Languages of Egypt
There are a number of languages spoken in Egypt, but Egyptian Arabic or "Masry" which literally means "Egyptian", is by far the most widely spoken in the country.
Egyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic has no official status and is not officially recognized as a language. Modern Standard Arabic, a modernized form of Classical Arabic (also called Qur'anic Arabic), is the official language of Egypt (see diglossia). Interest in the local vernacular began in the 1800s, as the Egyptian national movement for self-determination was taking shape. For many decades to follow, questions about the reform and the modernization of Arabic were hotly debated in Egyptian intellectual circles. Proposals ranged from developing neologisms to replace archaic terminology in Modern Standard Arabic to the simplification of syntactical and morphological rules and the introduction of colloquialisms to even complete "Egyptianization" ("tamṣīr") by abandoning the so-called Modern Standard Arabic in favor of Masri or Egyptian Arabic.