Unit 1 · Hello and who are you?

I, you, he, she

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

'ana (I), 'enta (you, to a man), 'enti (you, to a woman), howwa (he), heyya (she), 'e7na (we), 'entu (you, more than one person), homma (they). With a verb you can often leave them out, because the verb already says who. In a sentence with no verb, like 'ana maSri, the pronoun is doing all the work. Notice that "you" comes in two forms. Egyptian always marks whether you're talking to a man or to a woman.