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.
Arabization
Since the foundation of the Ptolemaic kingdom in Alexandria, Egypt had been under the influence of Greek culture, and later fell under the control of the Persian Empire and Roman Empire. Eventually it was conquered from the Eastern Romans by the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate in the 7th century CE. The Coptic language, which was written using the Coptic variant of the Greek alphabet, was spoken in Egypt before the Islamic conquest. As a result of Egypt's cultural Arabization, the adopted Arabic language began to serve as a lingua franca. The Egyptian Arabic dialect has retained a number of Coptic words, and the grammar takes some influence from Coptic, as well. Currently the Ancient Coptic language only survives as a liturgical language of the Coptic Church and is fluently spoken by many Egyptian priests.