<a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/tags/egypt/" target="_blank">Egypt’s</a> colloquial Arabic once echoed across the region, with Egyptian television series, films and song lyrics reaching large audiences who found it descriptive, funny and a little bemusing. But the <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/tags/arabic/" target="_blank">Arabic</a> spoken on Egypt’s streets has gone through unusually rapid changes in recent years, with the introduction of a wide range of new words and phrases which are understood almost exclusively by the young people using them. The pace of change is rapid, with newly coined phrases quickly taking root in everyday usage. While embraced enthusiastically by the young, these new additions to a beloved dialect are often seen as inappropriate or even vulgar by many of those who look back fondly on the language they grew up hearing. Like all dialects, Egyptian Arabic has slowly evolved over the years. Egypt’s film industry reflects the changes that have come to the language, from the stiff propriety of the early black-and-white productions of the 1930s and 1940s, through the nationalist blockbusters of the 1950s and 1960s to the slapstick comedies and biting realism of the 1970s and 1990s. Today, however, new forms of culture are driving the evolution of the language. Egyptian linguists are tracking the changes in Egypt’s spoken Arabic in real life and on social media, looking at soap operas, rap and mahraganat, a new music genre in which social and linguistic boundaries are constantly pushed. The speed at which new words and phrases have entered everyday use in Egypt is beginning to create a language barrier between young and old. “My parents tell me they barely understand what I am saying to my friends on the telephone,” said Hala Gado, 22, an economics and marketing major studying at Cairo’s German University. “If you read my WhatsApp messages, you will not understand very much unless you’re young.” Ammar Ali Hassan, a prominent author and sociologist, says the ongoing evolution of Egypt’s colloquial Arabic has gone off the rails and may not necessarily be beneficial to the language. “Our colloquial Arabic has slowly evolved over many centuries, taking a slow route that allowed it to ferment, mature and then spread widely. That includes the absorption of words from Italian, French and English,” he said. “The problem with what’s going on now is that the changes are finding their way to our spoken Arabic too quickly, without ‘consensus’ or respect for our authentic vernacular. They also become in vogue for a time before they disappear, unlike older changes that stayed.” Video platforms like TikTok and Instagram are helping to accelerate the changes. Such is the speed of change that Egyptian Arabic has never been farther removed from its standard cousin. The widening gap between Egypt’s colloquial Arabic and its standard form has long been debated by Egyptian writers looking to translate the language of the streets to the page in an appropriate fashion. Mohammed Hashem, a Cairo-based publisher with a track record of helping young writing talent, says the debate over what is deemed fit for written work was settled in his mind long ago. “Every author must be free to write what he feels to be right for his work. A fictional character must be allowed to express itself in the way that's familiar to it,” he said. Not everyone would agree with Mr Hashem, who claims he has no difficulty understanding young Egyptians because of his daily contact with them since a youth-led popular uprising in Egypt toppled autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Supporters of the new lingua franca of Egypt’s youth say it is an improvement on the dialect with which their parents might be familiar. Farida El Shirbiny, 23, an artist who runs her own handicraft business in Cairo, believes many of the phrases and words that have recently joined Egyptian Arabic are more expressive than those they replaced. “But some are fairly offensive that they might raise my parents’ eyebrows if I used them in their presence,” said Ms El Shirbiny. “They are just vulgar.” The difficulty outsiders now have in understanding colloquial Egyptian Arabic has weakened its appeal in the region, leading to a decline in influence in favour of dialects spoken in Lebanon, Syria, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. “Egypt’s place as a cultural and art centre is not as strong as it used to be,” said Reem Bassiouney, a bestselling novelist and a linguistics lecturer at the American University in Cairo. “People in the region are now exposed to other dialects beside the Egyptian one, thanks mainly to soap operas.” But while it may be less powerful at crossing international borders, Egyptian Arabic has helped break down class boundaries among those who speak it. Compared with decades ago, when people's choice of vocabulary, intonation and pronunciation were often taken as an accurate indication of social status or education, this is a significant change. Shady Lewis Botros, a London-based Egyptian novelist, pointed out that one of the defining features of this evolved dialect involved converting English verbs to use Arabic tenses, with some of the new words reflecting the emergence of functions that did not exist even 20 years ago. This, he said, allowed a generation of young Egyptians to claim an identity for themselves. “For the young people to have their own kind of dialect gives them a social distinction that separates them from the rest of society. It’s something many of them actually want,” he said. “I have been away from Egypt for years and I tell you, sometimes I read or hear things I don’t understand.” Bassiouney, the American University linguist, does not see a problem with the rapid changes in the spoken Egyptian Arabic. She says the actual problem lies instead in the declining importance among young people to study standard Arabic. A new generation of Egyptians, she said, “sees it as unnecessary to master speaking and writing in Arabic”. Her fear is borne out by many among the hundreds of thousands of pupils at expensive international schools, who mostly communicate with each other in English or French instead of investing time and effort in learning how to read and write in Arabic, a language they use only when dealing with people outside their immediate circles. “But changes to our spoken Arabic is not for the better or worse. They mostly reflect political and economic conditions. Change happens and there’s no such thing as bad change,” said Bassiouney. <b>Here are the words you need to know in colloquial Arabic and what they used to mean:</b>
