a period of rich literary output until the movement was halted with the continuing rise of Islamism and Arab nationalism in Egypt and the Middle East, particularly with Gamal Abdel Nasser's assumption of power in 1954. The first modern Egyptian novel to be written in the vernacular was Muhammad Husayn Haykal's Zaynab in 1913. Other notable novelists such as Ihsan Abdel Quddous and Yusuf Idris, and poets such as Salah Jaheen, Abnudi and Fagoumi, helped solidify vernacular literature as a distinct literary genre.^[12]

Nasser undertook an Arabization campaign in Egypt's education system and government administration, which stoutly relegated Egyptian Arabic to secondary status. In the last fifty years, educated Egyptian as a result became heavily influenced by the official language - Standard Arabic. Following Nasser's death, interest in the Egyptian dialect was rekindled by vernacular authors.

As the status of Egyptian Arabic vis-à-vis Classical Arabic can have such political and religious implications in Egypt, the question of whether Egyptian Arabic should be considered a "dialect" or "language" can be a source of debate. In sociolinguistics, Egyptian Arabic can be seen as one of many distinct varieties which, despite arguably being languages on abstand grounds, are united by a common dachsprache in Literary Arabic (MSA).

Spoken varieties in Egypt[link]

Sa'idi Arabic (Upper Egyptian), it is a separate variety in Ethnologue.com and ISO 639-3 as well as in other sources.^[13] It carries little prestige nationally though it continues to be widely spoken (19,000,000 speakers)^[14] including in the north by rural migrants who have adapted partially to Egyptian Arabic. For example, the Sa'idi genitive exponent is usually replaced with Egyptian bitāʿ, but the realization of /ʔ/ as [ɡ] is retained.^{[citation needed]} Second and third-generation migrants are monolingual in the Cairene variety, but maintain cultural and familial ties to the south.^{[citation needed]}

The traditional division between Lower and Upper Egypt and their respective differences go back to ancient times. Egyptians today commonly refer to the people of the north as baḥarwa ([bɑˈħɑɾˤwɑ]) and to those of the south as ṣaʻayda ([sˤɑˈʕɑjdɑ]). The differences throughout Egypt, however, are more wide ranging and do not neatly correspond to this simple division. There is a linguistic shift from the eastern to the western parts of the delta, and the varieties spoken from Gizah to el Minya are further grouped into a Middle Egypt cluster. Despite these differences, there are features distinguishing all the Egyptian Arabic varieties of the Nile Valley from any other Arabic variety. Such features include reduction of long vowels in open and unstressed syllables, the postposition of demonstratives and interrogatives, the modal meaning of the imperfect, and the integration of the participle.^[15]

The Western Egyptian Bedawi Arabic variety^[16] of the western desert is different from all other Arabic varieties in Egypt as linguistically it forms part of the Maghrebi group of varieties.^[17] The same was formerly true of the Egyptian form of Judaeo-Arabic.^{[citation needed]} Eastern Egyptian Bedawi Arabic is also distinct from Egyptian Arabic.^[18]

Phonology[link]

The phonology of Egyptian Arabic (or Cairene) differs slightly from that of other varieties of the Arabic languages and possesses its own unique consonant and vowel inventories. For a more in-depth look at Egyptian Arabic phonology, see the Egyptian Arabic Phonology page.

Morphology[link]

Nouns[link]

In contrast to CA and MSA, nouns are not inflected for case and lack nunation (with the exception of certain fixed phrases in the accusative case, such as شكراً [ˈʃokɾˤɑn], "thank you"). As all nouns take their pausal forms, singular words and broken plurals simply lose their case endings. In sound plurals and dual forms, where, in MSA, difference in case is present even in pausal forms, the genitive/accusative form is the one preserved. Fixed expressions in the construct state beginning in abu, often geographic names, retain their -u in all cases.^[19]

Plurals[link]

Color/defect nouns[link]

A common set of nouns referring to colors, as well as a number of nouns referring to physical defects of various sorts, take a special inflectional pattern, as shown in the table. Note that only a small number of common color inflect this way: ʔaḥmaṛ "red"; ʔazraʔ "blue"; ʔaxḍaṛ "green"; ʔaṣfaṛ "yellow"; ʔabyaḍ "white"; ʔiswid "black"; ʔasmaṛ "brown-skinned, brunette"; ʔaʃʔaṛ "blond(e)". The remaining colors are invariable, and mostly so-called nisba adjectives derived from colored objects: beeʒ "beige"; banba "pink"; bunni "brown" (< bunn "coffee powder"); ṛamaadi "gray" (< ṛamaad "ashes"); banafsigi "purple" (< banafsig "violet"); burtuʔaani "orange" (< burtuʔaan "oranges"); zibiibi "maroon" (< zibiib "raisins"); etc.

Pronouns[link]

Egyptian Arabic object pronouns are clitics, in that they attach to the end of a noun, verb or preposition, with the result forming a single phonological word rather than separate words. Clitics can be attached to the following types of words:

• A clitic pronoun attached to a noun indicates possession: béet "house", béet-i "my house"; sikkíina "knife", sikkínt-i "my knife"; máṛa "wife", maṛáa-ya "my wife"; ʔább "father", ʔabúu-ya "my father". Note that the form of a pronoun may vary depending on the phonological form of the word being attached to (ending with a vowel or with one or two consonants), and the noun being attached to may also have a separate "construct" form before possessive clitic suffixes.
• A clitic pronoun attached to a preposition indicates the object of the preposition: fill in examples
• A clitic pronoun attached to a verb indicates the object of the verb: ʃúft "I saw", ʃúft-u "I saw him", ʃuft-áha "I saw her".

With verbs, indirect object clitic pronouns can be formed using the preposition li- plus a clitic. Both direct and indirect object clitic pronouns can be attached to a single verb: agíib "I bring", agíb-hu "I bring it", agib-húu-lik "I bring it to you", m-agib-hu-lkíi-ʃ "I do not bring it to you".

Verbs[link]

Verbs in Arabic are based on a stem made up of three or four consonants. The set of consonants communicates the basic meaning of a verb. Changes to the vowels in between the consonants, along with prefixes and/or suffixes, specify grammatical functions such as tense, person and number, in addition to changes in the meaning of the verb that embody grammatical concepts such as causative, intensive, passive or reflexive.

Each particular lexical verb is specified by two stems, one used for the past tense and one used for non-past tenses along with as subjunctive and imperative moods. To the former stem, suffixes are added to mark the verb for person, number and gender, while to the latter stem, a combination of prefixes and suffixes are added. (Very approximately, the prefixes specify the person and the suffixes indicate number and gender.) The third person masculine singular past tense form serves as the "dictionary form" used to identify a verb, similar to the infinitive in English. (Arabic has no infinitive.) For example, the verb meaning "write" is often specified as kátab, which actually means "he wrote". In the paradigms below, a verb will be specified as kátab/yíktib (where kátab means "he wrote" and yíktib means "he writes"), indicating the past stem (katab-) and non-past stem (-ktib-, obtained by removing the prefix yi-).

The verb classes in Arabic are formed along two axes. One axis (described as "form I", "form II", etc.) is used to specify grammatical concepts such as causative, intensive, passive or reflexive, and involves varying the stem form. For example, from the root K-T-B "write" is derived form I kátab/yíktib "write", form II káttib/yikáttib "cause to write", form III ká:tib/yiká:tib "correspond", etc. The other axis is determined by the particular consonants making up the root. For example, defective verbs have a W or Y as the last root consonant, which is often reflected in paradigms with an extra final vowel in the stem (e.g. ráma/yírmi "throw" from R-M-Y); meanwhile, hollow verbs have a W or Y as the middle root consonant, and the stems of such verbs appear to have only two consonants (e.g. gá:b/yigí:b "bring" from G-Y-B).

Strong verbs[link]

Strong verbs are those that have no "weakness" (e.g. W or Y) in the root consonants. Each verb has a given vowel pattern for Past (a or i) and Present (a or i or u). Combinations of each exist.

Regular verbs, form I[link]

Form I verbs have a given vowel pattern for past (a or i) and present (a, i or u). Combinations of each exist:

Regular verb, form I, fáʕal/yífʕil[link]

Example: kátab/yíktib "write"

Note that, in general, the present indicative is formed from the subjunctive by the addition of bi- (bi-a- is elided to ba-). Similarly, the future is formed from the subjunctive by the addition of ḥa- (ḥa-a- is elided to ḥa-). The i in bi- or in the following prefix will be deleted according to the regular rules of vowel syncope:

• híyya b-tíktib "she writes" (híyya + bi- + tíktib)
• híyya bi-t-ʃú:f "she sees" (híyya + bi- + tiʃú:f)
• an-áktib "I write (subjunctive)" (ána + áktib)

Example: kátab/yíktib "write": non-finite forms

Regular verb, form I, fíʕil/yífʕal[link]

Example: fíhim/yífham "understand"

Boldfaced forms fíhm-it and fíhm-u differ from the corresponding forms of katab (kátab-it and kátab-u due to vowel syncope). Note also the syncope in ána fhím-t "I understood".

Regular verb, form II, fáʕʕil/yifáʕʕil[link]

Example: dárris/yidárris "teach"

Boldfaced forms indicate the primary differences from the corresponding forms of katab:

• The prefixes ti-, yi-, ni- have elision of i following bi- or ḥa- (all verbs whose stem begins with a single consonant behave this way).
• The imperative prefix i- is missing (again, all verbs whose stem begins with a single consonant behave this way).
• Due to the regular operation of the stress rules, the stress in the past tense forms darrís-it and darrís-u differs from kátab-it and kátab-u.

Regular verb, form III, fá:ʕil/yifá:ʕil[link]

Example: sá:fir/yisá:fir "travel"

The primary differences from the corresponding forms of darris (shown in boldface) are:

• The long vowel a: becomes a when unstressed.
• The i in the stem sa:fir is elided when a suffix beginning with a vowel follows.

Defective verbs[link]

Defective verbs have a W or Y as the last root consonant.

Defective verb, form I, fáʕa/yífʕi[link]

Example: ráma/yírmi "throw"

The primary differences from the corresponding forms of katab (shown in boldface) are:

• In the past, there are three stems: ráma with no suffix, ramé:- with a consonant-initial suffix, rám- with a vowel initial suffix.
• In the non-past, the stem rmi becomes rm- before a (vowel initial) suffix, and the stress remains on the prefix, since the stem vowel has been elided.
• Note also the accidental homonymy between masculine tí-rmi, í-rmi and feminine tí-rm-i, í-rm-i.

Defective verb, form I, fíʕi/yífʕa[link]

Example: nísi/yínsa "forget"

This verb type is quite similar to the defective verb type ráma/yírmi. The primary differences are:

• The occurrence of i and a in the stems are reversed: i in the past, a in the non-past.
• In the past, instead of the stems ramé:- and rám-, the verb has nisí:- (with a consonant-initial suffix) and nísy- (with a vowel initial suffix). Note in particular the |y| in nísyit and nísyu as opposed to rámit and rámu.
• Elision of i in nisí:- can occur, e.g. ána nsí:t "I forgot".
• In the non-past, because the stem has a instead of i, there is no homonymy between masculine tí-nsa, í-nsa and feminine tí-ns-i, í-ns-i.

Note that some other verbs have different stem variations, e.g. míʃi/yímʃi "walk" (with i in both stems) and báʔa/yíbʔa "become, remain" (with a in both stems). The verb láʔa/yilá:ʔi "find" is unusual in having a mixture of a form I past and form III present (note also the variations líʔi/yílʔa and láʔa/yílʔa).

Verbs other than form I have consistent stem vowels. All such verbs have a in the past (hence form stems with -é:-, not -í:-). Forms V, VI, X and IIq have a in the present (indicated by boldface below); others have i; forms VII, VIIt, and VIII have i in both vowels of the stem (indicated by italics below); form IX verbs, including "defective" verbs, behave as regular doubled verbs:

• Form II: wádda/yiwáddi "take away"; ʔáwwa/yiʔáwwi "strengthen"
• Form III: ná:da/yiná:di "call"; dá:wa/yidá:wi "treat, cure"
• Form IV (rare, classicized): ʔárḍa/yírḍi "please, satisfy"
• Form V: itʔáwwa/yitʔáwwa "become strong"
• Form VI: itdá:wa/yitdá:wa "be treated, be cured"
• Form VII (rare in the Cairene dialect): inḥáka/yinḥíki "be told"
• Form VIIt: itnása/yitnísi "be forgotten"
• Form VIII: iʃtára/yiʃtíri "buy"
• Form IX (very rare): iḥláww/yiḥláww "be/become sweet"
• Form X: istákfa/yistákfa "have enough"
• Form Iq: need example
• Form IIq: need example

Hollow verbs[link]

Hollow have a W or Y as the middle root consonant. Note that for some forms (e.g. form II and form III), hollow verbs are conjugated as strong verbs (e.g. form II ʕáyyin/yiʕáyyin "appoint" from ʕ-Y-N, form III gá:wib/yigá:wib "answer" from G-W-B).

Hollow verb, form I, fá:l/yifí:l[link]

Example: gá:b/yigí:b "bring"