Great Topic: Egyptian Arabic is a lugha and not a lahga or even lugha 3amiyya

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Jan 2, 2010 at 09:44

Thank you Dr Pipes and this topic is indeed a very interesting. I agree with you. I think if one is to study a subject then one must be able to read the primary sources of such subject in its primary language. I'm not sure if speaking the language is that important as you just have to be able to read the sources and in this case in Arabic or Egyptian Arabic

For thre readers: the word lugha means language and the word lahga/lahja (in Egyptian Arabic) means accent and lugha 3amiyya means colloquial language as Egyptian Arabic is called by Egyptians

Just a few words about Arabic as a language and this is from Wansbrough's Quranic studies where he makes it very clear that the so called Classical Arabic is a language that no one spoke since the Arab invasion starting in 633CE. We had a sudden transition to Middle Arabic because by then local languages (be it Coptic/Egyptian and Greek in the case of Egypt or Syriac as in the case Syria and Lebanon) affected the spoken Arabic of the Arab invaders and not just al-lahja (dialect) but also in the case of Egypt a new language (lugha) was created as you shall see below. What also changed the Arabic language was the introduction of many words that did not exist in Arabic in 633CE by the likes of Hunein ibn Ishaq (and the Bukhtishoo family) who translated the Greek learning fron Greek to Syriac and then Arabic and he used Sibawayhe's F3L and now we have perfect Arabic words that would have no meaning to Muhammad and his generation

Now any student of Arabic that goes to Egypt excpecting to be learning modern Calssical Arabic by talking to Egyptians, he/she will be in for a surprise. The language would sound Arabic enough but with strange grammar and strange words and strange syntax and in other words it is a different language

Egyptian Arabic has a unique grammar/syntax and words that are very different from those in classical Arabic and here is a case in point:

inta rayeh masr leh?

Or You go to cairo why?

In classical Arabic it would be

limadha satadhhab ila al-Qahira?

Or Why do you go to Cairo?

And for those that do not know any Arabic you can see for yourself that the two languages Arabic and Egytpian Arabic can be very different

And even a better example is what Niloofar Haeri in her book Sacred language ordinary people dilemmas of culture and politics in Egypt where she also argues that Egytpian Arabic is not a lahga (dialect) but a real lugha (language) or it is a real language as in the case of Italian v Latin (and for this see Wansbrough)

el-kaatib katab el-kitab (Egyptian Arabic) (subject, verb, object)

kataba al-kaatib al-kitab (modern Classical Arabic) (verb, subject, object)

So even the basic grammar of both languages is very different

And here is another example

Egyptian Arabic: el-wad kal el-akl (the boy ate the food)

Modern Classical Arabic: akala al-walad al-ta3am

Even if you do not know any Arabic you will realize that there are really major differences here not just in the words but also in the grammar and the syntax. Even in vocalization Egyptian Arabic retains the geem from Egyptian/Coptic instead of the Arabic jeem so Gamal is not a jamal

As for unique Egyptian words take the case of outa (tomatoes) which is from Egyptian/Coptic and the word for fruits (see Crum) and for more loan words from Egyptian/Cotpic in today's Egyptian Arabic see the wonderful book by Ahmad Abdel Hamid Youssef From Pharaoh's lips. Ancient Egyptian language in the Arabic of today.

As for a dictionary of Egytpian Arabic I suggest El-Said Badawi and martin Hinds' "A dictionary of Egyptian Arabic."

So why would Egyptians not admit the obvious that they speak a real and different language from classical Arabic? I do not get it. But what is most amazing is that when you watch and listen to even Egyptain islamists speaking in the Egytpian media they start with a few words in modern calssical Arabic then they swich to Egyptian Arabic their language

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Daniel Pipes replies:

Wait until you see Franck Salameh's Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East: The
Case for Lebanon, which I endorsed as follows:

In a stunning polemic, a well-known professor of Arabic indicts the classical and modern standard forms of the language as "a key factor in the Middle East's turbulence, authoritarianism, intellectual torpor, cultural rigidity, and lack of freedoms." In their stead, Franck Salameh argues for a "linguistic humanism" that recognizes and celebrates the Middle East's diversity of language and culture. His deeply researched and utterly original study fascinated me.