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Egyptian Arabic phrases, by meaning
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Currently available: Egyptian Arabic, Bengali, Mandarin Chinese, German, English, French, Hausa, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Marathi, Punjabi, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Sindhi, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Wu Chinese, Yucatec Maya, Cantonese
Common questions about Egyptian Arabic
What does this Egyptian Arabic page cover?
Twenty-two functional categories with worked examples in Cairo dialect: tense and aspect (the بـ habitual prefix, the هـ future prefix, the active participle for resultative states), modality (لازم for must, ممكن for can, عايز for want), the wrap-around negation ما...ش (مابكتبش 'I don't write'), questions (مين, إيه, فين, إمتى, ليه), comparison with أكثر من, and 16 others. Every example shows Arabic script with romanization and word-by-word glosses.
How does the root-and-pattern system actually work?
Most words trace back to a root of usually three consonants that carries a core meaning. Vowel patterns and affix templates fit around those consonants to form related words. From k-t-b you get كتب katab 'wrote', يكتب yiktib 'writes', كاتب kâtib 'writer', مكتوب maktûb 'written', كتاب kitâb 'book', مكتبة maktaba 'library'. Recognizing the root is the trick to learning vocabulary fast.
Why do plurals look so unpredictable?
Egyptian Arabic — like other Arabic varieties — has both sound plurals (regular suffixes -ât for feminine, -în for masculine) and broken plurals where the internal vowel pattern shifts (كتاب kitâb → كتب kutub, ولد walad → أولاد awlâd). Broken plurals follow a finite set of patterns once you've seen them often enough; learners memorize them with the singular.
Is this Egyptian Arabic or Modern Standard Arabic?
Egyptian (Cairene) Arabic — what people actually speak in Cairo, on TV, in songs, and in films across the Arab world. MSA (الفصحى) is a separate written register reserved for newspapers, formal speeches, and religious contexts. Phrases here use the everyday spoken forms: kêf-ak instead of MSA kayfa hâl-uka, إيه instead of ما, miš and ما...ش instead of MSA لا and لم.
Do I need to read the Arabic script to follow along?
Helpful but not required. Every example shows the Arabic, a transliteration, and a word-by-word gloss aligned underneath. Frequent characters and root patterns recur enough that learners pick up the script without studying it directly. Short vowels are shown in romanization so you can read aloud even before you master the abjad.
Sources for Egyptian Arabic
The grammatical descriptions on this page are informed by the following published reference and descriptive grammars. Grammatical facts themselves are not subject to copyright; the scholars who documented them deserve attribution.
- Abdel-Massih, Ernest T.; Abdel-Malek, Zaki N. & Badawi, El-Said M. (1979/2009). A Reference Grammar of Egyptian Arabic. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
- Woidich, Manfred (2006). Das Kairenisch-Arabische: Eine Grammatik. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
- Gary, Judith Olmsted & Gamal-Eldin, Saad (1982). Cairene Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
- Mitchell, Terence Frederick (1956). An Introduction to Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. Oxford University Press.
- Eisele, John C. (1999). Arabic Verbs in Time: Tense and Aspect in Cairene Arabic. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.