Egypt: English Loan Words · Global Voices
Tarek Amr

Here in Egypt, we usually borrow English words and use them in our Arabic dialect. We also Arabize those words, we make them follow the Arabic grammar, and change their pronunciation – to make them more suitable to us.
Amr El Beleidy, @beleidy, started a Twitter thread asking Egyptian tweeps to gather all those words and discuss how we use them.
Tarek Shalaby then replied to him. He also – in his tweet – mocked the way we use the words “fun” and “funny.”
Tarek then sent another tweet, to add one more word: “minute.”
Hisham Sadek was drawn to the idea, and asked to collect all those words into a dictionary.
Yasser Ahmad added a new word: “can,” as in a can of soda. It's interesting that the word “can” in Egyptian Arabic is in the plural, so it's just “cans” even if it is only one can.
Nourhan Refaat added three more words in the following tweets. They are “hi,” “cool,” and “game.”
And here comes the word “cool”:
And then comes “video games”:
Ziad also added how we sometimes not only use English words, but we also make them follow Arabic grammar. The word “save” here is put in the past tense to become “sayev,” then the letter ‘t’ is added at the end of the word to represent a second-person singular pronoun. Also notice how the word “file” is also used as it is.
Hisham Sadek then added two more words–“format” and “setup,” and explained how they are also altered to represent a command. So, “format” here is changed to “farmat” and “setup” is changed to “sattab” to represent the imperative mood. Also notice how the letter ‘p’ at the end of “setup” is changed to ‘b’, as the Arabic language does not have he letter ‘p,’ and many people don't even know how to pronounce it.
Even for a word like “peace,” we created “peacer” and “peacest”, but according to the Arabic grammar, here comes “apyac”. On the face, the word “peace” here is not used as an opposite to war, but it is used as an adjective to define someone who will never mind, or agree with your opinions and deeds. Also the word “touch” is used here to represent an argument or hard feelings.
There are also more loan words that we use everyday, such as “ok,” “cafe,” “T-Shirt,” “jacket,” “jeans,” “scarf,” “computer,” “mobile,” and “please.” So, stay tuned to #EgyEnglish to learn more about our Egyptian English.