Unit 1 · Hello and who are you?

No word for "is"

Capitals mark the emphatic letters, 3 is ع and 7 is ح, and ' is the glottal stop that Cairo uses for q.

In the present, Egyptian Arabic has no word for "is" or "are". You put the two parts side by side and the sentence is done. 'ana maSri is "I'm Egyptian", word for word "I Egyptian". howwa kareem is "he's Karim". It works the same with descriptions and places: el-kitaab gideed, "the book is new"; el-mudarris fi el-faSl, "the teacher's in the classroom". English speakers keep wanting to add a verb in the middle. Leave the gap. A real verb only shows up later, for "was".