5 Fascinating Facts About the Language Spoken in Egypt

CertifiedTranslationUS
4 min readJun 10, 2022

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5 Fascinating Facts About the Language Spoken in Egypt

Visiting Egypt
If you’re planning on visiting Egypt, or if you just want to brush up on your knowledge about its culture, one thing you might be interested in knowing is what official language and common language is spoken in the middle Egyptian. Though this may seem like an obvious question, it’s not as simple as it seems to answer!
For example, the official language of Egypt is Standard Arabic from the 17th century, eighth century to the 20th century and 21st century, yet the Egyptian language is closely related to the language of their ancestors like Nubian languages, African languages, Afro-Asiatic language, Arabic language, ancient language, french language, and Greek language.

Have you ever heard someone say Shukran?
The word shukran means thank you in Egyptian Arabic, so it comes as no surprise that many Egyptians use it to express gratitude. When saying thanks in the Egyptian language will often respond with de nada or just an appreciative nod of the head. While there are some regional variations, these two phrases are probably among the most commonly used by Egyptian people on a daily basis.

In fact, they’re so common that even non-Arabic speakers have adopted them into their vocabulary. For example, when someone says shukran to me while I’m traveling abroad and I don’t understand what they mean, I might ask if they said thank you. And if they say yes, then I know exactly how to respond! There are few other immigrant languages like English that are used as a literary language and popular language. These are also considered reliable language translation services.
Arabic is an ancient and liturgical language
The modern-day native language known as Arabic is actually a descendant of ancient variants of Semitic languages, like Akkadian and Aramaic. It’s believed that Arabic speakers settled in Northwest Africa sometime between 2000 B.C. and 1000 B.C., mixing with local Berber populations and becoming what we now call Arab culture. Today, there are more than 200 million native Arabic speakers around the world — the largest concentration of which can be found in Egypt. If you travel to Cairo or Alexandria, you might notice locals conversing in both Arabic and English; although middle Egyptian speaks English, they prefer to use their native tongue when communicating with friends and family.

Arabic borrowed from another national language
In addition to its own vocabulary, Arabic has also borrowed words from other languages. In fact, some of these words are very well known. For example, many English speakers know at least one word of Arabic origin: alcohol.

How do you say alcohol in Arabic? Al-kohl is an Arabic word that comes from a name for a type of antimony used as eye makeup by ancient Egyptians. Alcohol is actually a transliteration of al-kohl into Latin characters. Many other words came into English through Arabic, including algebra (from al-jabr), candy (from qandi), coffee (from qahwah) and admiral (from amir al-bahr).
Egypt’s official language and other foreign languages

The official language of Egypt is Modern Standard Arabic, but it is usually not spoken as a first language. Instead, Egyptians speak one of many dialects of colloquial Arabic and local languages such as Berber and Coptic. In addition to Arabic, English is also taught in schools from an early age, although fluency tends to be limited outside urban areas.

There are also languages that are commonly used by Egyptian citizens that aren’t technically considered official languages: Egyptian Sign Language (ESL) is used by those who are deaf or hard-of-hearing; French is used among educated people who studied abroad, and Italian was once common among elite families but has since declined in popularity. You must read this blog post to know about What language is spoken in Egypt?

Egypt is a melting pot of cultures, religions, and foreign languages
It is home to at least 42 distinct indigenous and minority languages, and English is commonly used as a second language. Despite that cultural diversity, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) serves as both a national and official language of Egypt. There are several theories about where MSA originated — including its roots within many ancient languages like Coptic or Nubian — but its relatively fixed form was standardized during the 19th century.

Today, it serves as an important tool for communication between speakers of different dialects across various regions throughout North Africa and Western Asia. For example, many dialects across both Iraq and Saudi Arabia still use MSA to communicate with each other, despite their sometimes vast differences in pronunciation or vocabulary usage, especially among educated persons, Egyptian dialect, colloquial dialect, and Nubian people. You will also see this spicy touch in the modern form of writing.
FAQs
1. Egypt Arabic

2, Sa’idi Arabic

3, Arabic

4. Sudanese Arabic

5, DomariIn total there are 8 languages spoken, the main language is Egypt Arabic, and the minor languages are

Sa’idi Arabic, Arabic, Sudanese Arabic, and Domari. Then there are 2 other languages English and French.Officially the Arabic language started in the 17th century.

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