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Egypt Feature Story
Egyptian Arabic
by Ismail Abasa
Most people who visit Egypt have little problems with communications because those working in the tourist sector are usually adept in at least several different languages. Typically, most of them speak some English, and many of them fluently. French is also a traditional language, but so too is German and Italian. Perhaps less common, are the Spanish, Russian, Japanese and Chinese languages, but of course there are specialized guides that are also fluent in most any language, who accompany various tours.
Nevertheless, if one escapes
the confines of a tour group and ventures out into normal Egyptian
neighborhoods, some command of the local language of Egypt is very helpful.
Upscale shops, restaurants and other establishments will usually have
multilingual personnel, but many common
Egyptians
one comes into contact with may only have such communication skills. Typically,
one may find someone nearby that can translate, but not always. Furthermore,
Egyptians are always impressed by foreigners who have made some effort to learn
their language, and will go out of their way to accommodate them.
The official language of Egypt is Arabic, though with an Egyptian dialect. Today, Arabic ranks as the sixth most common language with an estimated 186 million native speakers. Furthermore, as the language of the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, it is also widely understood throughout the Muslim world, even in countries where Arabic is not the native language. The Egyptian colloquial Arabic is spoken by some 50 million people, mostly in Egypt.
One need not learn an extensive amount of Arabic to function in Egypt outside of the confines of the tourist industry. Understanding some useful words and phrases will go a long way. However, some background information on the language is useful in this regard.
Arabic is originally the language of the nomadic tribes of the northern and
central regions of the Arabian Peninsula. It was only during the Muslim conquest
and expansion of the seventh and eighth centuries that Arabic spread into the
areas where it is now spoken. In the process, it largely supplanted the
indigenous languages of the conquered regions, including Aramaic in the
Levantine, Coptic in Egypt, Berber in North Africa, and Greek in the former
Byzantine Empire.
In written form, some early inscriptions exist. Arabic of the pre-Classical
period is found in inscriptions of central and northwestern Arabia, with
Classical Arabic itself appearing in inscriptions dating from at least the
fourth century. Pre-Islamic poetry, the Qur'an from the first half of the
seventh century, and the language of contemporary Bedouin provided the basis for
the codification of the language during the eighth and ninth centuries.
Arabic is a Semitic language of the Arabo-Canaanite subgroup (Ruhlen 1987).
It belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family of languages--the bulk of which are spoken
in Africa--which has several major branches: Semitic (including languages such
as Arabic); Berber; Chadic (including languages such as Hausa); Cushitic
(including languages such as Somali); and Ancient Egyptian, whose modern
descendent, Coptic, is preserved as a liturgical language.
Arabic and Canaanite, which includes Hebrew, Phoenician, and several
extinct languages, are distantly related to Aramaic. Other even more distant
relatives are the Semitic languages of Ethiopia and Akkadian, an extinct
language once spoken in Mesopotamia.
Arabic
itself is commonly sub-classified as Classical Arabic, Eastern Arabic, Western
Arabic, and Maltese. A modernized form of Classical Arabic exists and is
referred to as Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Classical Arabic, which is the
language of the Qur'an, was originally the dialect of Mecca in what is now Saudi
Arabia. An adapted form of this, known as Modern Standard Arabic, is used in
books, newspapers, on television and radio, and is also the common
conversational language between educated Arabs from different countries.
Egyptian Arabic is part of the Eastern Arabic subclass, which includes the Arabic dialects spoken in a large region of North Africa (Egypt and Sudan), the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula), and Arabic countries in Asia. Eastern Arabic, in addition to Egyptian Arabic, includes Levantine Arabic, spoken in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Palestine, and Gulf Arabic as well as dialects in adjacent regions.
Local dialects such as that spoken in Egypt may vary considerably so that someone from Morocco, for example, may have difficulty understanding someone from Iraq, even though they speak the same language. However, the dialect of Cairo, known as Cairene Arabic, is widely understood throughout much of the urbanized Arabic speaking world.
The main dialects that have been identified in Egypt and Eastern Libya include: Delta Arabic, Lower Egypt Arabic, Middle Egypt Arabic, Upper Egypt Arabic, Cairene Arabic, and others. Within these categories there are further regional sub-varieties. The differences among all the dialects are minor and, as a rule, do not impair understanding.
Actually, in Egypt, the Cairene dialect is today used in television, radio
and political speeches. Through the 1950s and 1960s, it gained prominence
because it was seen as a way of promoting democratic populism. Cairene is widely
understood in the Cairo region and beyond because it is
used
in Egyptian films, plays, popular music, and television dramas, which are
popular nationally and in other Arabic-speaking countries. Diglossia--a
situation in which variants of the same language exist side by side in the same
community, although they are used for different purposes--is still the rule, and
Modern Standard Arabic competes with the vernacular in most formal situations,
including television and radio, and is used in various religious contexts. The
vernacular is more common in less formal, more intimate circumstances in the
home and among friends. Most literature is written in MSA, but authors sometimes
use the vernacular in writing dialogue.
Daily usage encompasses a range of linguistic forms that passes from the
colloquial speech of the uneducated and illiterate, to a variety of more
sophisticated colloquial forms used by the educated, and on to the highly
classical and formalized MSA. Most educated Egyptians commonly use language that
falls somewhere in the middle, employing a form that fits the occasion, being
neither pure colloquial nor pure MSA (Parkinson 1994). Classical Arabic plays a
role largely in the religious context; for example, it is used in the daily
recitation of the Koran.
A language academy watches over MSA and tries to limit the influence of Western
languages by proposing new vocabulary based on classical Arabic models, rather
than on borrowings from foreign sources.
Arabic can be difficult for westerners to learn, but there are far fewer
irregularities in the grammar than, for example, in the English language.
The Arabic alphabet consists of 28 consonants and
three vowels (a, i, u), which can be short or long. Colloquial Dialects of
Arabic tend to use less consonants than MSA, but with more complexity in the vowel
and syllable structure.
Europeans and Americans are usually unfamiliar with the concept of the Arabic root and pattern system, which constructs words using three-letter consonant "roots" (thought they can have four or five) that convey a basic idea. The root, which is unpronounceable as such, are associated with the general meaning. For example, k-t-b conveys the idea of writing, but the addition of other letters before, between and after the root letters produces many associated words such as book, office, library and author.
Patterns of vowel sequences, which can be thought of as templates, (sometimes as prefixes and suffixes, and sometimes with additional consonants) are then "added" to, or within, roots following general, well-defined models. These patterns then generate various nominal and verbal stems which have a variety of functions;
Some of the sounds are unique to Arabic and difficult for non-native speakers to pronounce correctly, though one should be able to make oneself understood.
Nouns are inflected and marked for case, gender (masculine and feminine), number (singular, plural, dual and collective) and determination (definite and indefinite). Plural in many nouns is marked by ablaut, that is, the vowel pattern within a root varies between singular and plural forms, akin to alternations in English as in the verb sing, sang, and sung, or the noun mouse and mice. Feminine nouns add the suffix "aat" to form the plural but masculine nouns generally have a "broken" plural which involves changing vowels in the middle of the word: kitaab ("book"); kutub ("books").
Arabic has very few irregular verbs and does not use "is" or "are" at all in the present tense: "The king good" means "the king is good". In verbs, which occur in two basic stems, the perfect and imperfective, person, number, mood, and aspect are marked by prefixes and suffixes. Templates for verbs fall into ten commonly, and four rarely, used shapes and meanings, though in practice only three or four exist for most verbs. Their meanings indicate, for example, verbs that relate intensity, repetition, causation, intention, and belief.
There is also another system of particles. Particles include such things as function words which express syntactic relationships, for example, conjunctions, prepositions, interrogatives, and pronouns. Compared to the root-pattern system of other word categories these are quite simple in their formation.
Arabic sentences are usually written from right to left. The normal structure of a sentence in classical Arabic is verb-subject-object (VSO), though stylistic variations are possible. However, colloquial dialects are usually subject-verb-object (SVO), similar to English.
Egypt is an excellent place to learn Arabic. There are many short courses available that can just about fit in with the length of a vacation, as well as full programs. Many of the universities teach Arabic courses, but there are also seemingly hundreds of Arabic language academies. Visiting Egypt is probably the most intense and proficient means of learning the language. However, there are many on-line and off-line courses in Arabic available for those who wish to learn the language. Though many more exist, below are a few resources for learning the Arabic language:
Arabic Instruction inside Egypt
Universities
Private Facilities
Arabic Instruction Outside of Egypt
Computer Programs
Arabic Courses Online
Books and Audio