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There Is No Such Language

There is No Such Language It is a Dialect.

Give Me One book Just one book describing the rules of this language. There isn't. Or a well known Arabic scholar acknowledge "Masri".

The work of greatest Egyptians writers is consider the greatest Arabic Literature Do You know the Nationality of The Dean of Arabic Literature? Do You know the Nationality of the Prince of Poets?

Wikipedia Stop spreading lies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.52.36.43 (talk) 08:38, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

The topic of whether a system is a "language" or a "dialect" is a non-issue in linguistics, as it doesn't only depend on the language's characteristics themselves but also many sociolinguistic factors. It's for this reason that it has been opted to call the article "Egyptian Arabic" and not "Modern Egyptian language" or something on those lines. We're not acknowledging the Egyptian vernacular as a different "language", but rather an important part of the Arabic language as used in Egypt, where it lives vis-à-vis with Standard Arabic by distributing different social functions and creating a continuum from full "vulgar" language to pure 7th-century-sounding Standard Arabic.
There is several books describing the phonological and grammatical characteristics of Arabic as spoken in Egypt, specially that of El Cairo. The fact that you have never heard of them due to not having looked for them is another matter. Books have been being written since the 18th century to my knowledge, if not earlier. There's several recently-written options you can turn to in case you're interested: the arabist Manfred Woidich wrote a magnificient account of the vernacular in his book Die ägyptisch-arabischen Dialekte, vols. I, II. Of which the grammar written by El-Said M. Badawī, A Reference Grammar of Egyptian Arabic, is a significant expansion. The dictionary written by him in collaboration with Martin Hinds, A dictionary of Egyptian Arabic: Arabic-English, has practically become the standard replacing that written by Socrates Spiro in 1895, An Arabic-English Vocabulary of the Colloquial Arabic of Egypt. You asked for the title one book, I gave you the names of 4 excellent publications.
Wikipedia is not spreading any lies here, moreover, we're just trying hard to provide as much accuracy on topics as we can. Remember that assuming good faith is one of the essential pillars of the behavioral guideline. I understand that it might be shocking to you to consider the Arabic as spoken in Egypt worth of study, but we believe that it is important to do so in order to appreciate Arabic in its full richness.--Neqitan (talk) 02:56, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Egyptian Arabic versus Sa'idi Arabic

Sa'idi Arabic is clearly distinguished from Egyptian Arabic in ISO 639-3 and Ethnologue as well as in the linguistic literature. Comments that are specific to Sa'idi should be placed on the page for Sa'idi. (Taivo (talk) 21:16, 22 March 2008 (UTC))

Ethnologue is not the only and ultimate authority on any language, let alone Egyptian Arabic. What other "linguistic literature" are you referring to? — Zerida ☥ 21:18, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
For example:
  • This is a source on Sa'idi that does not include Egyptian: Khalaffallah, Abdelghany A. 1969. A Descriptive Grammar of Sa'i:di Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. Janua Linguarum, Series Practica 32. The Hague: Mouton.
  • Here is a source on Egyptian that does not include Sa'idi: Harrell, Richard S. 1957. The Phonology of Colloquial Egyptian Arabic. American Council of Learned Societies Program in Oriental Languages Publications Series B, Aids, Number 9. New York: American Council of Learned Societies.
  • On this map Egyptian and Sa'idi (Upper Egyptian) are on equal status as separate varieties of Arabic: Kaye, Alan S., & Judith Rosenhouse. 1997. "Arabic Dialects and Maltese," The Semitic Languages. Ed. Robert Hetzron. London: Routledge. Pages 263-311 (map on page 264).
  • On the World Atlas of Language Structures, Egyptian Arabic does not include Sa'idi ("Cairo" sources are clearly in abundance and specific Sa'idi sources are missing): World Atlas of Language Structures--Egyptian Arabic entry (Taivo (talk) 21:28, 22 March 2008 (UTC))
That doesn't quite answer my question, Taivo. That there are sources on Sa'idi specifically has no bearing on its well-attested relationship with Lower Egyptian (Masri). Kaye for example has written on the Qift dialect. Does this mean it is not Sa'idi? No! But no one is arguing that Lower and Upper Egyptian are not distinct dialects. It's a question of whether the term "Egyptian Arabic" is a catch-all for the dialects of the Egyptian Nile Valley (which only excludes the Bedouin dialects of the deserts and Sinai). It is. — Zerida ☥ 21:41, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Your question was are there sources that place Egyptian Arabic and Sa'idi Arabic on separate, but equal status as varieties of Arabic. If so, then Sa'idi information needs to be placed on the Sa'idi Arabic page and Egyptian information (of which 99% of this article constitutes) needs to remain here. The Kaye and Rosenhouse map clearly does that and the use of "Egyptian Arabic" without Sa'idi information in WALS does that as well. ISO 639-3 distinguishes the two as separate, but equal. I don't doubt that there is a "cover term", but since this article deals 99% with Egyptian and not with Sa'idi, and the language template does NOT include the ISO 639-3 code for Sa'idi, then this article is, ipso facto, an Egyptian Arabic article and not a "general Egyptian" article. By subsuming "Sa'idi" in this article, Wikipedia is seeming to perpetuate the apparent cultural prejudice that Lower Egyptians feel towards the "country folk". Sa'idi has an independent existence in ISO 639-3 codes, and, therefore, in Wikipedia. (Taivo (talk) 21:52, 22 March 2008 (UTC))
I also notice the article's point-of-view right from the very beginning--the use of Masri as an alternate name for the "Egyptian Arabic" of this article--Masri only refers to Cairene Arabic, not to Sa'idi. (Taivo (talk) 21:58, 22 March 2008 (UTC))
Ooh, I would love to see the map from Hetzron. — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:08, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
By subsuming "Sa'idi" in this article, Wikipedia is seeming to perpetuate the apparent cultural prejudice that Lower Egyptians feel towards the "country folk"' No, that's your assumption, and it is not appreciated. Most major language articles incorporate information on the major regional dialects of that language, but is usually more heavily geared toward the standard variety as a matter of convention. Since there is now an article on Sa'idi, it does make more sense to provide more detailed information on it there, but there is no rule that says that we are not allowed to write anything about the major regional variations in the main language article. As regards the name Masri, as the article explains, Masr is the both the name of Egypt and Cairo in Egyptian Arabic; therefore Masri, the nisba adjective, refers specifically to Cairene Arabic as well as to Egyptian Arabic more generally. — Zerida ☥ 22:14, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
So now that there is a separate article on Sa'idi, specific information about Sa'idi should be placed there first since it is not subsumed under the ISO 639-3 code for "Egyptian Arabic". The use of ISO in the template at the top of language pages makes the implicit assumption that information found on that page is related to the language identified by that code. It's not a perfect system, but it's the one there is. This whole discussion is also based on the entire issue of what is and is not a "variety of Arabic" and what is a dialectal variant of one of the varieties (a discussion way outside the bounds of what should be discussed here). As long as Sa'idi is given its just due as a separate and equal variety of Arabic then this issue can rest for now. (Taivo (talk) 22:33, 22 March 2008 (UTC))
The truth is that what constitutes a dialect or a variety or a language will always be an issue in Arabic sociolinguistics. It would be nice if we could give straight linguistic information on each variety, but unfortunately when it comes to Arabic, experience has shown that this is just not possible on Wiki without running into issues. And that fact is that your earlier description of Sa'idi as an "Afro-Asiatic language" (should at least be Semitic) did not help. Ironically, I have always been of the linguistically-based opinion that "Arabic" is cover term for a group of mutually unintelligible languages. Unfortunately, treating Arabic that way has always been an invitation for ideological edit warring, so we need to reach a middle ground. Also, readers are more likely to swallow that Egyptian Arabic (Lower and Upper) is a distinct variety or a language or whatever, than Sa'idi. Native speakers of Sa'idi themselves would react quite incredulously to the notion that their dialect is a separate language from Egyptian Arabic. It is difficult enough dealing with the thorny issue of what Egyptian Arabic constitutes, let alone Arabic in general. That said, there are linguistic grounds for treating Sa'idi and Masri (i.e. Egyptian) as representing a dialect continuum, for which I provided a reference. Let's keep things in perspective. — Zerida ☥ 22:56, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I am rather blunt in my writing and this comes across as abrasiveness. No offense was intended. But in the end both articles got improved. The "Afro-Asiatic" language tag is mainly because I was building a lot of Afro-Asiatic stubs at the time and it's easier to use one basic pattern rather than fidgeting around with each of them. There was no "agenda" related to it--just convenience. (Taivo (talk) 23:26, 22 March 2008 (UTC))
No offense taken. Communication over the internet can lead to misunderstandings. I am sure in a different context, we would be having more interesting and intellectually-stimulating linguistic conversations. The underlying representation :-) here is that we probably agree more than we disagree on the surface. But I found it interesting that Khalafallah's grammar does describe Sa'idi as "a variety of Egyptian Arabic" [1], so we could use that as a reference as well. I hope to check it out some time, and also to see both of these articles improved to the level of one of the better covered language articles (it's always a WP:LPOV issue with Arabic). By the way, I wasn't referring to the tag, but to the previous lead which referred to Sa'idi as "an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt" [2]. Setting aside the language question, it should be "an Arabic ____" or at least "a Semitic ____" for classification purposes; i.e. the next upper level subgroup. I don't how many other Arabic stubs have that description in the lead. — Zerida ☥ 00:36, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

swapping places !

nice to see you zerida swapping places, once you were defending egyptian arabic's independence from arabic proper, and now you're facing saidi arabic's independence from both arabic proper and egyptian arabic, you once said yourself that one can't understand upper egyptians talking, and I certainly don't. it's a different language then.
in fact, saidi arabic is alot different from egyptian arabic, they pronounce the ق as g , and pronounce the ج as j ( as in arabic proper ), and they use different words for indicating future intention, like عنجول (aangool) instead of هنئول (han'ool) for egyptian arabic and سنقول (sanaqool) for arabic proper for example, and I guess letter pronounciations differences was one of your reasons for taking the egyptian dialect as a language of its own ! now face that , saidi arabic pronounce letters differently too, they use different vocabulary, wow, that does make it a language on its own too, doesn'it?
and anyway, doesn't saiid (upper egypt) represent egypt proper more than cairo and delta? I mean all your pharaoh ancestry existed in upper egypt, nothing whatsoever related to cairo or delta, egyptian arabic proper should be the saidi one not the cairine one, because cairo is mainly a city established by the arabs, al-fostat city - the new capital of egypt founded by jawhar al-seqely instead of good-old teiba, and al-fostat has since then became the capital of the arab state in egypt, which was later renamed to cairo, remember? or they don't teach this kind of history at your coptic church?
so you should stick more to upper egyptian, that's your true ancestry and all the pharaohic glory and stuff, but hey , they DO pronounce the arabic proper ج as J in upper egypt, sohaj you know is not sohag for example, amazing, how could this be possible when one of your claims for closeness of egyptian arabic more to coptic rather than arabic proper was that ancient egyptians didn't actually know the letter J so they prounounced it G instead? guess what, modern pharaohs in upper egypt DO know what the letter J is, yet the mixure of arabs, kazakhistanis, french, english, persians, lybians, saudis, egyptians proper, moroccans, iraqis, turks, lebanese, syrians, mongols, sudanis, yemenis, nubians, ( what else? can't remember all of them! ) that form the modern day cairo and delta society pronounce G instead of J unlike upper egyptians ( egyptians proper ) !
any way, I know you're a fanatic, and I won't be replying here, just wanted to make stuff clear for those passer bys that read stuff in this page and take it for facts, well, they're not facts, they're just fictions of some group of coptic christian neo-nazis that fantasy modern egypt as a place of their own, and the rest of the egyptian people are filthy invaders that should be kicked away !
good luck, since you read this far, the message is through, it's ok to work your reversion magic now!

41.233.46.9 (talk) 15:58, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Vowel section to be corrected

Let's juxtapose two claims from the article in its current form:

1. "The distinction between short and long vowels is still phonemic".

Thus we should assume that there are still 4 types of syllables in EgAr: CA, CAA, CAC, and (rare unless resulting from vowel reduction in unstressed posttonic syllables) CAAC, all of them occurring both in stressed and unstressed syllables.

2. "Unstressed long vowels are shortened, and stressed short vowels are usually lengthened", "Long vowels in closed syllables are reduced to their short version".

Thus we should assume that all the CAAC --> CAC, all unstressed CAA --> CA, and most stressed CA --> CAA, which makes the former claim an overstatement -- vowel length proves to be phonemic never in pretonic syllables (no long vowels there), only partly in tonic (never before long consonants, only sometimes before short ones) and virtually never in posttonic (well, the posttonic long [i]'s don't undergo the change into [e]'s after shortening /"If long /iː/ is shortened, it becomes → /ɪ/~/e/, but, this is usually restricted to those vowels when appearing in the middle or beginning of words. "/, but in this position there can't be any remnants of ClassAr short [i]'s, so we can call this a positionnaly conditioned pronunciation, without referring to vowel length in ClassAr).

So the correct form of the first statement would in my opinion be "The distinction between short and long vowels is still phonemic only in open stressed syllables, and even there it has/had tendency to obsolesce". However, my knowledge of Arabic (let alone its dialects/daughter languages is so far too scarce to determine whether the data given in this section is itself correct, so I don't consider myself a person competent to correct it. I mark it with the "contradict" template. 85.222.86.17 (talk) 15:18, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

OK man, thanks for the explanation. I've felt that part needed reform & what you suggest is absolutely meaningful :) --Mahmudmasri (talk) 02:04, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I've studied Egyptian Arabic a fair amount and the problem is that the statement that "stressed short vowels are usually lengthened" is false. You are right that the environments where long and short vowels can contrast are limited -- to stressed syllables, either open or final, but there is little if any tendency to lengthen short vowels. The case of rajul -> raagil is the only one I know of. It is easy to construct minimal pairs like /kátab/ "he wrote" (form I) vs. /káttab/ "he caused to write" (form II) vs. /káatab/ "he corresponded" (form III) vs. /káatib/ "writer" vs. /kitáab/ "book" etc. (The last word has final stress while the others have penultimate stress, but stress is basically non-phonemic.) Other examples: /kátabu/ "they wrote" vs. /katabúu/ "they wrote it" (again, the stress moves automatically as a result of the final long vowel); /sáwa/ "together" vs. /sáawa/ "he arranged"; /sá9a/ "he worked hard" vs. /sáa9a/ "hour"; etc. Benwing (talk) 00:56, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

short vowel phonemes

At some point someone went and changed short /i/ to /e/, and short /u/ to /o/. This is incorrect and stems from a lack of understanding of the difference between phonemic and phonetic. Another indication of this confusion was the text "/i/, pronounced as /ɪ/ or /e/". This should read "/i/, pronounced as [ɪ] or [e]", where the // indicates the phoneme /i/, and [] indicates its phonetic manifestations. Regardless of whether /i/ sounds more like [e] when spoken, and regardless of what SMS users normally do, /i/ is the correct notation, and almost universally used in linguistically-oriented descriptions of Egyptian Arabic. I went and fixed all the mistakes; please don't unfix them. Thanks. Benwing (talk) 01:34, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Help me: Making the article understandable (linguist?)

I suspect the current article is awesome from a linguistic point of view. For a non-linguist like me, however, it's hard to impossible to understand. That begins with all the technical language, continues with the lack of examples for some of the described phenomena, and goes on with the use of Latin characters instead of Arabic ones. [BTW, the article seems to suggest that foreigners only use Latin characters, which would be incorrect. I don't know a single foreigner who would write Egyptian with Latin characters. I don't doubt they exist... but implying that using Arabic script is rare would require a reference.]

I'd love to try to expand/rewrite the article to make it understandable for people like me, but only if a linguist (or whoever wrote it or understands it) volunteers to "proof-read" it, i.e. to make sure that I don't insert mistakes or mess up the linguistic qualities of the article. "All" that person(s) has/have to do would be to understand the current article and then read my rewrite with a critic eye. So... any volunteer(s)? --Ibn Battuta (talk) 19:35, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd be happy to proofread any changes you make. But you need to keep the current use of Latin characters and not try to substitute Arabic ones. There are very good reasons for using Latin characters. For one, it makes the article much more understandable for the large majority of people who aren't fluent in Arabic script, and furthermore, the Arabic script is inadequate for expressing the phonology of Egyptian Arabic -- or, for that matter, most languages other than Classical Arabic. Arabic script has no way of expressing many distinctions that are important for Egyptian -- /a/ vs. /ɑ/, /r/ vs. /rˤ/, /ʒ/ vs. /g/, /p/, /v/, etc. Benwing (talk) 22:58, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Transcription system

The transcription system used here seems to be an ad-hoc mishmash of IPA and DIN. Perhaps we should switch to IPA, or does IPA fail somehow in a way that this transcription system doesn't? — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 07:11, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

No, IPA would work just fine. I think what happened is the existing text used DIN and then I greatly expanded the article and used IPA, and it ended up a mess. Benwing (talk) 22:59, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Uh, it occurred to me that there's one problem with using pure IPA, which is the sound of 'y', IPA /j/. All transcription systems that I've ever seen use 'y' not 'j', and in fact 'j' is used for /dʒ/ or /ʒ/. Doing the strict IPA thing will be extremely confusing. Benwing (talk) 00:19, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
That's not really a failure of the IPA, it's a manifestion of using two systems, which makes it confusing right now. Converting fully to IPA would remove confusion. Be on the lookout when I or others convert to IPA that instances of DIN j are converted correctly. — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 02:14, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

masri

It's called masri, do NOT delete the language's name!! 41.91.113.22 (talk) 10:05, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

perhaps when you get a Username, and enable us to discuss this with you, we should consider this... untill then, it remains Egyptian Arabic... but thank you for your concern...and hope to see you with a username, so we can discuss this.... cheers

Arab League User (talk) 02:46, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Arab League recent edits

[3]: Arab League removed some information, claiming that there were no citation, which didn't even have the citation needed tag. That information included that there were calls for the Spoken language in Egypt to be be made official. He also claimed that there is not political party in Egypt called Liberal Egyptian Party. Ethnologue says, “Similar to Sudanese Arabic, especially in the south, but heavily influenced by Cairene Arabic.” Review: aec (archived version). Also review Coptic language#Dialects, it had two main dialects: northern & southern. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 22:32, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

The Liberal Party is NOT a party, rather a Movement, eventho, this doesnt deny the case that THIS IS NOT supported by ANY referance, NOR Citations... and seem like rather a biased sentence for promoting personal political views... if you manage to get a referance, and a citation, please revert my edit, and add them in... and mahmudmasur (or is it Lanterix, im not sure of the nature of your username) please refer from using words that seem to jump to conclusions, such as "claiming", furthur on, the Link you provided with Ethnologue states Sa'idi as Arabic, rather than a seperate "Egyptian" dialect, so perhaps the entire part should be removed... dont you think, since Arabic Sa'idi, seems to be completely differant from the "Egyptian" (whether we agree on its status as a Language or a dialect), it is eitherway irrelevant to this Egyptian language theory...

furthur on, the discussion of Egyptian being a simply Spoken Dialect in Arabic, or a seperate Language needs to be discussed seriously, and a credible source needs to be created, rather than some opinions from here and their, dont you agree?? i mean, Wikipedia is NOT a place for promoting a certian ideology, or theory, but simply present it, and not create it as a fact. Arab League User (talk) 03:14, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

  • Generally speaking, ALL fact-statements in wikipedia shall be supported by references, especially those statements which evoke controversy. Sometimes, if the statement is not problematic or if common sense accepts it, then perhaps one could ignore such rules, or at least not delete the statement until someone finally provides a ref. So i agree with Arab League User that the statement shall be deleted, but i disagree with him/her regarding the speedy deletion. WP policy suggests that a (citation needed) tag be added to such unreferenced statements and some time be given to allow users to add such references. Please refer to Wikipedia:Citation needed and Template:Citations missing for further info on this matter. Thanks, Maysara (talk) 22:17, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Introduction

I propose to change the introduction in this way : <Egyptian Arabic (اللهجة المصرية‎[1] literally Egyptian Dialect) or (اللغه المصريه الحديثه‎....> --Helmoony (talk) 17:47, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

  • There is an ongoing debate on whether Egyptian is dialect of Arabic or language of its own (i.e. developed from many influences including Coptic, etc.). Since Egyptian is an existing medium of talking, then it certainly is a language regardless of whether it is original or not. Describing it specifically as "dialect" suggests to make an adversary point to the language-perspective. You could have seen all this had you looked carefully to the content of the article. It is simply POV to state that Egyptian is only a dialect. Our job as neutral editors is to report that there is a debate around this point, and not to adopt one of them. Thank you, Maysara (talk) 19:05, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
It s not a point of view but just giving the 2 point of views. As you can see I added OR. In later paragraphs, of course, there s a discussion about that fast. As you said our job is to report that there is a debate and that s what I said. Why shoud we JUST put one point of view in the introduction ? --Helmoony (talk) 19:49, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Yes, you can add "or" if you want to, but do not REPLACE language with dialect. This is what i was trying to say; a dialect is "in fact" a language, only that it has a different sound than another dialect of the same language. So, by saying that Egyptian is a language, this is a FACT. By staying that it is merely a dialect, this is a "disputed fact". Language is a term that encompasses "dialect". Now, feel free to add all the information you know about the dispute as long as it is said in neutrality and references are being added. Maysara (talk) 20:01, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
It s edited. --Helmoony (talk) 05:14, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
  • User:Helmoony, you do not seek to present information here, you want to have your point of you WIN over other points of view. Your last edit is arrogant and disrespectful of the opinions of others, and it will not pass. you want to add new disputed facts add them away from the leading part, you obviously don't know how to do it. And your reference does not meet any of the criteria. Do not replace original text with any other text without consensus. Maysara (talk) 11:31, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

you do not seek to present information here, you want to have your point of you WIN over other points of view.

I proposed an edit and you accepted it.

Your last edit is arrogant and disrespectful of the opinions of others

What other opinions? There is two opinions and I wrote it in the introduction. what s the problem ?

you obviously don't know how to do it

You propoblay have more experience thant me in wiki, why don t you correct the way the source is prsented instead of deleting it because it s not well presented.

And your reference does not meet any of the criteria

Here is an other source. < Arabic dialect of Egypt > or < Most of these works claim to describe the Arabic dialect of Egypt, thus giving the impression that there is only one. In fact, they all describe a variety of the elevated colloquial of Cairo which was certainly in the 19th century, as it is today, the standard Egyptian dialect. > [4] and also [5] and [6].

you want to add new disputed facts add them away from the leading part

If there is 2 point of view, why should we just put one point of view in the introduction. Egyptian dialect is a well known translation for Egyptian Arabic. Just take a look on google (I addition to the sources I added above, of course), (اللهجة المصرية) Egyptian dialect : 127,000 results [7] and (اللغه المصريه الحديثه) The Modern Egyptian Language : 17,000 results [8].

It is simply POV to state that Egyptian is only a language in the introduction. --Helmoony (talk) 15:44, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

  • Done .. you haven't got my point about what the word "language" means. Any spoken sounds and vocalizations used successfully for the purpose of communication is by definition a language. A dialect IS a language. Anyways, thank you for your patience! Maysara (talk) 16:12, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Thks, by the way the definition you made about language is a anthropological definition. But any dictionnary in the world differs a dialect from a language. --Helmoony (talk) 17:04, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
  • I think it's a bad idea to replace any facts whatsoever, my friend Helmoony. Anyway, I believe the best thing to do is to unbiasedly outline all the POVs about Masri and footnote all the facts concerning its nomenclature; because I think it's getting ugly all this parenthetical wording. Note that the Arabic word lugha is historically used for both "language" and "(dia)lect", regarding the context.--Zack (talk) 23:14, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

how come only 50 million speakers

The article states that the total number of speakers is 50 million, what about the rest 30 million, what do they speak in Egypt?!?!?! This should change to over 70 million i suppose! Maysara (talk) 01:15, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

The rest of the population of Egypt speaks Egyptian Arabic as a second language, not as a native language, which is what Wikipedia counts. The 50 million number is based on a reliable source. --Taivo (talk) 02:48, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
  • So are you saying that there are in Egypt over 25 million people who speak Egyptian as a "second" language? So what is/are the first language(s) of this great multitude of people, and where is your "unreliable" source? The source attached to the statement in the table states that "Egyptian Arabic is spoken by virtually all of Egypt's 76 million inhabitants". Where is the source that says 25 of these 76 million speak it only as a second language? Show it to me so that i can bounce on it at once!! Maysara (talk) 03:14, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
The population of Egypt is irrelevant to the issue. The source cited in the article says 48-53. This source says there are a total of 53,990,000 speakers. There are other languages spoken in Egypt--Sa'idi Arabic, Bedawi Arabic, Hill Nubian, etc. Not all Egyptians speak Egyptian Arabic as their native language. But we must rely on reliable sources and the figures that they cite for speakers, not for the population of Egypt. For example, this source lists 19,000,000 native speakers of Sa'idi Arabic. There is most of the 20 million speaker difference between speakers of Egyptian Arabic and the population of Egypt right there. Here's another million for you--Eastern Egyptian Bedawi Arabic. Over 300,000 speak Western Egyptian Bedawi Arabic, a variety of Libyan Arabic. Those are just the Arabic varieties spoken in Egypt and don't include the Hill Nubian or Berber varieties. Total speakers whose native language is not Egyptian Arabic: about 21,300,000 according to Ethnologue. --Taivo (talk) 04:06, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
  • ok .. you obviously don't know much about the matter .. you speak on and on about reliable sources as though you have become a machine or bot. the population of Egypt is highly relevant to the issue. Sa'idi Arabic (whose speakers you count up to 19 million) is certainly an authentic Egyptian Arabic, differences being only on the phonetic level, while syntactic and morphological substratum is the same as that of other dialects in Egypt. There are hundreds, if not thousands of languages/dialects that are spoken by the beduins in Sinai, and yes, there are different from Egyptian, and also the distinct Tamazigh language in Siwa and maybe other oasis of the western desert. But the beduin populations are very slim. The Nubians who still speak what you generically call "Hill Nubian" (lol) are bi-lingual, they speak Egyptian also as a first language. So, if your sources say that these beduin populations, along with whatever other minorities, account for over 25 million; I think logic dictates that you flush these sources in the toilet!!! Maysara (talk) 04:38, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
Egyptian Arabic does not include Sa'idi Arabic--not in Wikipedia and not in other reliable linguistic sources. We have reliable sources giving reliable numbers for speakers of Egyptian Arabic. Unless you actually have a reliable linguistic source that states otherwise, the number of native speakers of Egyptian Arabic is about 50,000,000--probably a bit more. Your word counts for squat in Wikipedia. The only thing that counts here are reliable sources. --Taivo (talk) 04:46, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
  • RELIABLE RELIABLE Ta Daaa! No one, ever, claim that Sa'idi Arabic is a different language. Only you because you know nothing about it. there is no 20 million people in Egypt who speak a different language than the rest of the population ... your reliable source is unreliable. I hope soon other editors might join this discussion, because obviously your insistence steams either from love of ignorance, or deluded belief of mastery in the topic, (maybe both), Mr. reliable source!!! Maysara (talk) 05:15, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps you need to actually look at the reliable sources that separate Sa'idi Arabic from Egyptian Arabic: [9], [10], Linguasphere separates them (Egyptian is 12-AAC-ea, Sa'idi is 12-AAC-eb), International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, etc. So you have one source while I have provided at least four sources without even breaking a sweat. --Taivo (talk) 06:07, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
And you have clearly not read your own source, which unequivocally says that there are only 48-53 million speakers of Egyptian Arabic. --Taivo (talk) 06:23, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
And here are other sources that separate Egyptian Arabic and Sa'idi Arabic as individual varieties of Arabic:
  • This is a source on Sa'idi that does not include Egyptian: Khalaffallah, Abdelghany A. 1969. A Descriptive Grammar of Sa'i:di Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. Janua Linguarum, Series Practica 32. The Hague: Mouton.
  • Here is a source on Egyptian that does not include Sa'idi: Harrell, Richard S. 1957. The Phonology of Colloquial Egyptian Arabic. American Council of Learned Societies Program in Oriental Languages Publications Series B, Aids, Number 9. New York: American Council of Learned Societies.
  • On this map Egyptian and Sa'idi (Upper Egyptian) are on equal status as separate varieties of Arabic: Kaye, Alan S., & Judith Rosenhouse. 1997. "Arabic Dialects and Maltese," The Semitic Languages. Ed. Robert Hetzron. London: Routledge. Pages 263-311 (map on page 264).
  • On the World Atlas of Language Structures, Egyptian Arabic does not include Sa'idi ("Cairo" sources are clearly in abundance and specific Sa'idi sources are missing): World Atlas of Language Structures--Egyptian Arabic entry --Taivo (talk) 06:51, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
By looking here, you can see that this issue has already been covered before and that the solution was to have two articles--this one covering Egyptian Arabic and Sa'idi Arabic covering Sa'idi Arabic. It has also been discussed elsewhere and decided by consensus that the terms "language" and "dialect" are not appropriate to be used in issues of Arabic diversity. Instead we recognize that neighboring varieties might be somewhat mutually intelligible, but unintelligible to more distant varieties. Therefore we use the term "variety" to refer to the different labeled forms of Arabic. Egyptian Arabic and Sa'idi Arabic are different "varieties". We therefore steer a middle ground between calling them separate languages or dialects of a single language. This usage is in total conformity to all the reliable sources. --Taivo (talk) 15:57, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

While I'm not going to take a stand on the particular numbers at issue here, I think it would be useful for everyone to look over Wikipedia: Original Research again. In particular they "directly support the material as presented" (emphasis added). This means no synthesis. You cannot combine two sourced statements into a third. --Selket Talk 16:59, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

The "76 million" isn't a reliable figure for second language speakers or even for a combination of native and second language speakers because it is simply a figure for the population of Egypt, not a survey of who speaks the language as a second language. --Taivo (talk) 13:49, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
For Taivo

What is this? Egyptian Arabic is spoken by virtually all of Egypt's 76 million inhabitants... Why do you insist on removing the 76 million number?[11]

48 — 53 million as a native language;[2] from 53,990,000[3] to 76 million[2] (inside or outside of Egypt)

  • Did you notice the semicolon?

Ethnologue mentioned people outside of Egypt :)

  • So, Egyptian Arabic is spoken by around 50 million natively & 76 non-native speakers in Egypt included.

First, you commented that the template only mentions the number of native speakers, to remove the 76 million number.[12] Then, you removed it again justifying that UCLA only talks about population of Egypt. But, what about that? Egyptian Arabic is spoken by virtually all of Egypt's 76 million inhabitants... --Mahmudmasri (talk) 17:44, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

There are a couple of issues here. First, the number of native speakers. We are in agreement here, but Ethnologue has two numbers--a number of about 52,000,000 speakers just in Egypt and 53,990,000 worldwide. That 53,990,000 number is the worldwide number. The UCLA source just has 48-53 and doesn't designate whether or not this range is just for Egypt or worldwide. I'm of the opinion that the number entry in the template should be just the simple 53,990,000 figure from Ethnologue and not include the range from the UCLA site. UCLA's numbers aren't precise, but just general anyway. Ethnologue's numbers are generally much more accurate. Second, the issue of whether to include non-native speakers or not. There is widespread consensus and usage that second language speakers are not included in the language template for a couple of very simple reasons: 1) They tend not to be very accurate and are typically just estimates that vary widely in accuracy from country to country; 2) They do not take into account how fluent a person must be in a second language in order to be judged a "non-native speaker" and the level of fluency required to count varies from country to country and even speaker to speaker. I can't tell you how many people I met in Hungary who claimed to "speak English", but who's English consisted of "OK, yes, no, I speak English". Therefore there is a wide consensus among linguists that we don't include second language speakers in the template unless there is a very reliable source that lists it, but even then we generally shun it. Taking the population of Egypt and saying that "virtually everyone speaks Egyptian Arabic" and then subtracting a figure for native speakers of Egyptian Arabic is not a reliable count of non-native speakers. There just isn't a reliable source that says, "X people speak Egyptian Arabic as a second language". In the text we go as far as the sources will allow in saying that most of the remaining 76 million people of Egypt speak it as a second language. But that's not accurate enough for the template. --Taivo (talk) 17:56, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
53,990,000 number is the worldwide native speakers number only. Not L1 + L2. Egyptian Arabic is a prestige dialect. It is the lingua franca of Egypt. UCLA didn't make a bizarre claim so that it would be unreasonably rejected. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 18:09, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes, 53,990,000 is the worldwide native speaker number. The template almost always only lists native speakers. I'm sure that the UCLA site isn't lying, but there's a difference between an accurate number and just a generalization. The template should contain only the most accurate numbers we can source. Saying that "most of the 76 million people of Egypt speak Egyptian Arabic as a first or second language" isn't an accurate number. It's just a generalization and we cannot extrapolate the number from that". If 52,000,000 people speak EA as a native language in Egypt, we cannot use the formula 76 - 52 = 24 to say that 24 million people speak it as a second language. We must have a citation that says, "24 million people in Egypt speak Egyptian Arabic as a second language" before we can include that in the template. We don't have such a statement. We mention the second language speakers in the text based on the UCLA site, but that site just isn't accurate enough for the template. And, even if we had an accurate number, the general consensus is to include only native speakers in the template. There are exceptions for truly major, widespread languages like English, but overall, we leave second language speakers out of the template. --Taivo (talk) 18:12, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
By the way, the Egyptian population census is over 83 million [13]. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 18:14, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
So that makes the UCLA number even more inaccurate than it already is :) --Taivo (talk) 18:20, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
This is a newer count: [14] (Total population (thousands), 2008  81527)=81527thousand=81527000.

so it doesn't make it less, maybe even more :) --Mahmudmasri (talk) 18:26, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Arab League map indicating literacy by country (2009 Human Development Report) Grey = no data
Speaking about accuracy in number of speakers, does the claim that Arabic language is spoken by 280 million native speakers seem to be reasonable! Illiteracy is widespread in the Arab League states. Arabic language needs to be learned in order to be understood. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 18:38, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
I was at work, so sorry for not getting back to you sooner. Arabic is a particularly sticky problem. You are correct that there are no native speakers of Modern Standard Arabic--it's a second language to everyone. However, there are very strong sociolinguistic issues involved so that many "Arabic" speakers consider their native variety to be somehow not real Arabic and only Modern Standard Arabic counts since it is the language of the Koran. Even sites like Ethnologue are a bit schizophrenic about it--listing "native" speakers of Arabic, but also listing native speakers of each of the constituent varieties. I try to keep away from the thorns over at Arabic language other than to remove the ridiculously high speaker numbers that clearly include "non-native" speakers. --Taivo (talk) 07:25, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, if the 53,990,000 number is to be used, it should be given as 54,000,000 instead. The number is Ethnologue is obtained by adding the estimates of speakers for each country, but since the estimate for Egypt is at best being given to the nearest 100,000, using a higher precision than that is incorrect mathematically. Carolina wren (talk) 01:22, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

No argument from me. --Taivo (talk) 04:02, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

"Dialects" versus "Varieties"

In the first paragraph the sentence "the 76 million Egyptians speak a continuum of dialects". That's not exactly right based on the terminology that we've been using in Wikipedia that seeks to avoid the whole dialect/language issue in terms of the Arabic-speaking world. There are four generally recognized varieties of Arabic spoken in Egypt, each of which has its own Wikipedia article--Egyptian Arabic, Sa'idi Arabic, Western Egyptian Bedawi Arabic (WEBA), and Eastern Egyptian Bedawi Arabic (EEBA). WEBA is part of Maghribi, so including it in a statement of a continuum is not correct. I have a feeling that the "continuum" comment was only meant to include the two "river dialects"--Egyptian and Sa'idi. There may well be a continuum, but they are separately named and recognized "varieties". We need to keep the Wikipedia terminology intact so as not to confuse readers between "dialect" and "variety" and to avoid the implication that Sa'idi is not a separate variety. The sentence should properly read, "the 76 million Egyptians speak one of four varieties of Arabic--with Egyptian Arabic being the most prominent" (or something like that). If Sa'idi and Egyptian truly form a continuum, then we can word it "the 76 million Egyptians speak a continuum of varieties". We just need to change the word "dialect" since it is so problematic in Arabic studies. --Taivo (talk) 18:44, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

As a clarification on Western Egyptian Bedawi Arabic, it is a dialect of Libyan Arabic spoken in the Western Desert. The Ethnologue link is here. As the article states, it's a Maghribi variety of Arabic and not the native Berber language of Siwa. --Taivo (talk) 18:53, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Consonants

The consonants section says this: [ʒ] tends to be Egyptianized & merge with [ʃ]; example: 'garage' جراش is only pronounced /ɡɑrɑːʃ/ even by educated speakers.

but it also says this: Few rural speakers pronounce [ʒ] instead of [ɡ]; away from Cairo. Pronouncing [ʒ] instead of [ɡ] is not considered prestigious.

Shouldn't that be [ʃ] instead of [ɡ] in the second quote? If not, then an explanation of why and when [ʒ] has two different substitutions needs to be included. Carolina wren (talk) 01:27, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Please tell me if it is still unclear after that edit: [15]. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 18:39, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Shouldn't we stress the closeness of the Masri dialect to the Yemeni dialect since the similarities are obviously their especially with word choices? For example, Yemenis and Egyptians say Aywa (instead of na3am like other Arabs) and edeeny (give me) instead of 3aTeelee or hat like other Arabs do. Also, it is most likely they took geem from the Yemenis who settled in Egypt rather than the Northern Arab settlers who say jeem. --Falastine fee Qalby (talk) 19:34, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Is this your hunch, or established research? If you follow your whim, you can manage to find similairies between every pair of Arabic dialects. Morrocan has eddi for 'give' and Maltese replaces 'q' with a gollottal stop, but they are not grouped with Egyptain. Just to give an example.Hakeem.gadi (talk) 04:06, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Pfft, Yemenis immigrated to what is now known as Morocco too. Look up بنو معقل Maqil and related Yemeni tribes that played a big role in Arabizing Egypt and Maghreb. Unfortunately, I don't have any sources at hand. I guess Wikipedia will have to miss on such important facts. --Falastine fee Qalby (talk) 06:54, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
I know all about the Maqil and Hilalian-Sulaimitian mega-migrations (I am Libyan, mind you), and I am sure that Egyption was influenced by them, but I think having such knowledge in the article would amount to originality. But I will be happy to see the results of your research elsewhere. Are you from Yemen, BTW?.Hakeem.gadi (talk) 07:57, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
I was about to say something similar to you. If you have any expertise in the Arabic language field, it would be nice of you to publish your research and future research at a reliable source, one we can use at Wikipedia. :D I am Yemeni, but born and raised in America. BTW, do you know if مش (not) is a Classical Arabic word or not? I have only heard Yemenis and Egyptians say مش instead of ليس or لن or لم--Falastine fee Qalby (talk) 18:38, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
مش and its variants ماشي (Moroccan) and موش, are almost pan-Arabic. In answering your second question, I will assume that your are refering to the Arabic used in classical times not to standardiazed Arabic. All I can say is that the word إيش appears to have been quite common. The oldest use of it, that I could find, is by a man called أبو علي حسين الكرابيسي, from the time of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, who is recorded to have said it. But on oral account, a friend of mine, who is an Arabic classics geek, says that Ali ibn Abi Tablib used it, too. How is that connected to مش? I think it shows a tendency towards using the ش words -مش, إيش, ليش-. As for لن, ليس, لم I have never heard them used in any vernacular, nor do I believe that they are used in any. I think they have fallen out of use ages ago. Hakeem.gadi (talk) 20:27, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
I see لم and ليس a lot in standard Arabic. The Oxford English - (modern standard) Arabic Reader's Dictionary (1980) lists لم and لا as the translations of not. Are you saying مش is ما with ش like إيش is أي with ش ‍? I don't think it is a coincidence that Arab people across the Arab world started adding the ش suffix to classical Arabic words. I do think it originated as a Yemeni influence, and Yemeni influence is not only limited to Egyptian Arabic as you acknowledged. BTW, the suffix of ش is added to verbs (من ذي زعلش؟), possessive nouns in second person راسش, and prepositions, all of which are used when directed to a feminine object, another example, Moosh ana dhee rizahtu al-bab alaish ya Ahlam. (It is not me who locked the door on you Ahlam) موش أنا ذي رزاحت الباب عليش. Is this present in Libyan Arabic? --Falastine fee Qalby (talk) 21:44, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm guessing that what you refer to as the ش suffex being added to verbs and passive nouns is in fact the phonetical shift from ك to ش attested in southern Iraqi and gulf coast modern accents. In all these examples you cite the ش is indeed in place of ك.
Regarding the influence for Yemenis on the whole of North Africa, from Egypt to Morocco, I'd like to add to what you said that Yemenis constituted the Arab warriors who fought along with the native Amazigh to conquere Iberia The conflict which took place between the two ethnicities is recorded, signifying their non-trivial existance. Banu AlAhmar of Granada were the last Arab dynasty to get expelled Andalucia in 1942. So their accent must have been influential.
--A. Gharbeia (talk) 17:28, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
Careful ... AFAIK the sound in question is not 'sh' (IPA /ʃ/) but 'ch' /tʃ/ as in English "church". Using Arabic characters to discuss sound changes is a bad idea because many sounds, e.g. 'ch', do not have equivalent characters. Better to use IPA. Benwing (talk) 01:01, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Also, the various comments above about 'lam', 'laysa', 'mush' and 'mashi' are not contradictory. No spoken dialect (i.e. vernacular) has 'lam' or 'laysa', but Standard Arabic does, and Standard Arabic is (of course) very much alive, and spoken in many contexts. 'mush' and 'mish' are contractions of "maa 'eesh", and 'eesh' or variants come from Classical "'ayya shay'". Note also Moroccan 'mashi', literally 'ma' "not" + 'shi' "thing". Benwing (talk) 01:10, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

What is written here is all non-sense. Yemineses, did you forget who the Egyptian in contributions for you country in nassers's era??? I am amazed by the amount of ignorance here and trying to relate every Egyptian things to Yemenis espically and not the other way around. Just have a look at your flag, national anthem and of course-- your language. did you forget the Egyptian teachers man who taught you and other arabs. MasriDefend (talk) 21:25, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Accent or Language

their is no doubt that Egyptian Arabic is not a language, everyone (i assume all sane ppl do) admit and recognize it as part of Arabic, which can be understood by other arab speakers, and for all of those who will blame media for it, a Saudi Accent, or Sudanese or Lebanese is also understoodable by Egyptians, anyways, the point is, shouldnt we refrain from using the word "Egyptian Language", and use "Egyptian Dialect", or Accent instead??

plus what makes a language??, UK english use Lift while Americans say Elevator (or is it the other way round), and tons of other stuff... does that mean that their is a new language called American??, no it just simply means that each community, borrows some words from other languages, or evolves his own language, thats the exact same scenrio with the arabic thing... calling Egyptian as a language independant from Arabic is a BIG mistake, one that should not be tolerated, since all these Egyptian Nationalists and Taha Hussein followers seek to isolate egypt from its roots, and bring back some thousands of years old roots, that is extinct, you cant bring back the dead, its unNatural, Egyptians speak arabic, most of them are arabs, and the Majority of Egyptians think that way, so you should NOT impose your opinion on such stuff. you have to be completly unbias to this issue, no one regards Egyptian as a language, except for some young nationalist fanatics, who seek to make dissproportioned issues.

throughout the article, i couldnt find ONE "credible" referance, or citation that refers to EGyptian as a new language. so please stop vandalising this article, or it will have to be protected. Arab League User (talk) 15:45, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi Arab League, while I understand your concern, I'd ask you to be careful with your conclusions. You seem to suggest that people who talk about an Egyptian language are "vandalizing" the article. That is a pretty strong word, and one that's usually reserved for other contexts such as willfully inserting nonsense, deleting valuable information or using profanities (look at the recent article history for examples). So I would ask you to assume good faith of the authors, and bear patiently with those who may not be aware (enough) of the distinction between language and article. Regards, Ibn Battuta (talk) 19:40, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Im not saying that they are vandalizing the article, but it seems that alot of jiberish is filled in this article, that seems to have absolutely no referance, nor citation, and seem to be simply a pan-Pharoanism nationalists, nothing more.

i understand that we are ALL trying to develop Wikipedia, and push it to its Extreame.... but this is ruinning the article's credibility, i was noticed by so, when i was discussing something about wikipedia with a friend here in Egypt, who said an evidence of wikipedia not being credible is that it states Egyptian as a seperate Language, rather than simply a dialect... --Arab League User (talk) 01:08, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

There are strong linguistic reasons for calling Egyptian Arabic a separate language. However, there are also sociolinguistic reasons why it is not called a separate language. In order to accommodate both points of view here on Wikipedia, we have tried to be careful and refer to the various Arabic languages as "varieties"--not as either "languages" or "dialects". ("Accents" is not a valid linguistic term.) (Taivo (talk) 20:47, 24 October 2009 (UTC))
  • our job as editors of this page is not to express our personal opinions regarding the identity or nature of what the Egyptians speak, but to make sure that all perspectives to the question are equally demonstrated, reliable sources are provided, and no prejudice in information, tone, or any aspect of representation, are occurring. Thank you, Maysara (talk) 23:58, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
As far as "credible references" go, ISO 639-3 lists Egyptian Arabic as a separate language by giving it its own code. The Arabic varieties are not mutually intelligible across the length and breadth of their territory. Uzbeki Arabic is quite different from Moroccan Arabic. Moroccan Arabic and Egyptian Arabic are not mutually intelligible. The problem comes in drawing the line where the different varieties become mutually unintelligible. This is rather difficult, so it is more efficient to call each of the varieties separate languages. There is generally mutual intelligibility between neighboring varieties, but once non-contiguous varieties are encountered, intelligibility drops rapidly until it is lost in more distant varieties. (Taivo (talk) 05:30, 25 October 2009 (UTC))
i understand and agree with most of this, but when Egyptians THEMSLEVS say that they speak Arabic, rather than Egyptian, then their is something odd... wouldnt you think, i mean, Egyptian Dialect, is simply a Dialect, Arabic is a VERY rich language, and the dialects are due to the use of what words... for example, the word "cry" in Arabic has several meaning, Yabki (which means Cry with no voice), while their is Yi'ayat (wich means crying in a loud voice), both Are Arabic words, yet in the levant and the gulf, they use Yabki, while the Egyptians use Yi'ayat, same goes to almost ALL exmaples... thats why it is recognized in the Arab world, and in EGYPT as Arabic dialect rather than a differant Language, and that is ALSO the reason why it was never adopted as a language, and will never be adopted as a language, because it is simply NOT viewed as a seperate language here in Egypt, which i Live... it was a suprise to me to see that wikipedia states that it is a Language, while the speakers of this "Language" dont view it that way...

--Arab League User (talk) 01:08, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

OMG, Do you live in any country other than the middle east?? If you do, with all this knowledge in English language, how dare you to say that Egyptian is not a language?!!!!!! Unbelievable, 

--MasriDefend (talk) 21:58, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Language of Arabic military troops and its relation to Masri(?)

  • Regarding this ongoing debate: [16], we respect the information provided in the book by Clive Holes, but the question remains, what evidence there is that proves the existence of a relationship between the spoken Arabic of the Military troops, and Masri or the modern Egyptian language. No such evidence currently seem to exist. User:Vb4ever and especially(!) User:Mahmudmasri, please discuss the matter and stop the edit war. Maysara (talk) 22:20, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
  • There is no debate. He doesn't debate anything before removing or adding. How come he removes a referenced statement! Am I the one who is edit-warring here? Reverting the edits of his removal or altering data without adding reference. If he had another claim, he could have added it with a reference (at least add it without a reference), but not remove the referenced claim. I honestly don't see it logical that a few foreigners coming to Egypt might be able to influence the Egyptians' spoken language hugely or influencing it at all! But, the statement is referenced, if someone had something else to say, he has to write it down with the reference, or add it without removing the referenced claim. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 22:45, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Additionally, the statement didn't claim that it is the only reason, however, it could be edited at the end of the sentence to be: “[...] which might have had an effect for some of the unique characteristics of the Egyptian variety.” but not remove the whole statement! See Vb4ever history I sent him a message explaining not to alter data, then he removed my comment. See the family of the language, it was removed. How come if I reverted that edit, I'd be accused as edit-warring! --Mahmudmasri (talk) 22:52, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Yes but even the statement “[...] which might have had an effect ..." must be one that is made by the author, not your presumption. Once more, you cannot link the language of the aforementioned military troops with contemporary Egyptian merely because there might be a relation. Unless there is in fact evidence, that is presented to the public in a reliable research source, you cannot say that there might be a relation. You can freely "think so", and you can research it yourself if you wish, but you cannot present it in an encyclopedia as either actual fact or probable possibility. Please refer to WP:Original Research for further information on such issues. Maysara (talk) 23:57, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Thanks, I know what does Original research mean. That was the whole statement. I wasn't the one to add it from the beginning. It was referenced, so I didn't want it to be removed. Part of it is referenced & the wrest is not: The variety of Arabic spoken by the Muslim military troops stationed in Fustat was already different from Classical Arabic[4], which in part accounts for some of the unique characteristics of the Egyptian dialect. Please, have some time to see the history of pages, thanks. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 01:19, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Mahmudmasri, there is obviously no way to communicate and argue with you, since "argument" is something that you reject whenever it is directed to you by other fellow editors and by myself here. Your tone is systematically aggressive and impolite towards others, and you are not willing to acknowledge what others say. You introduced original research: referring to a reference does not suffice to state facts. The statement the reference makes cannot be linked to the subject of this article, and therefore shall be deleted. User:Vb4ever, as you can see in your talk page, agrees with me on this; or rather I agree with him/her. For the time being, we are two, you are one; and above all, we have rationality, argument and logic, on our side, where you have prejudice and nervosity on yours. Although you are an admin in the Egyptian language Wikipedia, this is not the first time you violate Wikimania's policies and guidelines, since you once before published in the Egyptian Wikipedia a whole copyrighted poem, and refused to delete it when you were told that publishing it was both illegal and non-encyclopedic. Please respect others, and respect Wikimania's and Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If you wish, we can post this over in Wikipedia:Third opinion. Peace! Maysara (talk) 02:31, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

I really thank you maysara for you logic and the way of presenting it. obviously, mahmoudmasri is intended to ignore and target other people's edits and only make the article the way he wants to satisfy his inner instinct even if it is for the cause of the Egyptian language. But thank God, he is not an admin in this wikipedia as he is in other ones. So his actions are not tolerated and his instinct lose at the end. He may twist some words to convince other people that he is right like he does not have a source etc, although it is right that the one needs a source to proof a statement; however, when logic and unlogic is compared, you dont need a source to support a logical and a common sense against unlogical and randomness. The way he targeted vb4ever edits and following it one by one, checking and arguing against it. Mahmoud you need to see a psychiatrist. --MasriDefend (talk) 21:47, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Words and its orgin in the bottom section

In the table in the bottom of the page that includes the names like ustaz, sitt etc

I have some notes about the orgin of the words. Some of them are inaccurate for example the world sitt does not come from the arabic word sayedah which does not even mean women in arabic but actually comes from the root sayed which means lord, owner, king etc. the word orgin I believe is Ancient Egyptian for the word woman along with the word sy which means man like sy elsayed. Others note is the word ustaz; it is actually not Arabic in orgin but Persian. Mo3alem is the standard Arabic word for teacher. I swear considering region languages as Arabic dialect is even harmful to Arabic language itself which need to not be altered and changed. After all, the purpose of the Arabic language itself is to be able to read the quran, but with words like this languages exposure it will lead to its alteration, driving away from the real purpose of the language. --MasriDefend (talk) 23:20, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Phonemic vs. allophonic notation

Someone keeps "correcting" the examples by changing /i/ to [e], /u/ to [o], /a/ to [æ] or [ɑ]. These are (more or less) correct as the phonetic pronunciation, but not as the phonemic pronunciation. The point of using phonemic notation is that it makes it far easier to understand the complications of vowel lengthening/shortening, emphasis spreading, etc. etc. From a phonemic perspective, lengthening of /a i u/ produces /aː iː uː/, no problem. Writing this purely phonetically, you end up trying to figure out why lengthened [e] becomes [iː], why [æ] suddenly changes to [ɑ] when certain endings are added, etc. etc. I don't have time right now to undo all the "damage" in the phonology section, but if/when I do, please think before changing things again! Benwing (talk) 02:50, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I explained many reasons on my talk page after Benwing started a discussion about it. The following example proves that [e] isn't only lengthened to [iː]: */ɡeːbna/ [ˈɡebnæ] ('our pocket'; from [ɡeːb] /ɡeːb/ + [næ] /na/), so phonemically, it can be transcribed /ɡebna/, not /ɡibna/ which might be a transcription of */ɡiːbna/ ([ˈɡebnæ] 'we brought'; from [ɡiːb] /ɡiːb/ + [næ] /na/). The following example was left like that because it explains that the word is of the Arabic origin which is */ɡibna/ [ˈɡebnæ] /ˈɡebna/ ('cheese'), but all the phonemic short /i/ of Arabic correspond to phonemic short /e/ in Egyptian Arabic. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 15:27, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
Additionally, shortened vowels can be highlighted by bold text. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 15:31, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Deletion of phonemic transcriptions in Egyptian Arabic

I noticed that you have deleted my phonemic transcriptions of Egyptian Arabic, claiming that they are "ambiguous". From a linguistic standpoint, there is a very good reason why phonemic transcriptions are used, which is that they abstract out numerous complications relating to allophonic rules. The vowel lengthening/shortening/insertion/deletion rules and the emphasis-spreading rules are very good examples of this. Using [e i o u ɑ æ] etc. obscures the simple relationship that holds between /a i u/ and /aː iː uː/, a relationship that's extremely important to convey clearly in order for the reader to understand how the phonetic adjustments and emphasis-spreading rules work. Although the relationship between e.g. [e], [i] and [iː] may be obvious to a native speaker such as you, it's much less obvious to a non-native speaker, and adds unnecessary complication to the already tricky process of following the various adjustment rules. This is why the best Egyptian Arabic textbooks all use /a i u aː iː uː/ notation or similar, and write inti ʕandik sēf rather than enti ʕandek seef or whatever. Also, formerly the Egyptian Arabic article as I wrote it (or at least, I wrote the majority of it) was consistent in its notation, but your changes have made it more and more a mishmash of different transcription systems. Benwing (talk) 03:11, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

My explanation

Thanks for discussing the subject about the transcriptions. I'll explain the reason for my edits. Indeed, in Egyptian Arabic, these short vowel-phonemes are separate /e/-/i/ and there is little reason why they would be summed-up phonemically. Most of the literature dealing with Egyptian Arabic phonology assumes that the standard pronunciation has no short [e]. This is incorrect because /e/ can occur anywhere in syllables, initially, medially or finally. In Egyptian Arabic, short /i/ is a word-final vowel, only. There is a meaningful phonemic contrast between /ˈben.te/ (/bent/+epenthetic /e/) and /ˈben.ti/ (/bent/+my /i/), they can't be transcribed as /ˈbin.ti/:

  • /el ˈben.te ˈdi/ that girl  vs /ˈben.ti ˈdi/ that (is) my girl. According to the erroneous transcription which prefers /i/, both would render: /il ˈbin.ti ˈdi/ and /ˈbin.ti ˈdi/.
  • Syllables can't end with long vowels unless that final syllable is stressed, such as [kɑ.ˈfeː] café.  /æ/-/ɑ/ are also split, however, sometimes [ɑ] is an allophone of /æ/. [ˈnæj.lon] nilon, [ˈnæj.mæ] (she is) sleeping, [ˈnɑj.ki] Nike, [ˈmɑj.jɑ] water, [mɑjk] (wasn't that a super-heavy syllable?) mic, [ˈmæj.ʕæ] yielded.
  • According to the scheme you used in the article, that transcription is also erroneous: /ana ʕaːwiz aːkul u/, because the the pronoun /u/ when added to /aːkul/, even pronouncing the word alone separately, would be /aklu/ not /aːkulu/. So, according to your scheme, it should have been /ana ʕaːwiz aːkul+u/
  • Insertion of a glottal stop when necessary to avoid vowel-initial syllables  the previous sentence is incorrect. Many words can normally start without an initial glottal stop. The correct transcription, according to your scheme would be /a.na.ˈʕaw.ˈzak.lu/. (a light syllable initially!)
    • It is easy to test if a word has an initial glottal stop or not, just add the prefix /we/ and: [we.ˈʔɑmr] and a command, while [ˈwæ.næ] and me. However, if it was intended to make special emphasis (as in English language), an epenthetic glottal stop might be added to /ˈænæ/ → [weˈʔæ.næ]. In Literary Arabic /ˈænæ/ always has an initial glottal stop: /ˈʔa.na/ (for Literary Arabic rules, see Hamza#Hamzat waṣl).
  • There are other examples emphasizing that Egyptian Arabic phonology has super-heavy syllables: [mɑsˤr] Egypt; [ʔenʃ] or [ʃebr] both mean inch; [ʔætl] killing; [ʕɑmr] the name Amr; [ʔɑmr] command; [ʕæʔl] mind. Levantine people (example, Lebanese) would typically pronounce all of the previous words as [ˈmɑ.sˤer, ˈʃɪ.ber, ˈʔa.tel, ˈʕa.mer, ˈʔa.mer, ˈʕa.ʔel].
  • /hum ʕaːwiz+i:n yaːkul+u u/ should be, according to your scheme: /humma ʕaːwiz+i:n jaːkul+uh+u/. First, according to your scheme, in Egyptian Arabic they is always /ˈhum.ma/ not /hum/, the latter is the Literary Arabic form. So → /hum.ma.ʕaw.ˈziːn.jak.ˈluː(h)/, the final /h/ is optional to pronounce, mostly when the syllable following it starts with a vowel.

So, phonemic Egyptian vowels should be: /æ, ɑ, e, -i, o, æː, ɑː, eː, iː, oː, uː/  or  /a, e, -i, o, aː, eː, iː, oː, uː/;  phonetically: [æ, ɑ, e, -i, o, -o~u, æː, ɑː, eː, iː, oː, uː]. The confusion arises primarily because most linguists try to compare all Arabic varieties phonologies together along with Classical Arabic, leading them to prefer /a, i, u, aː, eː, iː, oː, uː/. You would also know the reason for me writing two phonemic transcriptions of sample text in the article. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 15:13, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I didn't edit the morphology section and its subsections, with the exception of only one word in Nouns subsection. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 18:10, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Comments

Thanks for not changing things before we have discussed the issues.

First of all, I'm not sure if you understand the principle of verifiability, which is that we need to trust reliable sources (which include scholarly works) even if you think they are wrong (so-called "verifiability not truth"). The reason for this is that, as much as you personally make think something is right and something else is wrong, you may be mistaken. In general, this is especially the case when it comes to areas that an editor has a good deal of personal experience with but not so much scholarly background (I don't know for sure but I suspect you aren't a linguist).

In this case, since the relevant sources prefer to phonemicize [e] as /i/, this is what we need to follow. There's actually a good reason for this: As I mentioned before, the alternations between [e], [i] and [iː], and the fact that [e] lengthens to [iː], strongly suggests that the phonemicization of /i/ is correct. (BTW when I listened to Egyptian Arabic, the sound you indicate as [e] sounded to me more like [ɪ]. It may be the case that your dialect, but not all dialects, have [e]. One of the benefits of phonemic abstractions like /i/ is exactly that, when properly understood, they abstract out the differences of particular dialects and are applicable to all, or at least most, dialects.)

Your statement above (your point #1) about the epenthetic vowel is not an argument for treating [e] as a phoneme. It's rather an argument that the epenthetic vowel is a separate phoneme. In fact, many of my textbooks and discussions of Egyptian Arabic do exactly this, denoting the epenthetic vowel as /I/. The fact that I didn't do this is basically laziness on my part, since I didn't consider this the most relevant issue when describing the phonetic adjustment rules; but I have no problem with treating this as a separate phoneme denoted /I/.

As for your point #2, the issue of [æ] vs. [ɑ] is a tricky one. Yes, there are unpredictable alternations, especially in foreign words; but it's also very much the case that most alternations are predictable. Some discussions treat them as incipient phonemes, i.e. sounds recently phonemicized but mostly still predictable. Some treat them as "extra-systemic" or "foreign" phonemes, similar to /v p ʒ/, i.e. phonemes that are not completely nativized and occur primarily in foreign words, often those that themselves are not completely nativized, and which tend to become assimilated to other sounds in more common words, esp. by uneducated speakers. Some discussions treat them as pure allophones by expanding the number of emphatic consonants. Some discussions largely ignore the difference, because for understanding most aspects of the morphology it's irrelevant and needlessly complexifying. The fact that the two sounds are not completely phonemic is indicated very clearly by the fact that emphasis spreading operates in a not completely predictable fashion, with free or intra-speaker variation [æ~ɑ] in many contexts in long words at some distance from an emphatic consonant. I'd suggest we follow the path of:

  1. always listing phonemic descriptions
  2. ignoring the distinction in phonemic descriptions, possibly with the "trick" of indicating nearby consonants as emphatic
  3. giving exact phonetic equivalents for most example sentences (but not necessarily everywhere, esp. when this increases the clutter)

As for your point #3, apologies for missing the + sign, feel free to add it.

As for your point #4, you've misunderstood me. There is a phonetic glottal stop pronounced at the beginning of ana after a pause, just like in a word like ʔarnab with a phonemic glottal stop. Hence there are no surface syllables beginning with vowels.

As for your point #5, you've also misunderstood the discussion of light vs. heavy vs. superheavy. A light syllable is not just a vowel-initial syllable, but a CV syllable, and these certainly do exist, even though EA tries to avoid this when possible. In general, the fact that EA prefers heavy rather than light or superheavy syllables does not mean that they don't exist. Superheavy syllables do exist but only in a stressed syllable before a pause. These kind of exceptions are common in language phonologies, and phonologists often treat such exceptional phonemes as being "extra-syllabic" or extrametrical. In this case, the final consonant in the surface phonological word is best analyzed as extrametrical. This is why the final stressed syllable in a negative construction must be e.g. /lakʃ/ or /laːʃ/, but not /laʃ/: treating the /ʃ/ as extrametrical, the rest of the stressed syllable must be heavy. This does not change the fundamental fact that EA generally disallows superheavy syllables and disprefers light syllables. I did not add a discussion of these extra-syllabic exceptions because I didn't want to needlessly burden the discussion with complexity: Remember that this article is directed not towards native EA speakers, but towards a general audience who would like to know more but will easily get overburdened with too many details. If you want to add discussion of details like superheavy stressed syllables before a pause, put them in footnotes, so they don't get in the way of the flow of the main text.

As for your point #6, apologies for confusing hum with humma, it's been awhile since I've directly worked with EA. I know about the /h/ in uh, which surfaces mostly in endings like /-uhuːʃ/ (as in "They didn't X it"). Older EA textbooks list this ending as /-uhʃ/ and have -uːh in sentences of the sort "They X'd it", but newer textbooks recognize only the endings /-uhuːʃ/ and -uː. From a linguistic standpoint, what we'd actually say is that the clitic pronoun corresponding to "him/it" has multiple allomorphs, which include /u/, /uh/ and a bare stress (i.e. move the stress onto the ending -- which automatically triggers lengthening -- but with no other phonetic content). How you express that symbolically is your choice; if you'd prefer +uh, that's fine.

Benwing (talk) 22:10, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Quick reply

  • You are absolutely correct that claims need to be verified, but there are some problems regarding languages of poor places, such as Egypt and especially because it's not a literary language, so it attracts little scholar attention. Watson himself claimed that Egyptian Arabic has [d͡ʒ] (not [ʒ]) in loanwords. This is absolutely incorrect. All words containing /d͡ʒ/ are always approximated to [ʒ]. If I were writing the way I pronounce, well I can pronounce both with ease, but that doesn't mean that it's how the average Egyptian pronounce that, whether (well) educated or not.
  • Regarding the phonemic /e/, it varies. Most people pronounce it [e] while others pronounce it [e̝]. I was sticking to the more common way of pronouncing that phoneme. Many speakers raise short /e/ and /o/ to [e̝] and [o̝] in some circumstances, when they occur in words which have a stressed syllable having a long close vowel ([iː] or [uː]), example: [ke̝ˈ.tiːr], so long close vowels can assimilate other close-mid vowels. However, in most cases, speakers who pronounce all short phonemic /e/ and /o/ in all cases as [e̝] and [o̝] are elders or not of the urban population or of extremely conservative religious background, such as Azharis or Islamic clerics, who try to speak as close as possible to Koranic Arabic.
    • Because of Egyptian Arabic popularity in the Middle East, actors and singers from places, such as Lebanon, sing in Egyptian Arabic, but would mispronounce some of the vowels, for example, Nancy Agram pronouncing [ɪ] and [ʊ] in place of [e] and [o], closer to her native language phonology, Lebanese Arabic. Lebanese typically fail to pronounce the Egyptian /æ/, pronouncing it [a] and fail to back it to [ɑ] when it must, in Egyptian Arabic.
  • There is more about the /h/. Inflected words, such as [mæʔolteˈluːʃ] used to be pronounced more often as [mæʔo̝lte̝ˈlo̝hʃ], but the latter pronunciation is mostly archaic and if found, it's mostly by elder people. You would even find the latter pronunciation in some of the very old Egyptian movies. Anyway, it is originally /ohuːʃ/ (still exists), which is reduced to [ohʃ] (archaic) or [uːʃ] (more common).
  • The word [ˈmɑj.jɑ] isn't a loanword, whether its origin is Arabic or Coptic. The Arabic word for that is /maːʔ/. There are other words proving that [ɑ] isn't always an allophone /æ/. Watson claims that there exist /mˤ, bˤ/ and that was his explanation why do Egyptians differ between words as [ˈbɑːbɑ] vs [ˈbæːbæ] (which are 100% native, not loanwords, although they may have foreign origins). The Arabic letters ح‎, خ‎ and و‎ are named [ħɑ], [xɑ] and [wɑːw], although the latter can less likely be pronounced by some people as [wæːw]. In Egyptian Arabic, we have certain words expressing feeling pain, such as [ʔɑj] never [ʔæj] ouch and [ʔɑː(h)] never [ʔæː(h)], the last one in other contexts means yes, but is always [ʔɑː(h)].
  • I understand your point of simplifying transcription in order to make it easier to understand lengthening and shortening, but if we are explaining actual pronunciation, why would we still write phonemically? That doesn't even happen with articles dealing with English language phonology which assume that readers are essentially English language speakers.

I agree that in cases when it is needed to explain shortening and lengthening vowels to only (or mainly) use the phonemic transcription scheme you used (or the like), although I think that would be very deficient. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 01:57, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

  • I almost forgot to mention that the spread of emphasis of backing /æ/ to [ɑ] isn't complete through whole words or all syllables in, most notably, Alexandria, while in Cairo, the emphasis spread is complete. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 02:18, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Is it also worth mentioning that the rhotic of Egyptian Arabic is a tap [ɾ] in the northern most of Egypt, while a trill [r] anywhere else? In Cairo, there is a free variation between both, although the trill dominates. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 02:35, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Standard linguistic practice is to use phonemic rather than phonetic transcription. Phonetic transcription is included as well when there may be questions as to how exactly to pronounce things. We need to follow this everywhere, giving both when questions of exact pronunciation are important, but using phonemic transcription elsewhere. To the extent your comments about the description of English phonology are correct, they're irrelevant since readers of this page aren't EA speakers the way that readers of a page on English phonology are English speakers.
Yes, there are non-native words like [ˈmɑj.jɑ] (which I suspect is not Coptic, but originates as some sort of transformation of /maːʔ/, probably a diminutive similar to shuwayya); this shows that æ~ɑ have been partly phonemicized in certain lexical items, but they still alternate all over the place in a mostly predictable fashion, e.g. in verb paradigms, where the alternation is a phonetic detail that's irrelevant to understanding how the paradigms work. The reason for giving phonemic transcription even in a discussion of pronunciation details is so that non-native speakers understand clearly the relationship between phonemic and phonetic transcription. The reason for favoring phonemic transcription elsewhere, as I've said many times, is that the phonemic transcription illustrates clearly the workings of the morphology and the adjustment rules (technically, phonotactic rules or something like that): The æ~ɑ difference is also irrelevant for explaining the vowel elision rules, where /a/ (whether [æ] or [ɑ]) does not elide, but /i/ and /u/ do. There's also a very significant advantage in using /a i u/ instead of some other system, in that nearly all readers who delve into this page will have some experience with Classical Arabic (which is almost always taught before any spoken varieties), and using a system that highlights the basic similarity between Classical and Egyptian Arabic makes understanding a lot easier.
BTW the same phonemic approach is used e.g. in all linguistic descriptions of Moroccan Arabic. This language has even more phonetic variability in its vowels (although no adjustment rules): phonemic /a i u/ (which are equivalent to CA long vowels!) are half-long [æˑ iˑ uˑ] in non-emphatic contexts but more like half-long [ɑˑ eˑ oˑ] in emphatic contexts (which do not sound raised to me, unlike the sounds you denote [e o] in EA; perhaps it's more like [ɑˑ e̞ˑ o̞ˑ]). Similarly, the sound usually denoted ‹e› in dictionaries, phonemic /ǝ/, sounds like short [ɪ] in non-emphatic contexts but short [ɐ] in emphatic contexts, and centralized short [a] next to pharyngeal consonants (which are considered "non-emphatic", as in EA). Some speakers distinguish short [ɐ] and short [a] next to pharyngeal consonants, and some educated speakers have short [a] in a few other words borrowed from CA. As a result, Harrell's dictionary writes ‹ă› for all occurrences of short [a], even those that are predictable because of being next to a pharyngeal consonant; but his grammar doesn't do that, because it is unnecessary detail that adds additional complexity to understanding verb and noun paradigms. (Moroccan Arabic has a lot more complex noun morphology than EA. This occurs both in numerous areas: diminutives, which are extremely productive in Moroccan but almost nonexistent in EA; broken plurals of foreign words, esp. from European languages, again very common in Moroccan but AFAIK rare in EA; and in occupational-related nouns, e.g. the CCaCeC "X-er" pattern, corresponding to Classical CaCāCiC, and in the taCCaCit/taCCaCeCt "X-ing" pattern, which comes from Berber.)
Benwing (talk) 22:58, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
BTW:
  1. Sure if you want to mention variability in pronunciation of /r/, go ahead.
  2. Your statement about /ohuːʃ/: Are you saying that "I didn't say to him" was formerly maʔultiluhuːʃ? It's been awhile, and I'm speaking from memory, but I seem to remember that the more modern textbooks I have indicate that maʔultiluhuːʃ is "I didn't say it to him", and my older textbook would give this as maʔultiluhʃ; that "I didn't say to him" is both modern and older maʔultiluːʃ; and that "I didn't say it" is modern maʔultihuːʃ, older maʔultihʃ.

Benwing (talk) 23:09, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Confusions

I have some suggestions regarding the Egyptian Arabic article:

  1. The symbol used for the epenthetic vowel, even phonemically transcribing, is /e/, because it is never changed from [e] and isn't of Arabic origin (traditional Arabic vowels: /a, i, u/), also so that it won't be confused with other phonemes as I explained in the example I already provided a previous reply.
  2. Transcribing phonemically or mainly phonemically in cases explaining features hard-to-see such as vowel-lengthening/shortening, morphemes and roots. The phonemic transcription of short /i, u/ ([e, o]) can't be generalized all the time, because there are situation when they are the shortened forms of [eː, oː]. Transcribing these as /i, u/ would be wrong, so these would be transcribed phonemically as /e, o/.
  3. In cases when you or somebody else feel that the phonetic transcription is needed, but are not quite sure of the actual phonetic pronunciation, you may use the phonemic transcription. It can be left for others who may add the proper phonetic transcription. I can do that.
  4. Current phonetic transcriptions won't be removed, but phonemic transcriptions would be added along with them, if needed.
  5. Literary Arabic examples within the article be transcribed with the Egyptian Arabic phonemes because that's how Literary Arabic language is used in Egypt and that would simplify the comparison. (I also think that the same should be made in each article of each variety of Arabic, because Literary Arabic is pronounced differently in each region, mainly affected by their local dialects).
That's the phonology of Literary Arabic in Egypt not Egyptian Arabic
  Labial Dental Alveolar Palato-
alveolar 		Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyn-
geal 		Glottal
plain emphatic
Nasal m n              
Stop voiceless t tˤ     k (q)   ʔ
voiced b d (dˤ)   ɡ      
Fricative voiceless f (θ) s sˤ ʃ   x   ħ h
voiced (ð) z zˤ   ɣ   ʕ  
Tap/trill     ɾ~r [ɾˤ]~[rˤ]
(allophone)		          
Approximant     l     j w      

The brown background phonemes are often approximated to the nearest Egyptian equivalent.

I have some comments regarding your last reply... Because I don't have yet the verifiable sources about the rhotic, I couldn't write something about it. I found that wikipedians here are accustomed to transcribe the Egyptian rhotic as a tap, so I was sticking to their choice, although it is obvious that the trill is more prevalent (maybe because the popular singers Omm Kalsūm and Abdelhalīm pronounced it as a tap, again, because they were originally of the northernmost of Egypt). Also, as I said, that Watson's claims about /mˤ, bˤ/ are wrong, I didn't remove them. If they existed, it is possibly in Port Said, where it's famous for a more guttural accent, but if Watson just mentioned that and didn't specify, then it's imprecision of him. Some wikipedians collect bits and pieces from different sources, obviously explaining specific traits of pronunciation at certain geographic regions outside of Egypt, I see such information added to Egyptian Arabic related information at some articles. For example, the open vowel word-finally [æ]~[ɑ], is claimed to be pronounced as [ɐ] which is the pronunciation of Iraq, Persian Gulf and central Arabia. I saw that [ɐ] is written in some transcriptions of Egyptian Arabic pronunciation. In Egypt, that phoneme is [æ]~[ɑ], and is pronounced by some rural Egyptians as [e], which isn't a widespread nor a prestigious pronunciation anyway. I also see that wikipedians in general generalize some traits specific to some geographic regions and treat them as a standard and/or sometimes claim that they are even prestigious along the whole Arab League!

Explaining the double negation pronunciation. They are the most confusing for non-natives :D

The longer forms are not archaic. They are still used, but are less often than the shorter forms. You would notice that in special cases, there are no shorter forms. You would also notice that in rare cases, there are 2 archaic forms. It's important to mention that the archaic forms may still be used by rural Egyptians and some urban elders. Some of the following negations can use a single form of negation and mean the same thing, but I didn't mention these here, because that would be a lot. Also, the single negation usage might differ slightly in usage and meaning for rural speakers.

Don't get confused because of the epenthetic [e]! I'll mark them as bold.

  • First, let's analyze the word. [ʔolˈtelo], which is [you(masculine, singular)/I] said to him [ʔolt]+[le-]+[-oho], the latter parts are only pronounced as [-lo(h)] when they are joined to the verb, but when they are separate, it is [liː(h)], however, archaically [lo(h)] was also used for both of the joined and the separate form. So, [ʔolˈtelo] can also be archaically [ˈʔol.te ˈlo(h)] or contemporarily [ˈʔol.te ˈliː(h)].
  • Now, moving to the double negation added to the verb along with the pronoun. [You(masculine, singular)/I] didn't say to him ([mæ-]+[ʔolt]+[le-]+[-oho]+[-ʃ]  or  [mæ-]+[ʔolt]+[-ʃ]  +[lo(h)]/[liː(h)]): archaically: [mæ.ʔol.teˈlohʃ]  or  [mæ.ˈʔol.teʃ ˈlo(h)]; contemporarily: [mæ.ʔol.teˈluːʃ]  or  [mæ.ˈʔol.teʃ ˈliː(h)]. That negation has a longer form: [mæ.ʔol.tel.ˈhuːʃ]. In the longer form, the /h/ must be pronounced.
  • Plural [ʔolˈtuːlo] (the final short vowel can also be [u] especially in words having stressed syllables with long close vowels, remember the above discussion?), which is [you(plural)] said to him [ʔolt]+[-o]+[le-]+[-oho], the latter parts are only pronounced as [-lo(h)] when they are joined to the verb, but when they are separate, it is [liː(h)], however, archaically [lo(h)] was also used for both of the joined and the separate form. So, [ʔolˈtuːlo] can also be archaically [ˈʔol.to ˈlo(h)] or contemporarily [ˈʔol.to ˈliː(h)]  (the last 2 can also ambiguously mean [you(masculine, singular)] said it(masculine) to him; contemporarily: [ˈʔol.to ˈliː(h)]; analyzed: [ʔolt]+[-oho]  +[le-]+[-oho]).
  • Plural+double negation: [you(plural)] didn't say to him ([mæ-]+[ʔolt]+[-o]+[le-]+[-oho]+[-ʃ]  or  [mæ-]+[ʔolt]+[-o]+[-ʃ]  +[lo(h)]/[liː(h)]): archaically: [mæ.ʔol.toˈlohʃ]  or  [mæ.ʔolˈtuːʃ ˈlo(h)]; contemporarily: [mæ.ʔol.toˈluːʃ]  or  [mæ.ʔolˈtuːʃ ˈliː(h)]. That negation has a longer form: [mæ.ʔol.tol.ˈhuːʃ] or the longest [mæ.ʔol.to.lo.ˈhuːʃ]. In the longer and the longest forms, the /h/ must be pronounced.
    • Comparing the contemporary short forms of the singular and the plural: singular: [mæ.ʔol.teˈluːʃ] vs plural: [mæ.ʔol.toˈluːʃ]
    • Comparing the archaic short forms of the singular and the plural: singular: [mæ.ʔol.teˈlohʃ] vs plural: [mæ.ʔol.toˈlohʃ]
    • Comparing the long forms of the singular and the plural: singular: [mæ.ʔol.tel.ˈhuːʃ] vs plural: [mæ.ʔol.tol.ˈhuːʃ] or the longest [mæ.ʔol.to.lo.ˈhuːʃ]
  • "[I] didn't say it(feminine) to him": [mæ.ʔol.tel.hæ.ˈluːʃ] or [mæ.ʔol.tæ.hæ.ˈluːʃ] (analyzed: [mæ-]+[ʔolt]+[-æhæ]+[le-]+[-oho]+[-ʃ])
  • "[I] didn't say it(feminine) to her": [mæ.ʔol.tel.hæl.ˈhæːʃ] (analyzed: [mæ-]+[ʔolt]+[-æhæ]+[le-]+[-æhæ]+[-ʃ])
  • "[You] didn't say(feminine) it(masculine): [mæ.ʔol.te.ˈhuːʃ]; archaically: [mæ.ʔol.ˈtehʃ] (analyzed: [mæ-]+[ʔolt]+[-i]+[-oho]+[-ʃ])
  • "[You] didn't say(feminine) it(feminine) to him": [mæ.ʔol.te.hæ.ˈluːʃ]  or   [mæ.ʔol.te.hæ.lˈhuːʃ]; another 2 archaic forms: [mæ.ʔol.te.hæˈlohʃ]  or  [mæ.ʔol.te.hæˈlehʃ] (analyzed: [mæ-]+[ʔolt]+[-i]+[-æhæ]+[le-]+[-oho]+[-ʃ])
  • "[You] didn't say(feminine) it(feminine) to her": [mæ.ʔol.te.hælˈhæːʃ] (analyzed: [mæ-]+[ʔolt]+[-i]+[-æhæ]+[le-]+[-æhæ]+[-ʃ]). --Mahmudmasri (talk) 23:46, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
I went ahead and rewrote parts of the phonology section according to the way I think we ought to discuss the issue. I don't think it's a good idea to indicate the epenthetic vowel as /e/. For one thing, there's no connection between this vowel and stressed /e(ː)/; perhaps even more important, though, is that no scholarly source agrees with this analysis, and hence it is original research. Benwing (talk) 02:10, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
As for the transcription of literary Arabic words, it depends on the context. As an example, it matters whether we're talking about words given as the historical origin of EA words or whether we're talking about MSA words imported into EA. Can you give some examples? Benwing (talk) 02:15, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I just noticed, but please, if you found the letter y is written in an IPA transcription, would you change it to j as the official use of IPA for the palatal approximant?
The examples on Literary Arabic words, such as those with /ðˤ/ ظ or /d͡ʒ/ ج. /zˤuhr, ɡamiːl/ ظهر‎, جميل‎ rather than /ðˤuhr, d͡ʒamiːl/. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 02:47, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
I'll change all y to j, that's indeed a mistake. As for /zˤuhr, ɡamiːl/ vs. /ðˤuhr, d͡ʒamiːl/, it matters the context in which you are introducing these words. Which contexts do you have in mind? Benwing (talk) 08:29, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
Contexts, such as comparing a Literary Arabic statement with an Egyptian Arabic version. I also revised some transcriptions. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 17:50, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
A question: Is it meant by /I/ the IPA symbol /ɪ/? --Mahmudmasri (talk) 17:52, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
Is it appropriate to write statements such as The Egyptian Arabic vocalic system has changed from the Classical system.? Is it a proven fact that all modern spoken Arabic varieties (and Egyptian Arabic) are descendants of Koranic Arabic (Classical Arabic), not of other extinct old Arabic dialects? --Mahmudmasri (talk) 18:02, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
I think it's fine to write "The Egyptian Arabic vocalic system has changed from the Classical system". Technically it may not be strictly the case that all aspects of the modern dialects descend from the Koranic language; this is most clear in the verb prefixes yi- ti-. It appears that the language slightly before the time of the Koran had ya- ta- when /i/ followed in the next syllable but yi- ti- when /a/ followed in the next syllable, and some conservative dialects of the Arabian peninsula actually preserve this. It's thought that the dialect underpinning Koranic Arabic generalized ya- ta-, while the koine dialect that led to the modern "sedentary" varieties of Arabic separately generalized yi- ti-. But practically speaking, virtually all aspects of the modern dialects can be derived from Koranic Arabic, so there's not much point worrying about this except when discussing very particular issues. For example, it's thought that Koranic Arabic had a sound like [gʲ] or [ɟ] instead of modern [dʒ], and it's usually said that EA [g] is a secondary derivation from this sound, but some linguists have suggested that [g] is actually a preservation from an archaic dialect that still preserved this sound. I suspect that a more likely possibility is that some of the Arabic-speaking soldiers who settled early on in Cairo were from an Aramaic-speaking background and habitually substituted their [g] for the cognate Arabic sound [gʲ ~ ɟ].
/I/ is not the same as the IPA symbol /ɪ/, but a way of indicating a phoneme whose allophones partly but not completely overlap with /i/. Different schools of phonology have differing attitudes towards the acceptance of phonemes like this, and similarly towards a phoneme /a/ (with allophones [æ] [ɑ]) coexisting with a phoneme /ɑ/ (with allophone only [ɑ]). Some are fine calling these phonemes; others would define such entities as "archiphonemes" that exist at a higher level of abstraction. In general, most standard schools of phonology have lots of difficulties dealing with various aspects of spoken Arabic. Most do not have a coherent system for handling "partly phonemic" distinctions (cases where the large majority of phonetic alternations are predictable, but not all of them); nor for handling sub-phonemic long-distance effects (vs. e.g. Turkish, where there is long-distance vowel harmony but the vowel variants in question are undoubtedly separate phonemes rather than allophonic or mostly allophonic variants). The issue of "partly phonemic" comes up in other languages, too, e.g. Tamil, with similar difficulties.
BTW I didn't get a chance to thank you for all the careful and detailed work you did in describing the variants of the clitic pronouns. I'd suggest you create a section on clitic pronouns including table(s) listing the clitic pronoun variants, and incorporate your text and tables here in the Talk pages into that section.

Benwing (talk) 08:35, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

[d͡ʒ] pronunciation isn't more than just the evolution of the phoneme at Hijaz. It evolved as [ʒ] in most of the Levant and most of North Africa (or was preserved from the extinct dialects of the conquerors) and as [ɡ] in Egypt (or was preserved as it is from the extinct dialects of the conquerors, although I read that in previous times in Egypt, [ʒ] was the dominant pronunciation of the phoneme over [ɡ], but [ɡ] continued to spread until it became the predominant and prestigious pronunciation). [mɑʃˈhuːr]. Actually in the previous example, /uː/ didn't trigger the emphasis. It's the /r/ which triggered the emphasis on the /a/ of the previous syllable. In words, such as the name [ʕɑmr], what triggered the emphasis here? Obviously, the /r/. Go to her [roħˈlɑhɑ] (also [roħˈlæhæ], mostly in Alexandria). I guess the [ɑ] in these words is because of their appearance in other inflected forms in other contexts, such as [mɑʃˈhuːr] → [ˈʃohrˤɑ] fame; [roħˈlɑhɑ] → [rˤɑħ] [he] went, [ˈrˤɑːjeħ] going(masculine). So, the /r/ may back /a/ in a word, even if it were in another syllable, away of it. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 22:55, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
  1. ^ Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: arz
  2. ^ a b Egyptian Arabic UCLA Language Materials Project
  3. ^ Ethnologue
  4. ^ Holes, Clive (2004). Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions, and Varieties (2nd ed ed.). Washington: Georgetown University Press. ISBN 1589010221. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
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