Dialogue

Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Egypt’s monetary unit is the Egyptian pound.
Denominations include coins for 5, 10, 25, 50 piastres and bills for 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, and 200 Egyptian pounds. Egyptian pounds is abbreviated as L.E.
GRAMMAR POINT
Let’s say some prices in Egyptian Arabic. It won’t be too difficult. Let’s start with 1 pound.
geneeh
(slow) geneeh.
geneeh.
جنيه
15 pounds will sound like this:
ḫamastaashar geneeh. The word geneeh is never used in its plural form in Egyptian Arabic when it is used as a quantifier, so just use it the way it is, and put the number you want before it.
Let’s break that down:
(slow) ḫamastaashar geneeh.
ḫamastaashar geneeh.
خمستاشر جنيه
If you go up to hundreds or thousands, just try to remember our previous lessons about counting.
We’ve already learned that “a hundred” in Egyptian Arabic is meyya.
230 pounds is meteen w talateen geneeh.
(slow) meteen w talateen geneeh.
meteen w talateen geneeh.
ميتين وتلاتين جنيه
meteen means two hundred. It has a different form from 300 to 900.
So 300 is tolto meyya, 400 is robʿo meyya and so on.
Note how all the vowels in the word before meyya turn into o.
“A thousand” in Egyptian Arabic is
alf.
(slow) alf.
alf.
ألف
For 2000 , we’ll put een at the end of alf. So 2000 is alfeen.
Now for a slightly more complicated number, “5420 pounds”: ḫamastalaaf w robʿomeyya w ʿeshreen geneeh.
Let’s break it down:
(slow) ḫamastalaaf w robʿomeyya w ʿeshreen geneeh.
Once more:
ḫamastalaaf w robʿomeyya w ʿeshreen geneeh.
خمستالاف ربعمية و عشرين جنيه
The prices in Egypt also include the piastres units, for example 5 piastres and 50 piastres, which is half a pound. In Egyptian Arabic, “5.5 pounds” sounds like this:
ḫamsa geneeh w nos.
(slow) ḫamsa geneeh w nos.
ḫamsa geneeh w nos.
ḫamsa geneeh means “5 pounds”
and nos means “half”.
Altogether, it’s
ḫamsa geneeh w nos.

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