Learn Egyptian Arabic (Masri)

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About Egyptian Arabic (Masri)

Egyptian Arabic, sometimes simply known as Masri, is the spoken variety of Arabic in Egypt and is probably the best recognised version of colloquial Arabic, due to the widespread prevalence of Egyptian film and media. It has influences from Coptic - the language in use in Egypt when Arabic arrived in the 7th century - Turkish, English, French, Italian and Greek. The Cairo dialect is considered the prestige dialect and is what is taught on uTalk.

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Planet Earth
Where is it spoken?

Egypt

People Talking
Number of speakers

60,000,000

Family Tree
Language family

Afro-Asiatic

Semitic

Central Semitic

Fun facts — Arabic (Egyptian)

  • The proverb 'old habits die hard' in Egypt is expressed as 'a belly dancer dies, but her waist is still moving'.
  • Egyptian Arabic spoken in big cities like Cairo is instantly recognisable by the distinctive 'G' sound that replaces the letter J in speech. Thus, Arab speakers named 'Gamal', 'Gaafar' or 'Gamila' instead of 'Jamal', 'Jaafar' and 'Jamila' are likely to be Egyptian.
  • Plural words in Masri are very irregular. A book is a kitaab but books are kutub. A suitcase is a shanta but suitcases are shunat. Boy is walad but boys is awlad.

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