Most people who visit Egypt have
little problems with communications because those working in the
tourist sector are usually adept in at least several different
languages. Typically, most of them speak some English, and many of
them fluently. French is also a traditional language, but so too is
German and Italian. Perhaps less common, are the Spanish, Russian,
Japanese and Chinese languages, but of course there are specialized
guides that are also fluent in most any language, who accompany
various tours.
Nevertheless, if one escapes
the confines of a tour group and ventures out into normal Egyptian
neighborhoods, some command of the local language of Egypt is very
helpful. Upscale shops, restaurants and other establishments will
usually have multilingual personnel, but many common
Egyptians
one comes into contact with may only have such communication skills.
Typically, one may find someone nearby that can translate, but not
always. Furthermore, Egyptians are always impressed by foreigners
who have made some effort to learn their language, and will go out
of their way to accommodate them.
The official language of Egypt
is Arabic, though with an Egyptian dialect. Today, Arabic ranks as
the sixth most common language with an estimated 186 million native
speakers. Furthermore, as the language of the Qur'an, the holy book
of Islam, it is also widely understood throughout the Muslim world,
even in countries where Arabic is not the native language. The
Egyptian colloquial Arabic is spoken by some 50 million people,
mostly in Egypt.
One need not learn an
extensive amount of Arabic to function in Egypt outside of the
confines of the tourist industry. Understanding some useful words
and phrases will go a long way. However, some background information
on the language is useful in this regard.
Arabic is originally the
language of the nomadic tribes of the northern and central regions
of the Arabian Peninsula. It was only during the Muslim conquest and
expansion of the seventh and eighth centuries that Arabic spread
into the areas where it is now spoken. In the process, it largely
supplanted the indigenous languages of the conquered regions,
including Aramaic in the Levantine, Coptic in Egypt, Berber in North
Africa, and Greek in the former Byzantine Empire.
In written form, some early inscriptions exist. Arabic of the
pre-Classical period is found in inscriptions of central and
northwestern Arabia, with Classical Arabic itself appearing in
inscriptions dating from at least the fourth century. Pre-Islamic
poetry, the Qur'an from the first half of the seventh century, and
the language of contemporary Bedouin provided the basis for the
codification of the language during the eighth and ninth centuries.
Arabic is a Semitic language
of the Arabo-Canaanite subgroup (Ruhlen 1987). It belongs to the
Afro-Asiatic family of languages--the bulk of which are spoken in
Africa--which has several major branches: Semitic (including
languages such as Arabic); Berber; Chadic (including languages such
as Hausa); Cushitic (including languages such as Somali); and
Ancient Egyptian, whose modern descendent, Coptic, is preserved as a
liturgical language.
Arabic and Canaanite, which includes Hebrew, Phoenician, and several
extinct languages, are distantly related to Aramaic. Other even more
distant relatives are the Semitic languages of Ethiopia and
Akkadian, an extinct language once spoken in Mesopotamia.
Arabic
itself is commonly sub-classified as Classical Arabic, Eastern
Arabic, Western Arabic, and Maltese. A modernized form of Classical
Arabic exists and is referred to as Modern Standard Arabic (MSA).
Classical Arabic, which is the language of the Qur'an, was
originally the dialect of Mecca in what is now Saudi Arabia. An
adapted form of this, known as Modern Standard Arabic, is used in
books, newspapers, on television and radio, and is also the common
conversational language between educated Arabs from different
countries.
Egyptian Arabic is part of the
Eastern Arabic subclass, which includes the Arabic dialects spoken
in a large region of North Africa (Egypt and Sudan), the Middle East
(Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula), and Arabic countries in
Asia. Eastern Arabic, in addition to Egyptian Arabic, includes
Levantine Arabic, spoken in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Palestine,
and Gulf Arabic as well as dialects in adjacent regions.
Local dialects such as that
spoken in Egypt may vary considerably so that someone from Morocco,
for example, may have difficulty understanding someone from Iraq,
even though they speak the same language. However, the dialect of
Cairo, known as
Cairene Arabic, is widely understood throughout much of the
urbanized Arabic speaking world.
The main dialects that have
been identified in Egypt and Eastern Libya include: Delta Arabic,
Lower Egypt Arabic, Middle Egypt Arabic, Upper Egypt Arabic, Cairene
Arabic, and others. Within these categories there are further
regional sub-varieties. The differences among all the dialects are
minor and, as a rule, do not impair understanding.
Actually, in Egypt, the
Cairene dialect is today used in television, radio and political
speeches. Through the 1950s and 1960s, it gained prominence because
it was seen as a way of promoting democratic populism. Cairene is
widely understood in the Cairo region and beyond because it is
used
in Egyptian films, plays, popular music, and television dramas,
which are popular nationally and in other Arabic-speaking countries.
Diglossia--a situation in which variants of the same language exist
side by side in the same community, although they are used for
different purposes--is still the rule, and Modern Standard Arabic
competes with the vernacular in most formal situations, including
television and radio, and is used in various religious contexts. The
vernacular is more common in less formal, more intimate
circumstances in the home and among friends. Most literature is
written in MSA, but authors sometimes use the vernacular in writing
dialogue.
Daily usage encompasses a
range of linguistic forms that passes from the colloquial speech of
the uneducated and illiterate, to a variety of more sophisticated
colloquial forms used by the educated, and on to the highly
classical and formalized MSA. Most educated Egyptians commonly use
language that falls somewhere in the middle, employing a form that
fits the occasion, being neither pure colloquial nor pure MSA
(Parkinson 1994). Classical Arabic plays a role largely in the
religious context; for example, it is used in the daily recitation
of the Koran.
A language academy watches over MSA and tries to limit the influence
of Western languages by proposing new vocabulary based on classical
Arabic models, rather than on borrowings from foreign sources.
Arabic can be difficult for westerners to learn, but there are far
fewer irregularities in the grammar than, for example, in the
English language. The Arabic alphabet consists of 28 consonants and
three vowels (a, i, u), which can be short or long. Colloquial
Dialects of Arabic tend to use less consonants than MSA, but with
more complexity in the vowel and syllable structure.
Europeans and Americans are
usually unfamiliar with the concept of the Arabic root and pattern
system, which constructs words using three-letter consonant "roots"
(thought they can have four or five) that convey a basic idea. The
root, which is unpronounceable as such, are associated with the
general meaning. For example, k-t-b conveys the idea of writing, but
the addition of other letters before, between and after the root
letters produces many associated words such as book, office, library
and author.
Patterns of vowel sequences,
which can be thought of as templates, (sometimes as prefixes and
suffixes, and sometimes with additional consonants) are then "added"
to, or within, roots following general, well-defined models. These
patterns then generate various nominal and verbal stems which have a
variety of functions;
Some of the sounds are unique
to Arabic and difficult for non-native speakers to pronounce
correctly, though one should be able to make oneself understood.
Nouns are inflected and marked
for case, gender (masculine and feminine), number (singular, plural,
dual and collective) and determination (definite and indefinite).
Plural in many nouns is marked by ablaut, that is, the vowel pattern
within a root varies between singular and plural forms, akin to
alternations in English as in the verb sing, sang, and sung, or the
noun mouse and mice. Feminine nouns add the suffix "aat" to
form the plural but masculine nouns generally have a "broken" plural
which involves changing vowels in the middle of the word: kitaab
("book"); kutub ("books").
Arabic has very few irregular
verbs and does not use "is" or "are" at all in the present tense:
"The king good" means "the king is good". In verbs, which occur in
two basic stems, the perfect and imperfective, person, number, mood,
and aspect are marked by prefixes and suffixes. Templates for verbs
fall into ten commonly, and four rarely, used shapes and meanings,
though in practice only three or four exist for most verbs. Their
meanings indicate, for example, verbs that relate intensity,
repetition, causation, intention, and belief.
There is also another system
of particles. Particles include such things as function words which
express syntactic relationships, for example, conjunctions,
prepositions, interrogatives, and pronouns. Compared to the
root-pattern system of other word categories these are quite simple
in their formation.
Arabic sentences are usually
written from right to left. The normal structure of a sentence in
classical Arabic is verb-subject-object (VSO), though stylistic
variations are possible. However, colloquial dialects are usually
subject-verb-object (SVO), similar to English.
Egypt is an excellent place to
learn Arabic. There are many short courses available that can just
about fit in with the length of a vacation, as well as full
programs. Many of the universities teach Arabic courses, but there
are also seemingly hundreds of Arabic language academies. Visiting
Egypt is probably the most intense and proficient means of learning
the language. However, there are many on-line and off-line courses
in Arabic available for those who wish to learn the language. Though
many more exist, below are a few resources for learning the Arabic
language:
The Tour Egypt Phrase Book
Arabic Instruction inside
Egypt
Universities
Private Facilities
Arabic Instruction Outside
of Egypt
Computer Programs
Arabic Courses Online
Books and Audio
