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Egyptian Language and English Translation

To no one's surprise, the Egyptian language is the language spoken in none other than Egypt! Egyptian belongs to the Afroasiatic language family, meaning that it comes from African and Asian roots. Again, that is no surprise because of where Egypt is located. All of that information is at least somewhat common knowledge. However, did you know that Egyptian is one of the oldest recorded languages?

The earliest records we have of the Egyptian language are dated to around 3400 B.C. That is absolutely astounding! We are talking about nearly 5000 years here. Until approximately the 7th century A.D., the Egyptians referred to their language as the Coptic form. That began to die out, and Egyptian Arabic, which is the modern language of Egypt, took over. Yet you will still find some Coptic speakers living today. In fact, Coptic is the language used in the Coptic Church.

Translate Words from English to Egyptian

Here are a few words in English with their translation into Egyptian.

  • fire-el nar
  • water-el maa
  • wind-el reyah
  • house-mnzl
  • person-skhks
  • cat-Qt
  • mine-mnjm
  • mouse-f'f
  • computer-al-Kmbytwr

With these translations, as with all others, you need to remember that the Arabic languages are not represented by the same letters as English is. The words above are how the words would sound phonetically. However, most of the words are written with symbols, so this is not how they would look.

The best action for you to do would be to translate your own words, that way you can see how they actually look. Remember though, that consulting a book or an actually speaker of Arabic Egyptian is your best bet. Translators are not accurate 100 percent of the time. Furthermore, please remember that you need to translate to Arabic, for that is the language spoken now. Although translation can get jumbled, here are four reputable sources.

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