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Egypt and its languages 101 and this is as basic as it can be

Reader comment on item: "An Arabist's Guide to Egyptian Colloquial" Now Online
in response to reader comment: BIG FONTS - BIG DENIALS.

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), May 8, 2010 at 10:36

Our dear iam ... reads here in this blog about Egyptian Arabic (EA) and is it a real lugha (language) or a dialect (lahja) and then our dear iam spews his little diatribes about his ugly term the "Arab race" and that there no Arabs or is it Arabic or is it Arabs and Arabic before 400CE or is it 300CE or is it 500BCE and only allahu a3lam but what does this have to do with EA he has no clue

So this is for the readers

1. The language of Egypt was called by the Egyptians metremnkemi (Sahidic) and Egyptians called themselves; 'Enremnkemi and called their country KMT or Kemi

2. Their is no extant literary evidence in Arabic or in Egyptian or in Greek for the existence of Arabs in Egypt before 642CE although we are told in the Islamic Historical Tradition that 3Amr ibn al-3As traded in Alexandria before 642CE but this is most likely no more than an anachronistic qissa

3. The language of Egypt was written in several "alphabets" over a period of 3000 years and they are heiroglyphics, Hieratic, Demotic and the last one is the so called Coptic script

4. The pristine texts in Demotic were indeed the old language

5. Coptic texts have 20% Greek loan words

6. A Copt would not be able to read Demotic texts

7. The word Masr is the name of Egypt in Quranic Arabic and masri is an Egyptian

8. The words bilad al-Qibt (the country of the Copts) and al-Aqbat or the Copts and lughat al-aqbat or the language of the Copts are all post 642CE and the construct QBT is the Arabized Greek Aegyptios

9. Egyptian Arabic is the language that was created starting in 642CE by the people of Egypt and it is Arabic/ Egyptian (the language of Egypt that is) and it is written in Arabic alphabets and it is really a language

10. Many historians believe that the invaders seem to always adopt the language of the civilization they invade and in the case of Egypt it seems that indeed Egyptians invented their own version of Arabic and I think it confirms the old saying: Old civilizations are not conjured away and what looks obvious is not really that obvious

...


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Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".

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