Egyptian Arabic

Egyptian Arabic is the first language of 92 million Egyptians. Egypt is the most populous country in the Arab world, and so its Arabic is the most widely spoken Arabic dialect. Egyptian Arabic is understood by almost all of the 300 million Arabic speakers in the world, thanks to the Egyptian cinema and media industry. It is spoken primarily in Egypt, but listened to across many countries.Modern Standard Arabic is the standard literary Arabic that is written and read in every Arabic speaking country. It is based on and similar to Classical Arabic, which is the Arabic of the Qur’an (the holy book of Islam) and early Islamic texts.

Egyptian Arabic has many similar features to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). It also has been influenced by a number of other languages, including Coptic (the language of pre-Islamic Egypt, which is now mostly used in Coptic Christian religious contexts), Turkish (Egypt was a part of the Ottoman Empire for 500 years), French, and more recently English.