Colloquial Arabic of Egypt

313 Pages·1988·3.243 MB·English

by  Russell McGuirk

1111
Colloquial
Arabic of Egypt
4211
THE COLLOQUIAL SERIES

Series adviser: Gary King

The following languages are available in the Colloquial Series:
Afrikaans French Portuguese of Brazil
Albanian German Romanian
Amharic Greek Russian
*Arabic (Levantine) *Gujarati Scottish Gaelic
Arabic of Egypt Hebrew Serbian
*Arabic of the Gulf Hindi Slovak
and Saudi Arabia Hungarian Slovene
*Basque Icelandic *Somali
Breton Indonesian Spanish
*Bulgarian Italian Spanish of Latin America
Cambodian Japanese Swahili
Cantonese Korean Swedish
Catalan Latvian Tamil
Chinese Lithuanian Thai
Croatian Malay Turkish
Czech Mongolian Ukrainian
Danish Norwegian *Urdu
Dutch *Panjabi Vietnamese
English Persian Welsh
Estonian Polish
Finnish Portuguese

COLLOQUIAL CD-ROMs
Multimedia Language Courses
Chinese French Portuguese
Spanish

Accompanying cassette(s) and CDs are available for all the above titles (cassettes
only for the titles marked with *). They can be ordered through your bookseller, or
send payment with order to Routledge Ltd, ITPS, Cheriton House, North Way,
Andover, Hants SP10 5BE, or to Routledge Inc, 270 Madison Avenue, New York,
NY 10016, USA.

COLLOQUIAL 2s Series
The Next Step in Language Learning
Dutch French Italian
Russian Spanish Spanish of Latin America
1111
Colloquial
Arabic of Egypt
The Complete Course
for Beginners
Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar
First edition by Russell McGuirk
Published 1986 by Routledge
New edition published 2004
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon,OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue,New York,NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2004 Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar
Typeset in Times
by g-and-w PUBLISHING,Oxfordshire,UK
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical,or other means,now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording,or in any information
storage or retrieval system,without permission in writing from
the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Wightwick,Jane.
Colloquial Arabic of Egypt:the complete course for
beginners/Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar.– 2nd ed.
p.cm. (Colloquial series)
1.Arabic language – Textbooks for foreign speakers – English.
I.Gaafar,Mahmoud.II.Title.III.Series.
PJ6307.W52 2003
492.7’82421 – dc21
ISBN13:978–0–415–27689– 4 (book)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–28694–7 (CD)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–42698–5 (pack)
1111
For Zeinah
4211
Contents
1111
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
Arabic sounds and alphabet 3
1 áhlan wa sáhlan! 8
Hello and welcome!
2 9ílti 19
My family
3 tíshrab shay? 32
Would you like tea?
4 fíihaa takíif? 46
Does it have air conditioning?
5 eh kamáan? 56
Anything else?
6 shákluh eh? 72
What does he look like?
7 kída áHsan 83
That’s better
8 muráaga9a 97
Review
9 Hayáati 102
My life
4211
viii
10 b-aHíbb Sayd is-sámak 120
I like fishing
11 9ála Tuul! 132
Straight on!
12 inbasáTt fi faránsa? 144
Did you enjoy yourself in France?
13 min zamáan 157
A long time ago
14 máT9am in-niil 171
The Nile Restaurant
Structure summary 185
Arabic script supplement (dialogues in Arabic script) 209
Key to exercises 234
English–Arabic glossary 257
Arabic–English glossary 280
Acknowledgements
1111
We would like to acknowledge the various reviewers of the
manuscript for this course, particularly Dr Waheed Samy of
Michigan University for his useful suggestions on the romanization.
We appreciated also the support we received from the Routledge
team, particularly Sophie Oliver, James Folan and Della
Tsiftsopoulou,and the Colloquial series editor,Gary King.
Our final thanks go to our families in England and Egypt for helping
us with the photographs – and acting as models in some of them –
and to Charles and Maha for the pictures of their elegant villa in
Ein Sukhna.
4211
Introduction
1111
The Arabic language
Arabic is often thought of as having separate ‘spoken’ and ‘written’
forms.The ‘spoken’ being the various dialects of the 20 or so Arabic-
speaking countries, and the ‘written’ being the Standard Arabic
taught in schools and understood by all educated Arabs. It is true
that most conversations take place in the colloquial language and
most written material is in Standard Arabic. But the factor
determining which is used is more to do with the formality of the
situation than how the communication is delivered.A mother might
dash off a quick note to her kids in colloquial.On the other hand,
a high-level television political debate would probably be conducted
in Standard Arabic – although a soap opera would be in colloquial.
Communication between different Arab nationalities tends to
include at least elements of Standard Arabic where dialects might
be mutually incomprehensible.
Egyptian colloquial is perhaps the most vibrant and universally
understood of the many spoken dialects of Arabic. Egypt is the
centre of popular Arab culture, exporting its films, soap operas,
popular programmes, songs and advertisements to fill the
mushrooming airtime of the Arabic TV channels.
The differences between the colloquial and the Standard become
less the more elevated the subject matter. Even at the basic level,
it tends to be vocabulary that is most affected.The structure of the
language remains largely recognizable. So, whichever way you
approach the language – from an initial study of the colloquial or
of Standard Arabic,you will find it a good basis for expanding your
knowledge to other areas.
4211