Talk:Egyptian Arabic/Archive 1

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I am a teacher in the past I'VE been a student.

Judging from your IP ( 129.215.13.83 (talk · contribs)), it seems that you're from the University of Edinburgh. We welcome any new contributors so why not register and start contributing? — mark ✎ 12:49, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

i've done some research on egyptian arabic- and arabic in general- but so far i know far more about hebrew.hebrew is probably the language i know the most about, next to english. Gringo300 14:40, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Question

Is there much difference between Egyptian Arabic and Arabic/Eastern Arabic? — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-6 05:38

Question

If there are 77 million inhabitants of Egypt why do only 44 million of them speak Egyptian dialect? What do the others speak? Amy Sandridge

The remainder of the population speaks Sahidic. There are two major Arabic languages (dialects) in Egypt Bahari (which is the Egyptian Arabic described here), and Sahidic (Saiidi). Bahari is spoken North of and including Cairo, Sahidic is spoken in the south. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Karkaron (talk • contribs)

transliteration

please use {{transl|ar|DIN}} for transliteration, in particular using ’ ḏ ḥ instead of ʔ ð ħ. dab (ᛏ) 09:15, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Re Substratum

Something about the mention of triradicalism in the Substratum section bothers me. Is it not more correct to say that Ancient/Medieval Egyptian(Coptic) shares this feature with Arabic in general, and that this has not changed in Egyptian Arabic? Are there any dialects of modern Arabic which do not exhibit triradicalism? RJCraig 18:03, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that, I edited it. Actually, biradicalism is what I had in mind when I wrote that sentence, though there are also many triliteral roots retained from Egyptian. The article is a work in progress. I hope to include examples in Coptic and hieroglyphic Egyptian to illustrate. There's an external link listing examples of lexical correspondences in the meantime, but it's in Arabic — Zerida 22:13, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification; I'll have a look at the linked material later...although I fear my Arabic isn't really up to snuff! (It's one of my "dabblers"; I did a language exchange with a fellow from Egypt to improve my pronunciation, but that was years ago. Another of the many things I hope to devote more time to...someday!)

One question: how do you go about determining that a particular word in Egyptian Arabic has truly come down through Egyptian and is not simply cognate through general Arabic? (How large is the number of ambiguous cases, or is the distinction very clear?) RJCraig 02:46, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

In the examples that are known and have been published (see list of references), the distinction is clear. It's also worth noting that some Egyptian words have entered Arabic proper. You can see a couple of examples on the Coptic page. The loanwords in Egyptian Arabic can range from nouns and verbs, to personal names and place-names, to the local calendar that Egyptians use today, to popular sayings or songs during festivals. There are also instances were two words exist side by side, having the same meaning and are used by native speakers interchangeably, but one is derived from Arabic and the other from Egyptian.

Here is a quick example of an Egyptian loanword (English 'pat'):

Egyptian:

Egyptian Arabic: طبطب

IPA: [tˁʌbtˁʌb] — Zerida 04:43, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the response & egs! RJCraig 08:33, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Diamond

Can anyone help me with the correct pronunciation of the English word "diamond" into Egyptian Arabic. A phonetic example would be most useful. I have been told in the past that it is pronounced similar to the word "maz" but cannot verify that anywhere. If there is no direct word-to-word translation, I am trying to construct the sentence: "diamond of Egypt" with English letters for the Egyptian sounds. I certainly appreciate any assistance afforded to me. Holt

Diamonds=Mass

Diamond=Maassa

Diamond of Egypt = Almazet Masr

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Karkaron (talk • contribs)

Hmmm... shouldn't this be "almaaz" and "almaaza" (like the district in masr el-gedida)? "Mass" sounds classical arabic. Egyegy 19:58, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Without the definitive article al(el) it is Mass and Maassa, with the definite article it is almaaz and almaazah, you're right.--Karkaron 01:12, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

NPOV dispute

I see this article is largely biased, most of egyptian people don't consider the egyptian dialect a seperate language, if you ask any egyptian person what language do he speak, automatically he'll answer : arabic! egyptian dialect is no more than a dialect, it's not a seperate language, and slicing that dialect from its mother standard arabic is totally unfair, this seperation ( I think ) comes from a defeciency in understanding the nature of the arabic language usually by foreigners trying to learn arabic, that it is the nature of the arabic characters being mainly consonants and and to less extent vowels, while most of the vowels are described using accents "tashkeel". this gives the possibitly that people in certain localities will develop their local dialects mainly by changing those vowels described by accents because they are easier to ignore, it only LOOKS different when you write it in latin letters ( which shouldn't be, arabic is only written in arabic letters ! ) because that way a foreigner will not know the whole story about arabic letters and accents and all that stuff, this is mostly the case about different dialects of arabic, some other possibilty is the total and permanent conversion of some letter to another, like for example in the egyptian dialect the conversion of the letter ق (qaaf) to ء ( hamza ) , and ج from J to G, which is also benign because it's only in the spoken dialect, the written form is the same, and basically once you know that egyptian people pronounce G instead of J it's no more a problem! one more cause of this misconception is the unawareness of the normal development of colloquial terms among people, I give you an example, some words that most people will consider it to original egyptian terms, like for example the word كدا (keda) meaning "like this", this word is actually the same word كذا (kadha) where كذا developped into كدا (keda) because people usually deem easy the pronounciation of the letter ذ (dhal) into د (dal), where these two letters are very closely related to the extent that the only difference between their writing is just a dot, if you remove that dot from a (dhal) it becomes a (dal), and we all know that the ancient form of arabic writing didn't actually have any dots, and both those letters did have the same writing! in the same time, the word with the same meaning هيك (hek) in lebanese accent is also developed from the standard هكذا (hakadha) which is another word for كذا (kadha) in standard arabic, this development followed the same route to be هيك (hek) by removing the suffix ذا (dha). one more example about other original arabic words that developed into local colloquial words is the standard arabic word هذا (hadha) which developed in egypt into دا (da) by removing the leading هـ (ha) and converting (dha) into (da) , while in lebanon it developed from هذا (hadha) into هيدا (haida) following the same role plus adding an extra "i" sound. and basically if you say any of those words to ANY arab person he will understand what you say, but he will consider you an egyptian if you say it the egyptian way, and if you say it the lebanese/syrian way he'll consider you a lebanese/syrian person! if you can read arabic you can go to any arabic online discussion forum, (maxforums dot net as an example) you'll find people with various arabic dialects talking together, each writes in his dialect while the other will reply in his own dialect, and still everybody speaks one language which is arabic! while dialects only give a hint about where the person comes from.

one more cause of this misconception is the unarawreness of the richness of the arabic language by foreigners, that is to tell, arabic language usually have many words for one meaning, unlike chinese for example where many meanings are condensed into one word and the only way to differentiate them is through the tone, where tones in some chinese languages like cantonese can reach up to 9 tones, in arabic the situation is totally reversed, there are many more phonetics and letters than any other language that ever existed, plus an inherent tendency in arab people to call one thing many different names, which resulted in the producation of a vast number of words, that it is to say that arabic has the largest vocabulary range on earth, for example, the english word "lion" which you all know is a beast of prey, this animal has 15 names in arabic! some of those names are أسد , ضرغام , ليث and many other words that count up to 15, the catch is, by the overgrowth of the arabic community to include distant areas, people in variant localities selected one word for each meaning, so that some areas call some meanings different standard names and adopted them to be their colloquial everyday vocabulary, but in the end all those vocabulary are standard arabic words! for example the english word "super market", in egypt we call it المحل (al-ma7all), in saudi arabia they call it السوق (al-suuq), while in other areas of the arabian gulf they call it المتجر (al-matjar), all those words are actually standard arabic ! all those words are understandable to all arab people, and your choice of which vocabulary to use in speach only determines where you come from, nothing more!

and let me tell you that the most slangish words you find in arabic are actually standard arabic but they're not recorded due to moral reasons! if you are an egyptian person, what's the most impolite slangish word you have ever heard in egyptian dialect? let me answer for you, and excuse me, I don't mean to offend anyone, I don't usually say those terms but I really have to, because they are significant here, these words are زب (zebb) which stands for the male genitalia , and كس (koss) which stands for the female genitalia, those two words are very very slangish and impolite and they're used in many ways to insult someone in egyptian dialect, let me tell you that these two words are purely standard arabic !! don't you believe me? ok , you can verify it yourself, get an uncut version of the novel Arabian Nights ( ألف ليلة وليلة ) , go to the first chapter, find the "story of the carrier with the girls" ( قصة الحمال مع البنات ) ( the story number 11 )and read it, you'll see it yourself, and don't forget that this novel Arabian Nights first existed in the days of the Abbasid caliph (الخليفة العباسي) in Baghdad (بغداد) more than a 1100 years ago! you can find an online copy of Arabian Nights on wiki source, http://ar.wikisource.org

by the way, in lebanese accent, they have the same word order that you mentioned in your example, yet they have nothing to do with a dead language like neither hieroglyphic nor coptic.

last thing I want to say : egyptian people speak arabic, but their own way of saying it, all the names of things and all terms of everything are in standard arabic, and people usually mix in their speech between standard arabic and local egyptian dialect, knowing in their hearts that standard arabic is the RIGHT way of say it , and the local dialect is the colloquial way. and lastly, if I speak to you in egyptian dialect, and there's a word that you haven't met before, you'll search an arabic dictionary.

conclusion : this article is totally biased and unfair, and should be marked as lacking neutrality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dr_amr

Sources

It was hard for me to follow what you were saying due to the format, but a couple of quick notes: According to Arabic linguist Clive Holes (2004) [1], Egyptian Arabic descends from the spoken variety of Arabic that was introduced to Egypt at the time of Islam. It is not a direct descendant of Standard or Classical Arabic. Also, some of the words you mentioned are actually loanwords from ancient Egyptian as they can be attested in hieroglyphic texts. The language vs. dialect controversy has been discussed elsewhere before; the article probably needs a section addressing that topic separately, though it already describes Egyptian Arabic both as a dialect and a language. Stating that Egyptian Arabic is only a dialect is itself not a neutral point of view, as Haeri (2003) [2] shows that Egyptians hold different opinions with regard to the issue. Furthermore, it would completely ignore the movement in Egypt calling for the recognition of Egyptian Arabic as an official language (whether in last century or today with Masr el Um). Linguistically, Egyptian Arabic indeed has all the basic components of a language (lexicon, syntax etc.) It simply does not have "an army and a navy" as of yet (see Dialect#"Dialect" or "language" and language-dialect aphorism) — Zerida 02:19, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

sorry for the bad formatting, I'm new to wiki editing, anyhow, who is Clive Holes? my sir, this is a foreigner, whatever he says; he's got a foreigner's point of view. but I am an egyptian, I was born in egypt and lived in egypt for all my life, so if you want to learn about the origins of the egyptian dialect, ask an ARABIC linguist, and let me tell you that egyptians are muslim people, well at least more than 90% of them, their holy book is in Arabic, they study the proper rules of arabic in schools, they read newspapers in arabic, they watch arabic television, they have an own way of speaking arabic that had influences from the various nations that conquered egypt like turks for examples, there's a remarkable turkish influence on the egyptian dialect, yet all this has nothing to do with the fact that egyptians speak arabic language, and are continuously adjusting their spoken dialect according to the proper arabic. I didn't say that I have a neutral point of view, I wrote here just to make sure that nobody will think that what is stated in this article is a complete fact that has no opposition, no my sir, the point of view of the writer of this article is just the point of view of those whom you called a "movement" that calls for cutting the egyptian dialect from its mother arabic and developing it into a seperate language, no wonder this happens because we've seen it before, I remembered one of those people once called that we should write the arabic language in latin letters!! his name was Abdelaziz Fahmy Pasha, he died long ago, and people's response to his call was dramatically dissapointing for him, people thought that he was crazy or a fame-manic and everybody considered what he says to be absolute non-sense, that's because those people are a minority in egypt, they compose mainly of the minority christians plus some anti-islamics from muslim origins (they have muslims names), if you want to see what the majority's point of view is, you can very easily go to egypt and ask people in the street about their language! not to say that most of the external links the writer provided are links to christian sites! the first link "Coptic Words in Egyptian Arabic" is a link to the coptic church's site! the fourth link "Masr el Um" is a link to a christian/anti-islamic site too! actually this is the home for those people calling for cutting egyptian dialect from mother arabic, and the writer is absolutely one of them. the fifth link "Newspaper article in partial Egyptian Arabic" is a link to a christian newspaper that prints in Canada! while the other 2 links are absolutely foreigners' researchs, where's the role of the majority of egyptians? they have no role, because this is a biased article.

ok, that's enough for now :) Dr amr 15:50, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Please do not tag the article until a consensus has been attempted on the discussion page and in the article. So far, you have not provided a legitimate or reasoned argument as to why the neutrality of the article should be disputed. It's well referenced and documented from a variety of different sources, including a 16th century treatise by an Arabic grammarian. Clive Holes is an Oxford University professor of Arabic studies. Please re-read the History and Official Status sections. Also, anyone can edit the article, so if you want to add a "Dialect vs. language" section expressing some of the views of native speakers on the topic, I think it would be very appropriate (no need to worry about the formatting, as it can be copyedited). Wikipedia, however, is not a place where only people with an invested emotional attachment to a particular issue are allowed a platform on that issue. This is a linguistics-related article and should be treated first and foremost as a such. Dismissing the information/sources as "Christian" and "anti-Islamic" is extremely POV and is based on no evidence, not to mention it can be easily viewed as "anti-Christian" itself. — Zerida 19:34, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

of course I'm not anti christian, but I just wanted to point it out that the point of view of the majority of the egyptian population is ignored, while only the point of view of a minority is presented, any one who's gonna read this article will take it as facts, which is not necessarily true,

by the way you can check this link about Masr_el_Um [3] yourself so you can know what they say about themselves, so you can see that this is a political party, actually it doesn't have even one member in the egyptian parliment!

see this quote from the previous link "Today, it also seeks to free Egypt from Arab nationalist hegemony" , now judge it yourself..

anyhow, I'll prepare a section about Language Vs Dialect, and I'll post it when it's finished! so that both points of view would take a fair share of appearance. — Dr amr 22:22, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm sure a reasonable consensus can be reached. — Zerida 01:17, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Hey, I added an online poll about whether what we speak in egypt is a dialect or a seperate language, on a heavily populated online forum, let's see what native egyptians and people from other arab countries say, here is the link [4] Dr amr 11:47, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

hehe, it seems that site is really heavily populated ! I got 97 replies in 12 hours! with the poll result up till now it says 84.62% consider what we speak in egypt a dialect, and 15.38% say it's a language Dr amr 23:43, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

unfortunately the thread was deleted due to fights about who's nationality is better ! Dr amr 14:55, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

things that need to be corrected

in the Substratum section, I found those examples that need to be corrected :

Examples of in-situ wh words:

   * rāħ maṣri ʔimta ? (راح مصر إمتى؟) "When (ʔimta) did he go to Egypt/Cairo?" (lit. "He went to Egypt/Cairo when?")
   * rāħ maṣri lēh ? (راح مصر ليه؟) "Why (lēh) did he go to Egypt/Cairo? (lit. "He went to Egypt/Cairo why?")
   * mīn [ʔilli] rāħ maṣr ? (مين [اللي] راح مصر؟) "Who (mīn) went to Egypt/Cairo? (literally - same order)

The same sentences in Standard Arabic (with all wh words in the beginning of the sentence) would be:

   * matā ðahaba ʔilā miṣr ?
   * limāðā ðahaba ʔilā miṣr ?
   * man ðahaba ʔilā miṣr ?

now this can be misleading, because the verb راح is not egyptian dialect specific, it's a proper arabic verb, you can check that in the following link from "المعجم الوجيز" ( the concise dictionary ) of arabic language, http://qamoos.sakhr.com/openme.asp?fileurl=/html/4091408.html (make sure your encoding is windows-arabic-1256 )

it's a verb the same as ذهب except that it doesn't need a preposition, so it carries the meaning of "went to" not just "went"

so the correct Standard arabic examples would be :

متي راح مصر؟

لماذا راح مصر؟

من راح مصر؟

now I need help getting the IPA writing of this, I will try but if it's wrong please correct it

again the accuarcy of this part is a big question "Two syntactic features that are particular to Egyptian Arabic (inherited from Coptic) are postposed demonstratives (i.e. "this" and "that" are placed after the noun) and in-situ wh words (i.e. "who", "when", "why" remain in their "logical" positions in a sentence rather than being preposed, or moved to the front of the sentence, as in Standard Arabic and English). Examples of the former: ʔir-rāgil da "this man" (Standard Arabic hāðā-r-rajul) and ʔil-binti di "this girl" (Standard Arabic hāðihi-l-bint)."

it is linguistically correct to say "الرجل هذا" in proper arabic! so please get me a clue why this syntax is wrong or we should label this part as inaccurate or even remove it. Dr amr 14:43, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I added my section and edits, if you have any questions please post them here,

--Dr amr 15:35, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I copyedited the section you added, but I also had to revert the changes you made to the text sample as the "corrections" you made were simply not correct. The verb /raħa/ is used in vernacular Arabic differently than in Standard Arabic. It is simply not a convention of Standard Arabic to use the expressions you wrote above, which sound quite awkward and practically made up. They are recognizable as vernacular and would never make it to a national newspaper in Egypt. The same goes for the use of postposed demonstratives which would never be used in either Standard Arabic nor in essentially all other varieties of spoken Arabic. Again, it is simply not conventional non-Egyptian Arabic syntax. The problem you are having is that you simply want to prove that Egyptian Arabic is basically derived from Arabic. Well, that's quite fine, but the fact is neither the article nor anyone else is questioning that Egyptian Arabic is basically as its name clearly suggests, Arabic. Since this, however, is an article about Egyptian Arabic, and not Arabic in general, it is bound to explore the characteristics distinguishing spoken Egyptian. You really should familiarize yourself with some concepts in Arabic linguistics to appreciate the article, rather than respond defensively to any suggestion that Egyptian Arabic is different from Standard Arabic. I suggest exploring the sources provided in the references section, and also Versteegh's The Arabic Language [5] Finally, the text sample is the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which already has an Arabic translation written in actual Standard Arabic [6] — Zerida 03:40, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

It's also not clear whether maḥal is really Arabic or an Egyptian loanword. Note that even in Standard Arabic there are Egyptian loanwords (e.g. wāḥa) — Zerida 04:45, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

excuse me I'll write this in arabic : أي واحد يكتب كلمة "حرين" بالمنظر ده يبقي واحد ساقط ثانوية عامة ! أسمها "أحرار" يا أستاذي Dr amr 12:06, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

and let me tell you that words like "rekindled" and "gaining ground" "linguists in genereal" are not NPOV in any way so I had to revert them, besides you have no right to prevent the appearance of what the egyptian people think about "Degrading" Quran into a silly local vocabulary, and if you don't like this fact your only way is to make a public poll in egypt and prove it !

and once again, please let arabic stuff to arabs, or learn arabic well, because "المحل" is a standard arabic term, see it in the dictionary ! http://qamoos.sakhr.com/idrisidic_1.asp?Sub=%c7%e1%e3%cd%e1 the source of the word is "حل" with shadda about the "ل" , meaning settled down, and the word "المحل" means the place where things settle down, the market.

see this link to for the word "راح" http://qamoos.sakhr.com/idrisidic_1.asp?Sub=%d1%c7%cd

and if you have never ever seen the words "رحنا , يا ليتنا ما رحنا" "المحال التجارية" "من ضربك يا بني؟ , الرجل هذا " "in novels or newspapers for example, that's not my problem, you should read more novels and newspapers, the word "راح" is less used but it's there, anyhow a foriegner will know nothing about this, he will find different verbs, he will think that egyptians invent verbs! so please either change the example to one that shows the point you want to make solely, or remove it completely because even this point is wrong, in lebanon and syria they say it with the same word order without any influence from coptic language! anyhow I will not edit this one. Dr amr 13:16, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

ḥurrīn

well, ur edits sound fine, except for, it's called أحرار not حرين , I don't know how to make you understand this! I'm sorry sir, but this is wrong, it's common to say , "إحنا حرين" or "إحنا أحرار" but if you say "هما كلهم حرين" then it's wrong and awkward, the correct would be "هما كلهم أحرار" I lived in Egypt for all my life , and I never heard someone says it like this, but you somehow find that how egyptians say it is wrong, and how you say is right, sorry , I'm editing this, aslo the reference at the head of the article about egyptian arabic is language, it's wrong, non-accurate and non-neutral and is edited Dr amr 15:59, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

humma ḥurrīn (they are free [to do whatever they want]) is perfectly acceptable Egyptian Arabic, in addition to being a very common expression (and very apt here!) ʼaḥrār is used in "educated" Egyptian Arabic due to Standard Arabic influence, and therefore it does not provide an accurate taste for Egyptian Arabic, which is what the sample is intended for. — Zerida 03:39, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Language vs dialect

hey, I was wondering how come that egyptian people let an article in wikipedia stating that their dialect is actually a language, I wondered how come that nobody disagreed, but while revising the whole history of the article I see that the article has always called it a dialect or a vernacular, until you Mr Zerida (I'm not sure if the name is male or female) changed this according to the log : 08:35, 23 March 2006 Zerida (conforming to style) , well ok, now I don't need to hold public polls about whether it is a language or dialect, because egyptian people who contributed to this article have already always described it as a dialect or a vernacular. so as an egyptian I think the describtion as Vernacular to be fair enough, and I hope you agree.

yours, Dr amr 23:26, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

First, I would like for you to stop assuming I am not Egyptian (or that I'm male)! Not that it actually matters, but my user page indicates that I am a native speaker of Egyptian Arabic, and even that is not really relevant here. Which brings me to the second point which I've said before: the article is a linguistic description of Egyptian Arabic; it is not and will not be about what "the Egyptian people" think should be said about the topic (see prescription and description). Such views are allowed in articles, but not to dominate the articles or for the articles to be wholly based on them. Since you are new to Wikipedia, you should familiarize yourself with its polices, in particular What Wikipedia is not. The article should contain verifiable information, preferably available in published books and journals. With regard to the distance between the different varieties of Arabic, Versteegh (1997) writes this: "Nowadays, Moroccans and Iraqis, each speaking their own dialect, would find it extremely difficult to understand each other, and it is fair to say that the linguistic distance between the [Arabic] dialects is as large as that between the Germanic languages and the Romance languages, including Romanian, if not larger" (p. 98).

Also, there are Egyptians who consider Egyptian Arabic to be an independent language, regardless of how many there are and whether you disagree with them or not. The classical-vernacular split has been a matter of debate for over a century in Egypt as the article indicates, and now with Masr el Um, the matter will probably be debated for quite some time to come. You cannot simply write them off or hope that they go away. Interest in the vernacular is alive and in 1993, editor Mohammed el-Boghdadi founded an Egyptian Arabic literary journal known as Ibn Arous. It spoke of "the true literary consciousness of the Egyptian people" (i.e. the vernacular), contending that Classical literature was mostly for the intellectual elite. There are clearly different opinions across the spectrum. — Zerida 03:17, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

first, you ask me not to assume that you are male, so from now on I'm going to address you as a female. second, one can't be a native speaker of english and arabic at the same time, at least one who's grown up in egypt, adding the "agnostic" factor then we conclude that you are not one who can speak for the majority of egyptian people, and it does matter because this is about egypt, and I will never allow anybody to spread his own thoughts about anythings related to egypt or egyptians as facts in wikipedia, understood?

and yes my days with wikipedia are not as many as your long long history, but hey, I can understand english too, and I remember I read this quote somewhere :

"If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it. [emphasis added]".

so my dear, wikipedia is not reserved for your own thoughts, you don't own this article because it's in wikipedia not in your own notebook, so you too familiarize yourself with wikipedia's policies, so I won't have to remind you everytime that it's a linguistic subject that has nothing to do neither with religious subjects like translation of Quran or coptic churchs, nor with political parties that you find glorious, like Masr el Um or anyother stuff like that, because on the other hand there is another party called Muslim Brotherhood that promotes use of proper standard arabic in everyday life among egyptian people not only in novels or plays. and yes this one too is "awaiting" license but it has 88 members in the egyptian parliament, unlike your unknown party that you're chanting its name all the time. Which is in fact a drawf but you give it a larger size thinking that all who write in vernacular belongs to them, well my dear, most of the egyptian songs, plays, films, tv series are in vernacular yet they have nothing to do with Masr el Um, even the rare newspapers that writes in vernacular like "Garidat ad-dustoor" publish articles that consider calls for returning back to Ancient Hieroglyph or Coptic to be idiot, which is actually not their own opinion, it's every sound-minded egyptian's opinion, so not every verbacular writer belongs to Masr el Um, only people who belong to Masr el Um belong to Masr el Um !

so it's clear, either both together or non of them. same goes for influences, either both arabic origins and coptic influences or non of them, this is just in case you want this situation to reach a consensus, otherwise, Edit Wars can always be resolved through Arbitration.

I speak Egyptian dialect, it's my native tongue, so please don't tell me about it, I know it very well, and again don't quote from foreigners, anyhow I agree with the part that says that morrocans and iraqis can't understand eachother, that's because morrocan dialect (language?) has been altered far beyond acceptable limits, being mixed with alot of Berber languages and french which is not even proper french, and resulted in that mix you see today in Morocco, even people from different provinces in morocco can't understand eachother, because each has almost a different local language withing the same country! so moroccan languages are not understandable to any other arab nation. but that's not the case with arabic dialects where all iraqis, lebanese/syrians , egyptians, sudanis , saudis, kuwaitis, imaratis who can understand eachother very well without the need for books or blackboards.

so Egyptian Arabic is the dialect of egypt, and it's not you who's gonna make it a language forcibly, this is wikipedia - the free encyclopedia - not your notebook, ok?

and again go learn the egyptian dialect because it's أحرار not حرين , because if you say "هما حرين" that would mean "ok, I'm tired with this, they are free to do whatever" but when you want to Describe some group of people that they are free , born free, then you would use "أحرار" so it would sound fine if you say "هما حرين , يعملوا الي عايزين يعملوه" the same as "هما أحرار , يعملوا الي عايزين يعملوه"

while "البني أدمين كلهم مولودين حرين" would sound very awkward, the correct way to say it would be "البني أدمين كلهم مولودين أحرار" because you're describing people that they are free, besides the addition of "كلهم" makes it mandatory to use "أحرار", that's how we speak it in egypt, if you speak it differently in your country, please correct it. not to say that both words are the plural form of the Arabic noun "حر" which is a Standard Arabic term that means "free", and both give the flavour of egyptian arabic, because "unfortunately" the number of illiterate people in egypt has dropped dramatically, so if you're still living the illiteracy era, please update your info, egyptian people are now literate! same goes for إتوهب لهم which you know are two words not one, but you seem to have your own rules !

and again it's a dialect not a language, and if you're flaming an Edit War, then I'm gonna request for protection of the article and Arbitration.

greetings ! Dr amr 08:37, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

In addition to what I said before, please also learn about the policy regarding Wikipedia:Civility as you've made clear it's impossible to carry on a discussion with you without your resort to attacks. — Zerida 16:59, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

you've made it clear also that you cannot carry on a discussion at all, reverted Dr amr 17:34, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

reverting will lead you nowhere, cause I'll always be there to revert it again, you can not impose your POV, there's no way other than discussion and public polls, reverting is of no use at all because it's reversible too! btw check out Wikipedia:3RR Dr amr 17:56, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Remember to be civil Dr amr. You should pay closer attention to 3RR because it looks like you already violated the rule 207.67.146.126 04:34, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

To Dr. Amr the Muslim Brotherhood party is not merely awaiting license they are an illegal supposedly ex-militant organisation, I'd rather you not bring this group "shella" to represent the whole Egyptian population Be it Muslim or Christian. And since you were so kind to flex their power let me remind you of their demise during Nasser's era if it weren't for U.S. pressure on Sadat to release them from jail they would never have regained their foothold in Egyptian territory. And as a fact the muslim brotherhood do not represent Egyptian Religous or political views but Saudi ones. Zakaria mohyeldin 16:48, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

A quest for a specific reference!

Hello to everyone (that is, Zerida, so far!),
In regard to the description of Amin and Lutfi el-Sayyed as the "proponents of Egyptian linguistic reform", I wonder whether the knowledge of this information is to be found in or is derived from the listed references?
If yes, would you kindly specify in which of the 5 references this is mentioned?
Most appreciatively, --Maysara 21:39, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi Maysara! It's mentioned in Haeri (2003), though only in passing. I suggest Wendell (1972) [7] for more on Lutfi's views regarding language reform. Salama Moussa was actually another exponent of Egyptian Arabic who deserves mention in the article. — Zerida 03:34, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Coptic hallucinations

what u'r saying in this article is very funny for an Egyptian Arab  ; actually Egypt's dialect of Arabic is the most understood and popular dialect of Arabic language ; something that would never happen if our dialect was prominently affected by Coptic ( mainly Greek - has nothing to do with Semitic languages )

about the coptic calendar u mentioned ; i only know names of 2 coptic months ( Toba and Amsheer ) and i don't think any Egyptian Arab can tell me the sequence of its 12 months

u should ask some Arabs if they find weird or hardly understood words in our dialect ; i assure u they will laugh alot to hear about the Egyptian Arabic theory of yours

Some Notes :

1 Alexandria has its own dialect ; Recently Cairine dialect started to have an effect on it - just like its growing effect on different rural and even upper Egypt's dialects - but u can't say :( Cairine dialect , which originated in the Nile Delta region around its urban centers, Cairo and Alexandria Today ) this is not true ; actually Alexandrian dialect even today is still different from Cairine dialect ; different enough to consider it : Alexandrine dialect and it's also the dialect of Alexandria's neighboring cities and centres ( Kafr el Sheikh ; Damenhour )

2 ( and calls for making Egyptian Arabic an official language and the language of education reappeared ) i have never heard of these calls - which can only be described as SILLY CALLS - but i'd like u to tell us WHO called for that

3 ( some students of Arabic and linguists may find Egyptian Arabic sufficiently different as to be an independent language ) Can Egypt's dialect be considered a different language from Arabic while the Lebanese and Iraqi kids and all the Arabs understand it easily ( with no need for learning it ) ? i guess it makes more sense to say that Brazilian dialect of Portuguese is a Brazilian language ; cause Brazilians don't understand the dialect of Portugal ( related to a Portuguese friend )

3 ( many Yemenites have adapted their everyday speech to Egyptian Arabic by borrowing Egyptian words (such as kida 'like this'; kuwayyis 'well ) i don't know how do u judge that these words r not Yemeni ; actually it's really hard for an Egyptian to beleive that some Yemeni dialects r not Egyptian ; I've heard many Yemeni dialects which r closer to my dialect from the dialects ofUpper Egypt and Western Delta

4 ( The letter jim ج is pronounced as a (hard) [g] in most Egyptian local dialects, apart from those of Upper Egypt , This pronunciation is considered "typically" Egyptian Arabic. It is attested in ancient Egyptian but may have also been the original Semitic pronunciation of the sound - corresponding to the letter gimel in Hebrew and Aramaic The sound therefore may be a direct retention from ancient Egyptian, or Semitic, or it may be a secondary development from a palatal or palatalized g )

pronunciation J : G is originally Yemeni ; u can't relate it to other Semitic / ancient Egyptian languages when it's the dialect of Yemenites who constituted the majority of the Arab tribes that settled down around the Nile bank following the early Arab conquest of Egypt ; u need to ask some Yemenites or just listen to the T.V.  ; they even pronounse it when they speak standard Arabic - just like we Egyptians do

All the different Sound differences in our dialect are common in the different Arab dialects : our pronunciation of Q and Th is common in Lebanon and Syria ; while pronounsing the Q : G is common in Saudia Arabia and Gulf

Cloud numbre 7 19:39, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Masri is a language

Well.... you see, actually all "languages" are "dialects" of other languages, which are also dialects of other languages, and so on... Because languages are affected by each other, all languages have borrowed words from other languages. BUT, choosing to refer to a language as an independent language or a dialect (to relate it to another language), all depends on your very own influences, rather those be religious, political, etc...

There are many dialects from Arabic in the region: Egyptian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Levantine, Gulf, etc, and they all share common words that have their roots in Standard Arabic. But let's not ignore many facts: there are many other words that are uncommon among the "dialects", and there are dialects which are very different from each other. And bearing in mind that a language is not only made of "words", then there will be found many "grammatical", phonetic, word-order differences, etc, among those dialects/languages.

Now, let's compare this to another group of languages: Germanic Languages.

German and Dutch are both "Germanic languages", they have their common roots in the ancient "Germanic" language. It is a known situation where one German and one Dutch would speak each in his own language making up an easily-understandable dialog between them. German and Dutch are VERY similar: similar words, similar word orders, similar grammar, but yet they are two independent languages. Using the "dialect" concept, those languages should be called "the German dialect of Germanic," and "the Dutch dialect of Germanic," respectively.

Also, when you think of a language that bears the name of a country as the language solely spoken by the dwellers of that specific country, then this makes a lot of sense calling Egyptian, the language of Egyptians, the "Egyptian" language; the language of Egypt; the Egyptian "speak", etc...

Maltese is a language with many Arabic-root words, and many other Italian-root words, which makes Maltese sound like a mix of Arabic and Italian. And because Malta lacks the religious and political influences available in the Middle East, it has recognized its language as a separate independent language, because it's the language of Malta. Not an Arabic dialect, and not an Italian dialect.

--Mamduh 13:24, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Poor u Mamduh ; u chosed German and Dutch ? well i can speak German and Germans can never understand Dutch nor even read it without learning ; let me tell u something : the differences between Spanish dialects of Latin America and original Spanish r much more obvious than differences between Arab dialects !

Cloud numbre 7 13:27, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

To Cloud number 7: can you work on the formatting? It's an eyesore to the reader and messing up the page's organization. And calling someone "poor u" is rude and against wikipedia's rules about civility. The discussion requires give and take and respect for other people's opinions... Your comparison with the Spanish dialects is strange to someone who's familiar with either subject. A better example is the Romance languages or the Slavic languages. -Egyegy 20:09, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Settling disputes?

Well I've read or atleast tried to read what everyone said about dialects or languages and the origins but it was way too much. I would like to state that the article does not appear to be biased it states that some view Egyptian Arabic as a dialcet others as a language. It is beyond dispute the presence of Egyptian, Coptic, Turkish and to some extent French, Greek or latin influence in the language or dialect. What would be helpful is a list of spoken words that come from these origins. I think the word "Masr" is of Egyptian origin as although "khmt" or "kemit" meaning the black land was what the egyptians called themselves the eastern desert and the western desert had names that began differently and ended with the word "mashr"

Plz add to my info and correct me if i'm wrong.

Plz refrain from bringing in personal beliefs or attacks and tryig to edit information to present your own point of view.

Personally I believe that egyptian arabic is just a dialect as it is understandable to any other Arabic speaker, and yet me as an Egyptian find it hard to converse in standard Arabic, I only use standard Arabic in extremely formal or official situations writing etc., or to someone who learned Arabic in an institution and isn't a native Arabic speaker. And once to a tunisian due to lack of my understanding of his dialect.

One other point Egyptian Arabic has no rules which separates it from Arabic and other languages, I know that from friends who came to Egypt study Arabic and the consensus was that Arabic was easier to learn then Egyptian "3amiya" common or general, due to the presence of grammatical structures. thus it is not a language but a dialect, even forms of written Egyptian Arabic can't help but revert back to more standard Arabic. Even the spelling is disputed, it would very difficult to read and instantly comprehend something written in Egyptian Arabic. how would you spell "enaharda" today or this morning or would it be "El Nahar dah"

Egyptians constantly make up words and old words dissappear, slang is what really makes up the difference between Egyptian Arabic and standard Arabic.

Sorry for Talking too long, your responses greatly appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zakaria mohyeldin (talk • contribs)

Hi there! To sign your messages, type in ~~~~ and your name will appear automatically when you submit your post!

What you're describing is standardization--or rather its lack in this case. Since there is no written standard for Egyptian Arabic, there is more room for innovation and borrowings from other languages. Egyptian Arabic is not standardized, not because there is some inherent quality that precludes it, but mainly for religious/political reasons. Standard Arabic on the other hand is regulated by the Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo, which as you know prescribes very strict rules regarding its usage. However, linguists tend to differentiate between a language's writing system from its actual spoken form. There are many languages that are passed on by oral tradition only, including other languages spoken in Egypt like Nubian and Berber.

It's true that Egyptian Arabic (the Cairene dialect specifically) is well understood throughout the Arabic-speaking world. However, this is not necessarily a matter of mutual intelligibility but familiarity. The reverse, for example, is not true; Egyptians don't typically understand other Arabic languages/dialects. It just so happens that Egyptian Arabic has become a lingua franca in the Middle East, the way English and French have in Europe. Egypt, namely Cairo, has been the cultural center of the ME for more than a hundred years and its influence on neighboring countries, particularly through its media, has been far reaching. This is true even with respect to Turkey and Greece to some extent.

As regards, the influence of other languages on Egyptian Arabic, Copto-Egyptian has had the most impact. Under list of references you'll find Youssef (2003) who is an Azhar University Egyptologist that writes about the topic. Also, this link has an extensive list of words [8] and if you're in Egypt you may be interested in checking out the three-volume work by Sameh Maqar [9]. The Egyptian Arabic dictionary by Badawi and Hinds (1987) has notes on the etymology of many Egyptian Arabic words. I'm not aware of other works that specifically target this issue, but I can think of a few examples right now. Greek has influenced Masri in two ways; through Coptic (e.g. tarabēza) and more recently during the European colonial period. From Italian, we get karavatta (cravatta) and ǧilatī (gelato, ice cream). Turkish gave Egyptian Arabic lots of vocabulary, titles like hanem, names like Mervat and even morphological suffixes like -gi in words such as agzagi (pharmacist) which is now being replaced with Standard Arabic (Saudi Arabic?) ṣaydali. The Egyptian Arabic word baḫt (bakht) is of Persian origin (Arabic ḥazz). Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg — Zerida 09:08, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip regarding the name signing. Not to argue the matter however there are certain points that I'm not sure about you said berber is spoken in Egypt that is something I didn't know and I'm not sure, I know of the coptic language, the nubian, I know the "Awlad Ali" bedouin tribes of the north east coast speak an untintelligible dialect and that the people of Siwa and the western desert's oasis have there own language as well but I don't think it's berber I thought it was coptic/roman related, and then I presume there is the gypsy language of the Roma people located mostly I believe in Luxor.

The second point is that regional dialects are too different from one another and Egyptian Arabic is too vague of a term, when you talk of Cairene dialect even that is different. For instance a person from "shobra" will speak differently than a person from "Dokki" and they in turn will speak differently from a person that comes from "alqalubia" or "elMaruteya" which isn't that far off. Also young people speak quite differently together then with older people excluding curse words an older person would find it hard to follow the conversation, though that is true to a lot of places.

People who can only speak Egyptian Arabic, such as Expatriates and people who studied in foreign language schools have a lack of understanding to our dialect and rarely use that language while illiterate people the other part of solely Egyptian Arabic speakers ARE illiterate.

I still feel that the learning of standard Arabic is essential it serves as a universal language among most of the Arab world, also the Egyptian Arabic dialect can sometimes be less elaborative than one wishes I find that sometimes I will use words that are distinctly Standard or classical Arabic to elaborate my exact meaning. It is much richer much more complex and it has right to be so for it is one the most difficult languages in the world.

If we were to set a standard regarding Egyptian Arabic whose standard would we set it to, the northern or lower Egyptian dialect, the upper Egyptian or southern dialect, the Cairene dialect etc..? will it be an amalgamation of all or the forcing of one instead of the rest? Such an endeavour would be too reminicent of Mustafa Kemal Attaturks' ultra nationalist government which to all its' successes managed to an extent to assimilate a culturally diverse people -if not completely destroy their culture. I may have drifted off point tends to happen when I keep babbling. Zakaria mohyeldin 16:33, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Egyptian Arabic/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Needs reference citations. Badbilltucker 17:20, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 17:20, 11 January 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 20:31, 2 May 2016 (UTC)