The Ingredients That Make Egyptian Arabic What It Is
One of the most wonderful aspects of looking into the history of languages is realizing how much we are all intertwined and connected to one another through our voices. Every word, even if we don’t know where it comes from, came from somewhere, and has ancestors and relatives too just like we do. Some of them came from faraway lands and found themselves settling on a particular spot amongst a particular group of people birthing a new language into being. The process of language formation is perhaps one of the most creative processes of our human civilization. When you inspect a language up close, you come to realize that language is a historical recording technology that keeps track of how humans interacted with one another, where they travelled and with whom they traded.
When looking into Egyptian Arabic, you are immediately confronted with the sheer amount of history embedded in it. Technically classified under the Arabic language family, Egyptian Arabic feels more like a cocktail of languages all infused together to make something very special indeed. Retaining the grammatical structural elements of the Coptic language, it has adopted many words from Greek, Italian, French and Turkish exactly as they are. These words are now a part of the Egyptian dialect so much so that if you ask any person what a table is they will say tarabeza (from the Greek trapeza). If you ask for a fattura (receipt) at a restaurant after eating gamberi (shrimp) or buy a pair of guanti (gloves) or a new comodino (bedside table ), you are speaking Italian words. If you take an ascenseur (elevator) or a swim in a piscine (pool), you are using French.
The oldest influence on Egyptian Arabic comes from the Coptic language which it still retains links to, not in the use of words themselves but in its grammatical structure and sentence formation. For example, placing demonstrative adjectives after the noun rather than before which is the case in the official Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) so the phrase هذا الرجل (this man) becomes الرجل دا (man this) in Egyptian Arabic. A large number of words used daily as part of the Egyptian vernacular come from Turkish which comes as no surprise at all as Turkish was the language of Egypt’s ruling class from the beginning of the Mamluke Sultanate in 1250 to the Free Officers Revolution in 1952. Many words that you hear everyday in Cairo like oda ( أوضة meaning room) has no relation at all to the Arabic word for room ghurfa (غرفة) but is a direct adoption of the Turkish word oda. Many titles of respect come from Turkish like pasha or efendim. Usta is still used today to refer to a driver. Adding the suffix -gi at the end of a person’s occupation to refer to them also comes from Turkish — so sofragi is a waiter, makwagi a dry-cleaner, baltagi a professional thug.
Egyptian Arabic is still the most widely spoken and understood dialect in the Arabic speaking world, in part by virtue of the size of the Egyptian population as well as the influence of Egyptian media in the region. The popularity of the Egyptian dialect can be traced back to the pan-Arab nationalist movement that helped push the Egyptian dialect. Under the leadership of then president Gamal Abdel Nasser, hundreds of teachers were sent to Algeria in hopes that the locals would stop using French. Nasser was himself known for his magnetic speeches using Egyptian Arabic and popularized what was then unheard of to speak to the public in the spoken vernacular. There have been debates and various attempts at trying to elevate Egyptian Arabic to the status of a language in its own right. Until now, Modern Standard Arabic is the official language used by the state, taught in schools, and used in all official documents and most publications. Those who argue for making Egyptian Arabic an official language say that it might help lift the poor literacy rates especially that most media content (films, tv, radio, theatre) — all are in Egyptian Arabic. However, some see that separating Egyptian Arabic from the Arabic language family might be taking a historical step back and severing its connection with the Arab world.
As we speak of Egyptian Arabic, we must remember that we are not referring to just one thing or one way of speaking. We are in fact referring to a whole family with many variations, accents and perhaps you could argue even entire dialects. So underneath this umbrella sub-language of Egyptian Arabic, you will find that those in Alexandria sound a little different to those in Cairo to those down south in Aswan or west in Siwa, and even though we might all speak Egyptian Arabic a little differently, we will always remain connected through its history.