Language focus: Passive forms In today's episode, I briefly introduce the new Instagram/ Facebook account dedicated to idioms. I then say some essential stuff - relevant to today's reading - about the various degrees of 'aammiya (dialect), and the relevance of فصحى in certain contexts/ levels of discourse. This is followed by the regular slow read, this time on the recently deceased former Egyptian president. The grammar topic we'll be looking at is the formation of some passive...

So far we’ve had one podcast in the series “إيه الأخبار؟” (story from the news), one "إيه الموضوع؟" (factual text of some sort), and today we have the third type that I’ll be including here, "إيه الحكاية؟" (an excerpt of a fictional text). To begin with, I’ve picked the first part of a very well-known story, that of Ali Baba and the forty thieves. The story is commonly known to be part of ألف ليلة وليلة (1001 Nights), but in actual fact it was only included in the ألف ليلة وليلة collection by...

Language focus: Demonstrative pronouns Important news first! Bilmasri is now available on all major podcast apps, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Podbean, Deezer, the Podcast App, and Google. Let me know if there’s an app I’ve missed out and I’ll take care of it! In this episode we will look at the particles ده – دي – دول . Listen carefully to where they appear in the text and figure out what they mean. Some of the text’s key vocabulary: * نبات plant* نباتي...

In this first podcast episode I tell you the what, why and how of Bilmasri. If you prefer to read a shorter version, check the About section!

Language focus: pronunciation of consonants The text read in today's podcast is on a topical news story everyone is familiar with. Below you can read the original modern standard Arabic text alongside the masri/ Egyptian dialect version. After reading I talk to you about one of the words just heard, and talk you through the pronunciation of some consonants in Egyptian Arabic. At the bottom of this page you’ll find an overview of these consonants in a table. بالفصحى...