Dialogue

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Vocabulary

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Lesson Notes

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Now it’s time for some useful Survival Phrases for when you’re shopping in Egyptian stores.
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The first thing you say to a shop assistant in Egypt is law samaht, which is one of the polite phrases we learned in our previous lessons. After that, you will want to ask: “How much is this?”
GRAMMAR POINT
In Egyptian Arabic, we say
bekam dah? if the thing we are interested in is masculine and
bekam dih? for feminine.
Let’s break the first question down:
(slow) bekam dah?
Once more:
bekam dah?
بكام دَه؟
bekam, means “how much.”
(slow) bekam.
bekam.
At the end of the question we have dah, which is translated as “this”. This is used when the item you are asking about is masculine.
Let’s move to the second question:
bekam dih?
(slow) bekam dih?
بكام دِه؟
dih is the feminine form of “this.”
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Imagine that you’re at a clothing stand in a local market and want to buy a shirt. To attract the attention of the stall-keeper, say law samaht, then ask how much the shirt costs. The question will sound like this:
law samaht, bekam el ‘amees dah?
Let’s break it down:
(slow) law samaht, bekam el ‘amees dah?
And again at natural speed:
law samaht, bekam el ‘amees dah?
لو سمحت, بكام القميص دَه؟
First we have the familiar law samaht
After that comes bekam, which means “how much”.
(slow)bekam
bekam
After that we have el ‘amees, the word for “the shirt”
(slow) el ‘amees.
el ‘amees.
The last word is dah, which is the masculine form of the word “this”.
The whole question is
law samaht, bekam el amees dah?
Let’s try now with a feminine item. Let’s say you saw a nice bag and you want to know how much it is. You should say:
law samaht, bekam el shanta dih?
Let’s break it down:
(slow) law samaht, bekam el shanta dih?
And again at natural speed:
law samaht, bekam el shanta dih?
لو سمحت, بكام الشنطة دهِ؟
What changed here is el shanta, a feminine item, and dih, to suit it. It’s simple, isn’t it?

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