Languages of Egypt

Languages of Egypt
Historical language	Egyptian and its Coptic descendant
Official language	Literary Arabic
Major native language	Egyptian Arabic (68%)
Minority languages	Sa'idi Arabic (29%), Bedouin Arabic (1.6%), Sudanese Arabic (0.6%), Domari (0.3%), Nobiin (0.3%), Bedawi (0.1%), Siwi, other
Main immigrant languages	Greek, Armenian, Italian
Main foreign languages	English, French and German

Bilingual Arabic-English sign in Cairo

Bilingual Arabic-French street sign in Alexandria.

There are a number of languages spoken in Egypt, but Egyptian Arabic ([ˈmɑsˤɾi]) is by far the most widely spoken in the country.

Official language

The official language of Egypt is the literary Arabic and is used in most written media. Egyptian Arabic is the commonly spoken language, and is occasionally written in Arabic script or Latin script. English, French, and German are also widely spoken and used in business and educated circles.

Arabic languages

Main articles: Egyptian Arabic, Sa'idi Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and Varieties of Arabic

Arabic came to Egypt in the 7th century, and Egyptian Arabic has become the modern spoken language of the Egyptians. Of the many varieties of Arabic, Egyptian Arabic is the most widely understood first dialect in the Middle East-North Africa, probably due to the influence of Egyptian cinema throughout the Arabic-speaking world.

A Bedouin Arab minority speaks a variety of Bedouin Arabic mostly in the Sinai Peninsula. Sudanese Arabic is also spoken by the Sudanese minority.

Nubian languages

In the Upper Nile Valley, around Kom Ombo and Aswan, there are about 300 speakers of Nubian languages, mainly Nobiin, but also Kenuzi-Dongola.

Historical languages

Main articles: Egyptian language and Coptic language

The Egyptian languages (also known as Copto-Egyptian) consist of ancient Egyptian and Coptic, and form a separate branch among the family of Afro-Asiatic languages. The Egyptian language is among the first written languages, and is known from hieroglyphic inscriptions preserved on monuments and sheets of papyrus. The Coptic language, the only extant descendant of Egyptian, is today the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

The "Koiné" dialect of the Greek language was important in Hellenistic Alexandria, and was used in the philosophy and science of that culture, and was also studied by later Arabic scholars.

Immigrant languages

There are also about 42,000 (2004) speakers of Modern Greek in Alexandria, and a comparable number of Armenian speakers, mostly in Cairo, and there are also around 7,500 speakers of Italian between Alexandria and Cairo

Other languages

Approximately 77,000 speakers of Beja live in the Eastern Desert and along the coast of the Red Sea.

Some 234,000 (2004) Dom speak the Domari language (an Indo-Aryan language related to Romany) and are concentrated north of Cairo and in Luxor.

The Berber languages are represented by Siwi, spoken by about 5,000 in the Siwa Oasis.

External links

• Ethnologue page on "Languages of Egypt"
• PanAfriL10n page on Egypt
• Linguistic situation in Egypt