Egyptian Arabic is a dialect of Arabic spoken in Egypt. It is the variety of Arabic with the largest number of speakers. This is due to the fact that Egyptian films are widely distributed in the Arab World. In addition, Egypt is the most populous Arab nation, with more than 70 million inhabitants (2004). There are few educational publications for Egyptian Arabic, compared to say, French, but Egyptian Arabic remains one of the most widely taught and known colloquial Arabic dialects. Many American and other Western students of modern Arabic learn Egyptian Arabic because it is so well understood all over the Arab world. A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. ... Arabic can mean: From or related to Arabia From or related to the Arabs The Arabic language; see also Arabic grammar The Arabic alphabet, used for expressing the languages of Arabic, Persian, Malay ( Jawi), Kurdish, Panjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Urdu, among others. ... The Arab world The Arab world comprises twenty-two countries stretching from Morocco in the west to Oman in the east. ...

Pronunciation

• The letter jiim ج [dʒ] is pronounced as /g/ in most Egyptian local dialects, apart from those of Upper Egypt (the Sa'id), e.g. gabal for jabal (mountain), gamiil for jamiil (beautiful), and so forth. This pronunciation is considered "typically" Egyptian Arabic; however, it is not unique to Egypt. This was in fact the original Semitic pronunciation of the sound, and the tribes of Arabia at the time of the Arab Conquest may still have had among them those who had this pronunciation, as did Yemeni Arabic since before the introduction of Arabic in Egypt. If this sound is a direct retention from the earliest times, then presumably one of these groups of speakers introduced this feature into the Egyptian dialect. However, it is perhaps more likely that it is a secondary development from a palatal or palatalized g ([ɟ] or [gʲ]), which appears to be the most common pronunciation of this sound at the time of the Arab conquest of Egypt. (The standard "jiim" pronunciation is another secondary development from this same sound, and the "zhiim" [ʒ] of North Africa is a further development, which restores the symmetry of the system by providing a voiced counterpart to [ʃ].) This substitution may have occurred as a result of Coptic influence. (Two notable syntactic features that are particular to Egyptian Arabic -- postposed demonstratives and in-situ wh words -- are also said to be due to Coptic influence.)
• The letter qaaf ق is pronounced as a glottal stop in Cairo and the delta, but /g/ in Upper Egypt (the Sa'id), which is due to Bedouin influence.
• Thaa ث /θ/ can become either /t/ or /s/ (in classicisms).
• dhaal ذ /ð/ becomes /d/ in much of Egypt, although sometimes it is /z/ (in classicisms).
• Egyptian Arabic is unusual among Arabic dialects in maintaining in all positions the early post-Classical distinctions between short /i/ and /u/, distinguishing kitaab "book", gumaal "beautiful" (pl.), and ixhtaar "he chose" -- which become ktaab, jmaal, and xhtaar in most other dialects.

The International Phonetic Alphabet is a phonetic alphabet used by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) the human vocal apparatus can produce. ... Phonetic ™ (pho-NET-ic) is a nationwide voicemail-to-text messaging service available for most digital mobile phones in which a subscriber is provided a special voice mailbox for the purpose of converting all incoming voice messages into actual text for reading via short messaging (also known as SMS, text... In computing, Unicode is the international standard whose goal is to provide the means to encode the text of every document people want to store in computers. ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... Map of Upper and Lower Egypt Ancient Egypt was divided into two kingdoms, known as Upper and Lower Egypt. ... The term the Middle East sometimes applies to the peninsula alone, but usually refers to the Arabian Peninsula plus the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Iran. ... Yemeni Arabic is a variety of Arabic spoken in Yemen. ... The Coptic Language is the last phase of the Egyptian languages, and is the direct descendant of the ancient Egyptian language written in the hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic scripts. ... The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages. ... The Nile Delta is the delta formed in Northern Egypt where the River Nile spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. ...

Related Articles

Varieties of Arabic This language or phonology related article needs to be fully converted to IPA. See IPA in Unicode for information about the correct codes for IPA characters. ...

External links

• UCLA (http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/profiles/profe01.htm)