The colloquial Egyptian dictionary

Arabic is the official language of Egypt, and Egyptian Arabic is the spoken dialect of Arabic that is used by Egyptians

Egyptian Arabic, locally known as the Egyptian colloquial dialect, Masri, is the most prestigious and most spoken dialect in Egypt.

Egyptian Arabic is the first language of 92 million Egyptians. Egypt is the most populous country in the Arab world, and so its Arabic is the most widely spoken Arabic dialect.

Egyptian Arabic is understood by almost all of the 300 million Arabic speakers in the world, thanks to the Egyptian cinema and media industry. It is spoken primarily in Egypt, but listened to across many countries.

Egyptian Arabic has many similar features to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). It also has been influenced by a number of other languages, including Coptic (the language of pre-Islamic Egypt, which is now mostly used in Coptic Christian religious contexts), Turkish (Egypt was a part of the Ottoman Empire for 500 years), French, and more recently English.

Vocabulary in Egyptian Arabic is mostly based on standard Arabic, but also borrows words from Coptic, Turkish, French, and English. Examples:

• ‘Ah’ = ‘yes’ (origin: Coptic)
• ‘ōda’ = ‘room’ (origin: Turkish)
• ‘asansir’ = ‘elevator’ (origin: French)
• ‘yisantar’ = ‘to center (something)’ (origin: English)

Sounds differ in some cases from MSA. One of the most distinctive features of the dialect is the use of the sound g (as in ‘gum’) for the letter ج instead of the sound j (as in ‘jam’). In phonetics, this means that ɡ – a voiced velar stop, is used instead of j – a palato-aveolar fricative. This is used in the Arabic of Cairo and Alexandria, but not southern Egypt.

Another example would be that a glottal stop (the hamza in Arabic, written ء), is used instead of a ق (the qaf in Arabic, which is a ‘k’ pronounced further back in the mouth… in phonetics, a uvular).