Where Egyptian Arabic is spoken
Egyptian Arabic is spoken in 3 countries: Egypt, Israel and Libya. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.
| Country | Share of population | Estimated speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Egypt | 64% | 71,198,080 |
| Israel | Not given | Not given |
| Libya | Not given | Not given |
Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.
On the map, Egyptian Arabic is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks Egyptian Arabic.
How many people speak Egyptian Arabic?
Wikidata gives about 64.6 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.
Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.
Where Egyptian Arabic sits in the language family tree
Glottolog classifies Egyptian Arabic as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.
- Afro-Asiatic
- Semitic
- West Semitic
- Central Semitic
- Arabian
- Arabic
- Egyptic Arabic
- Egypto-Sudanic Arabic
- Egyptian Arabic
Related languages
Other languages in the Egypto-Sudanic Arabic group:
- Saidi Arabic (22.4 million speakers)
More about Egyptian Arabic
- Read about Egyptian Arabic on Wikipedia
- Afro-Asiatic languages map
- Languages spoken in Egypt
- All languages, A to Z
Codes: ISO 639-3 arz, Glottolog egyp1253. Glottolog macroarea: Africa;Eurasia.
Questions about Egyptian Arabic
Where is Egyptian Arabic spoken?
Egyptian Arabic is spoken in Egypt, Israel and Libya. Unicode CLDR puts it at 64% of the population of Egypt, which is about 71,198,080 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.
How many people speak Egyptian Arabic?
Wikidata gives about 64.6 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.
Which language family is Egyptian Arabic in?
Glottolog places Egyptian Arabic in the Afro-Asiatic family, in the branch Semitic, West Semitic, Central Semitic, Arabian, Arabic, Egyptic Arabic and Egypto-Sudanic Arabic.