Languages of Egypt
Arabic came to Egypt in the 7th century, and Egyptian Arabic has become the modern spoken language of the Egyptians, is understood by almost all Egyptians and is based on Egyptian Coptic grammar. In southern Egypt, Saidi Arabic is the main spoken language for most non-urbanized people. Of the many varieties of Arabic, Egyptian Arabic is the most widely understood first dialect in the Middle East-North Africa, probably due to the influence of Egyptian cinema throughout the Arabic-speaking world.
Egyptian Arabic
Sa‘īdi Arabic is a separate variety from Egyptian Arabic in Ethnologue.com and ISO 639-3 and in other sources, and the two varieties have limited mutual intelligibility. It carries little prestige nationally but continues to be widely spoken, with 19,000,000 speakers, including in the north by rural migrants who have adapted partially to Egyptian Arabic. For example, the Sa‘īdi genitive exponent is usually replaced with Egyptian "", but the realization of as is retained. Second-and third-generation migrants are monolingual in Egyptian Arabic but maintain cultural and familial ties to the south.