Also, I learned Egyptian Arabic

They always say you should learn a few phrases of any country you visit and my entire family is sort of extra when it comes to travel (our older daughter read up on thousands of years of Egypt mythology and the Nag Hammadi texts discovered in Egypt in 1945 and stored at the Coptic Museum, our younger daughter schooled us all by making color-coded travel itineraries) so you know that one of us would have to try to learn enough to speak with locals.

And of course that someone was me.

When we were there in 2023 I had only learned a few phrases of Egyptian Arabic (which differs in some ways from Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and other dialects) but the language was so beautiful when spoken and especially when written, that I was sorry I hadn’t taken the time to learn more.

So, this trip would be a little different.

Here’s something that might be useful:

Egyptian Arabic is considered the most common and widely understood Arabic dialect in the Arab world. It is spoken by over 100 million people and is understood by a large majority of Arabic speakers, thanks in part to the popularity of Egyptian media and the large number of Egyptian speakers. So, if you speak Egyptian Arabic and you meet someone from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan or Lebanon, others, you will probably be able to understand each other.

Also, fun fact:

The Egyptian movie and television industry has been so popular and well-regarded for decades that Cairo is known as Hollywood on the Nile (even though the industry started in Alexandria in the early part of the 20^th century).

And, another fun fact: Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) is the oldest-running film festival in the Middle East and Africa.

Anyway, I digress.

I researched the best way to learn at least 500 commonly used words and phrases of Egyptian Arabic and decided on using the Pimsleur app and supplementing it with online classes with a native speaker in Cairo via iTalkie (I’m not an affiliate of either, these are just my personal opinions).

I looked into Duolingo, but they only had Modern Standard Arabic, not Egyptian, so that wasn’t going to be helpful, I didn’t need to confuse myself more than I knew I’d be anyway. 😊

And, I had used Pimsleur CDs to learn some Mandarin Chinese and Hindi in the past and knew it worked for me if I used it consistently. Tbh, their new app is even better – the one thing you couldn’t do using CDs is practice speaking and getting feedback on both speaking and word recognition.

They’ve gamified it so it’s fun – the speakers speak REALLY fast though so I found the following helpful when learning:

I didn’t have the patience to do a full 30-minute lesson each time so I broke it down into two fifteen-minute sessions
I’d listen through the lesson at least one time first (or two times if I was breaking it out) with no stress
I’d remind myself – this is supposed to be fun, it’s not pass/fail and no one is grading me (until I get there haha)
After listening through at least once, I’d keep my laptop open and type up phrases phonetically so I had a doc (ie “cheat sheet”) I could refer to quickly, on my phone – this doc ended up being 8 pages long

In addition, I found my wonderful online teacher Yara on iTalkie.

I used the following tips when learning online, practicing with a teacher:

I’d explain that I was also using Pimsleur to learn to speak, I wanted to practice phrases with her so I gave her a general bulleted outline of what my first few lessons in Pimsleur covered
Pimsleur is more conversational (not just learning lists of words such as “numbers” etc) but included days of the week, times, numbers, so we incorporated some of that into my online lessons with Yara
I finally realized that, re homework, it was better if she gave me homework based on what we’d be doing for the next lesson, so that I could puzzle it out, write it down, then she could correct me (ie she’d give me a page of “Greetings” and I’d have to translate the Egyptian Arabic writing, speak it, and try to figure out what it said based on prior lessons
(We had been joining a lesson and she’d have me try to read the Arabic phrases cold which often took me so long I’d get stressed that I was wasting her time)

Anyway, I learned a lot, it was fun, I’m still at it, but nearly everyone in Egypt speaks English.

Of course, it’s always nice to be able to speak with local people, they seem really appreciative of the effort 😊 and you get to hear what others are talking about because there was no way anyone thought I understood a little Egyptian Arabic.

Honestly, it’s a privilege to be able to learn a little bit about this culturally rich, beautiful language of one of the oldest civilizations in the world.