Culture of Egypt
Arabic is Egypt's official language, it came to Egypt in the 7th century, and the Egyptian Arabic dialect today has become the modern speech of the country. Of the many varieties of Arabic, it is the most widely spoken second dialect, due to the influence of Egyptian cinema and media throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Egypt's position in the heart of the Arab world has also had reversed influence, adopting many words, phrases, and proverbs from neighboring Arabic speaking areas such as the Maghreb area and the Mashriq. Today the daily Egyptian Arabic adopted several French, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Armenian and English words to its dictionary, as well as keeping several other words from its own ancient languages such as Coptic and Demotic.
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.