الأمير الصغيّر

Bilmasri [in Egyptian Arabic]

Today’s episode is another collaboration, and this time I was delighted to team up with Hector Fahmy, a fellow “Masri” enthusiast who runs the العالم بالمصري Facebook page, which aims to bring the world to the Egyptian reader (so you could say, the reverse of the direction Bilmasri operates in!) by translating a variety of content -texts, music etc.- into Masri. Hector is in the process of translating a number of literary works as well, and he has already published a Masri version of Le Petit Prince/ The Little Prince – الأمير الصغير, and so of course I jumped at the opportunity to have a Bilmasri episode featuring an extract from this delightful little book. Hector kindly agreed to cooperate and has provided his reading of the small chapters 2 and 3 (with me imposing myself on the role of the little prince! 🙂 )

Update: The Kindle version of الأمير الصغيّر is now available here

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B093HM5R92?fbclid=IwAR3NkpMzMZZ_S1T22ARpP_P8sFOu-BMbFf3RpaylUUFBaM1_2dhCFcDyx40

In the overview below, I put the Masri version alongside the English translation. Obviously, Hector translated from the French original, but it made more sense to use the English version here instead. After the reading, I say a little something about the words highlighted in yellow below.

I hope you enjoy the episode! As usual, feedback, comments and questions are very welcome.

PS: A couple of notes I wanted to add after uploading the podcast episode:

1. Which words can we start with a ت when preceded by a number from 3-10?
   In the text, we hear the words تمن تيّام for 8 days, and I explain that in only a small number of plural words beginning with alif, a ت appears at the start of the word when preceded by a number (3-10), which is a remnant from the فصحى – where we would say, for example أربعة أيام (arba’at ayyam) –> أربع تيّام
   I should have mentioned a few more words that are treated the same way. Here is a small non-comprehensive list – I’m sure there’s more!:
   آلاف: أربع تلاف، خمس تلاف (of all the words in this list, I’d say this is the only one where the ت is “compulsory”)
   أيام: أربع تيام، خمس تيام
   أشهر: تمت تُشهر (months)
   أدوار: خمس تدوار (in the sense of floors in a building)
   أنفار: سبع تنفار (individuals)
   أجواز: أربع تجواز (pairs)
   As I said, if you’re not sure, its safer to drop the ت – better than putting ت where it’s not expected. However if you say خمس آلاف for 5,000 it will sound odd, so make sure you add a ت there always!
2. Which word to use for “which”?
   Oh. my. God. This is quite embarrassing. A question that I received (in the comments below) alerted me that perhaps the word that I said I use for “which…?” – namely, آني – is not as common as I thought it was. And so I did two things: I asked in my family group chat if they said أنهي or آني and everyone confirmed that they say آني. Then I went on Twitter and asked any Egyptians out there what they say. You can see the result below. Zero for آني. So in conclusion: it’s a word that my family invented, or so it seems! It’s basically a simplification of أنهي. So please ignore anything I said about آني for “which”. I don’t want anyone to laugh at you because of me! 😀

Ep23-Le-petit-prince

Download here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1obj0vu_NxQEX6eKMxkdkaaTUqlcil5TL/view