Page 260 - The Rough Guide Phrasebook - Egyptian Arabic

’
a glottal stop, similar to that heard in regional forms
of English when the letter ‘t’ is not pronounced; for
example, ‘wa’er’ for ‘water’.
HOW
q and ’ represent the same letter in Egyptian Arabic, known
as the ‘qaf’; however, when represented by q, it is more
strongly pronounced.
THE
Letters given in bold type indicate the part of the word to be
stressed.
An asterisk next to a word in the English-Arabic section
means that you should refer to the How the Language
Works section for further information.
LANGUAGE
Abbreviations
adj adjective m masculine
f feminine pl plural
lit literally sing singular
WORKS

Arabic and the Arabic alphabet
Classical Arabic, the universal written language of the entire
Arabic-speaking world, is rarely spoken. Colloquial Arabic
is the spoken language and its grammar, pronunciation and
vocabulary vary between countries. The colloquial Arabic
used in this book is Egyptian.
Arabic is written from right to left. Each letter of the alphabet
has up to four different forms: one where it stands alone, one at
the beginning of a word, one in the middle of a word and one
when it is the final letter. The alphabet as listed below consists
almost entirely of consonants; Arabic words do not contain
written short vowels (although the long vowels are written).
Words consist of a string of consonants and the Arabic speaker
knows from experience how the vowels must be added in
speech to make sense. Sometimes, therefore, the same written
word can often be pronounced in more than one way, but usu-
■ A b b r e v i a t i o n s / A r a b i c A l p h a b e t
ally only one version makes sense in a particular context.
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RG New EGYPTIAN ARABIC How the L258 258 12/04/2006 16:46:12