Egyptian Arabic
This article contains Arabic
text, written from right to left
in a cursive style with some
letters joined. Without proper
rendering support, you may see
unjoined Arabic letters written
left-to-right, instead of right-to-left
or other symbols instead of Arabic
script.
Egyptian Arabic
مصري Maṣrī
Pronunciation
[mɑsˁɾɨ]
Spoken in
Egypt and a few other
countries
Total speakers
76,000,000 +[1]
Language
family
Afro-Asiatic
Semitic
West Semitic
Central Semitic
South Central Semitic
Arabic
Egyptian Arabic
Writing
system
Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-1
None
ISO 639-2
arz
ISO 639-3
arz
Egyptian Arabic (مصري Maṣrī; formally:[2] [3]
اللغة المصرية العامية al-lughah al-maṣriyah al-
`ammiyah in Egyptian Arabic) is a variety of
the Arabic language of the Semitic branch of
the Afro-Asiatic language family. It originated
in the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt around the
capital Cairo. Descended from the spoken Ar-
abic brought to Egypt during the AD seventh-
century Muslim conquest, its development
was influenced mainly by the indigenous
Copto-Egyptian
language
of
pre-Islamic
Egypt,[4][5][6] and later by other languages
such as Turkish, French and English. The 76
million Egyptians speak a continuum of dia-
lects, among which Cairene is the most prom-
inent. It is also understood across most of the
Arab World due to the predominance of
Egyptian media, making it the most widely
spoken and one of the most widely studied
varieties of Arabic.
The terms Egyptian Arabic and Masri are
usually used synonymously with "Cairene Ar-
abic", the dialect of the Egyptian capital. The
country’s native name, Maṣr, is used locally
to refer to the capital Cairo itself. Similar to
the role played by Parisian French, Masri is
by far the most dominant in all areas of na-
tional life. While it is essentially a spoken lan-
guage, it is encountered in written form in
novels, plays, poems (vernacular literature)
as well as in comics, advertising, some news-
papers and transcriptions of popular songs.
In most other written media and in TV ne