While Egypt has just one official language – Arabic – there are a number of other languages and dialects spoken in this nation of more than 117 million residents, most of whom live around the Nile River. In fact, Egypt’s population is the largest in North Africa and the Arab world.
Widely known as “the cradle of civilization,” the rather dense ancient country is in Africa’s northeast corner, with a portion of its territory extending into southeast Asia. There are a number of accents and dialects derived from Arabic. Here are the top ones.
What is an Accent?
First of all, we all have one, even if we don’t think so. An accent is simply how a person’s pronounces a language. So, if you live in the Midwest, for example, you’re going to sound different than someone in the South.
A dialect, by the way, does include pronunciation, in addition to grammar, vocabulary, and how the language is used. For example, the sentence structure used in Egypt can differ from English. Instead of saying “that city,” an Egyptian will say “the city that,” placing the modifier after the noun.
Historical Accents of Egypt
The Coptic language was a later incarnation of the ancient Egyptian language and was spoken by much of Egypt at the time of the Islamic conquest in the 7th
century. Arabic became more commonly used by the 12th century, with the Coptic language reserved for Coptic Orthodox Church liturgy. No native speakers exist today.The country’s first written language was the hieroglyphic script, which originated in Egypt around 3100 B.C. and was used for nearly 4,000 years. It’s found in the inscriptions preserved on monuments, temples, and papyrus, illustrating the lives of ancient Egyptians. Today, Egypt has a distinctly polyglot character, due largely to its history of contact with foreigners as well as the presence of foreign-language schools. In Egypt, most educated residents are fluent not only in Arabic, but French or English as well — sometimes both.There are also some minor linguistic groups including those at Siwa Oasis in the Western Desert whose language is related to the Berber languages of the Afro-Asiatic family. Meanwhile, Nubians speak Eastern Sudanic languages that possess some Cushitic features. Smaller minority linguistic groups include Armenian, Italian, and Greek.
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Top Accents in Egypt
The majority of Egyptians live along the banks of the Nile River, with urban dwellers comprising more than two-fifths of the population. Most people in Egypt speak one of a number of dialects of Arabic. Accent variations from one area to another are often nuanced, but at other times notable. Let’s look at some of the top ones.
Bedawi
This is the dialect of the Bedouin of the Sinai Peninsula and of the Eastern Desert, in addition to those in neighbors such as Jordan. Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Palestine. Bedawi comprises a number of dialects including Eastern Egyptian Bedawi Arabic and Levantine Bedawi Arabic.
Within Bedawi are other dialects that vary by tribe and region. However, they are all similar, owing to their historical contact with one another. Uniting all such dialects is the voiced pronunciation of Qaf, as opposed to voiceless pronunciations, such as /q/ in sedentary dialects. Almost all Bedawi accents use the /g/ and /d3/ sounds in most words.
Compared with other Arabic dialects, Bedawi is considered to be on the rough side, not as soft on the mouth. It’s also very concise and literal. For instance, a single word in Bedawi is used for “I don’t want to” (pronounced “bad-desh).
Masry
The most widely spoken and understood Arabic accent, Masry, is used primarily by those who live in Cairo and surrounding cities. It derives from the spoken Arabic form that arrived in Egypt with Islam. Later, Masry, also known as the Cairene dialect, was influenced by the Coptic language in addition to Turkish, French, English, and Italian.
Over time, contact with foreigners resulted in the incorporation of a number of loanwords into Cairene colloquial Arabic. Because Cairo is a center of the Arab film industry, its dialect is understood throughout the Arab world.
Features of the dialect include the pervasive use of emphatic consonants, specific vowel sounds, unique grammatical constructions, and a distinctive syllable structure.
Saidi
This accent is spoken by Saidi people who reside near the Sudan border in Southern Egypt. There are variations in cities along the Nile, and Saidi becomes more complex in the south, where there are some similarities with Sudanese Arabic.
Saidi Arabic has a number of sub-dialects that vary broadly from town to town, and shares linguistic features with Modern Standard Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, and the Classical Arabic of the Quran. In fact, Saidi is often regarded as a mother dialect. Still, nearly all Saidi speakers share the dialect’s distinctive style.
Delta
The Delta dialects are concentrated in the rich agricultural region formed by the two branches of the Nile: the branch of Rasheed and the one of Domyaat. These dialects are spoken in towns like El-Zagazig, Tanta, and Shebeen El-Koom. Due to the fertile nature of the Delta, these dialects are spoken by a large number of farmers.
They are very close to the Masry accent, with the exception of some vocabulary and the pronunciation of some letters (for example, “geem” becomes “jeem.” In other words, Cairines have no problem understanding any Delta accents.
North-coast
These dialects are spoken in towns such as Port Said and Alexandria, the residents of which have a very distinctive way of pronouncing words. They also use certain vocabulary that does not exist anywhere else in the country. For example, people in Alexandria say “ayooh” to emphasize beauty and wonder, and “mashroo” to refer to the micro-bus. Neither of those words exist in the Masry dialect.
Note that with the North-coast dialects, older generations eschew the singular in favor of the first person in the plural form, a feature that’s similar to Maghrebic Arabic, an Arabic dialect continuum spoken by people in Maghreb.
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