Languages of Egypt
Egyptian Arabic is the commonly spoken language, and is occasionally written in Arabic script, or in Arabic chat alphabet mostly on new communication services.
Egyptian Arabic
Proponents of language reform in Egypt included Qasim Amin, who also wrote the first Egyptian feminist treatise, former President of the Egyptian University, Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed, and noted intellectual Salama Moussa. They adopted a modernist, secular approach and disagreed with the assumption that Arabic was an immutable language because of its association with the Qur'an. The first modern Egyptian novel in which the dialogue was written in the vernacular was Muhammad Husayn Haykal's "Zaynab" in 1913. It was inly in 1966 that Mustafa Musharafa's "Kantara Who Disbelieved" was released, the first novel to be written entirely in Egyptian Arabic. Other notable novelists, such as Ihsan Abdel Quddous and Yusuf Idris, and poets, such as Salah Jahin, Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi and Ahmed Fouad Negm, helped solidify vernacular literature as a distinct literary genre.