cgizadly Gia yad os | Let’s Chat in ArabicYalla-Ndardish bi-learabi Let’s Chat in ARABIC A Practical Introductionto the Spoken Arabic of Cairo Ahmed Hassanein Mona Kamel Ph. D. in Arabic M.A. in Arabic Princeton University, U.S.A. ‘The American University in CairoThe central aim of this Arabic version of Yalla Ndhardish bi Lgarabi is essentially the same as that of the English version: to present the basics of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic speakers to students and to provide them with adequate and functional exercises in order to enable them to speak and understand Egyptian Colloquial Arabic in the shortest possible time. However, the Arabic version was conceived as a means of facilitating this task for students who had already taken some Arabic at the university level and who were therefore already familiar with certain aspects of the literary ( Fushd ) language. It was felt that in the case of these students, much time and effort could be saved when the Egyptian Colloquial language was presented in a form already recognizable to them. Indeed, due to the common morphological basis shared by the literary and colloquial languages, presentation in Arabic script could afford immediate recognition of vocabulary and other syntactic features. Thus, for example, the student could recognize that “dawa” (medicine) "13" was masculine (not feminine) as it way sound, and therefore required a masculine modifier or predicate nominative, i.e. “(722 Lay "1 "The word’s derivation from the fusha ely: is also easily recognizable). Similary, recognition. of verb forms (ie. I, IV, VIII ... etc) would come quicker and easier. It was in pursuit of advantages such as these that we decided to have Yalla rendered into Arabic script instead of transliteration. However, since at its origin the Arabic script was not devised to suit the needs of Egyptian Colloquial, there are certain limitations that accompany its use. Particular among, these is the problem of certain vowel sounds and combinations not found in fusha as well as the spirantization of certain consents in the colloquial language. Thus, for example, in reality there is no way of representing the colloquial word for ‘voice’ in Arabic script. The word "©, "is only an approximation since the word is actually pronounced ‘sewt” when spoken. Likewise, the word MASALAN (>~) has a spirantized ‘th’ sound not represented at all by the Arabic script. Helping vowels and stress patterns are also problematic in this regard. Hence, it might be suggested that the Arabic version not be taken as an independent and self-sufficient work. Rather, it will almost certainly