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Egyptian Arabic grammar wheels

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Grammar Wheels

"I gave my three books to her at the market." — Change any wheels to see how Egyptian Arabic encodes each shift.

Common questions about Egyptian Arabic

What can I toggle on the Egyptian Arabic wheel?
Subject (person, number, and gender, since هو and هي take different verb shapes), tense (past, present, future), aspect (simple, progressive, perfect), mood, polarity, and definiteness. Each spin rebuilds the verb form in Arabic script with a transliteration.
Why does the verb change when I switch from هو to هي?
Egyptian Arabic verbs agree with subject person, number, and gender. The stem stays, but the prefixes and suffixes shift — يكتب yiktib for 'he writes' becomes تكتب tiktib for 'she writes'.
How are the bi- and ha- prefixes shown?
Switching to the present habitual or progressive prefixes بـ (bi-) on the imperfect verb. Switching to future prefixes حـ (ha-). Both attach directly to the same imperfect stem, and the wheel writes them in for you.
How does definiteness show up?
Toggling a noun to definite adds the prefix الـ (al-), and adjectives pick up الـ to agree with it. Demonstratives like ده / دي follow a definite noun rather than precede it, which the wheel reorders automatically.
Can I use the wheel without reading Arabic script?
Each generated sentence shows Arabic script, a transliteration, a word-by-word gloss, and an English translation. The same letters reappear under each spin so the script becomes familiar over time.

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.

  1. 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.
  2. Woidich, Manfred (2006). Das Kairenisch-Arabische: Eine Grammatik. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
  3. Gary, Judith Olmsted & Gamal-Eldin, Saad (1982). Cairene Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
  4. Mitchell, Terence Frederick (1956). An Introduction to Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. Oxford University Press.
  5. Eisele, John C. (1999). Arabic Verbs in Time: Tense and Aspect in Cairene Arabic. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

See all data sources and dataset-level citations for the broader bibliography.

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