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Pimsleur Arabic Audio Books – MP3 Pimsleur Downloads. Save money with these Arabic language downloads and start your first Arabic lesson in a few minutes from now!Different Arabic DialectsEgyptian Arabic (Masri) is a variety of the Arabic language of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It originated in the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt around the capital Cairo.Descended from the spoken Arabic brought to Egypt during the AD seventh-century Muslim conquest, its development was influenced mainly by the indigenous Copto-Egyptian language of pre-Islamic Egypt, and later by other languages such as Turkish. Egyptian Arabic is spoken by more than 76 million people in Egypt. It is also understood across the Middle East due to the predominance of Egyptian media, making it the most widely spoken and one of the most widely studied varieties of Arabic.The terms Egyptian Arabic and Masri are usually used synonymously with “Cairene Arabic”, the dialect of the Egyptian capital. The country’s native name, Masr, is used locally to refer to the capital Cairo itself.Similar to the role played by Parisian French, Masri is by far the most dominant in all areas of national life. While it is essentially a spoken language, it is encountered in written form in novels, plays, poems (vernacular literature) as well as in comics, advertising, some newspapers and transcriptions of popular songs. In most other written media and in TV news reporting, a standard register of Classical Arabic is used. The Egyptian vernacular is normally written in the Arabic alphabet for local consumption, although it is commonly transcribed into Latin letters or in the International Phonetic Alphabet in linguistics text and textbooks aimed at teaching non-native learners.Levantine Arabic / Eastern ArabicLevantine Arabic (ArabicShami) and sometimes called Eastern Arabic) is a group of Arabic varieties spoken in the 100 km-wide eastern-Mediterranean coastal strip known as the Levant, i.e. in Syria, Israel, Palestine, western Jordan and Lebanon. This corresponds to the western wing of the Fertile Crescent, which clearly appears green on satellite photos. To the East, in the Desert, the North Arabian Beduinic dialects are found. There is no transition to Egyptian dialects in the South due to the Sinai desert. In the North, between Aleppo and Euphrates valley, there may be a transition zone towards North Mesopotamian qeltu dialects. Levantine Arabic or Eastern Arabic can be divided into six “mutually intelligible” sub-dialects Lebanese dialects (Lebanon, Nusairieh Mountains in Syria) Central Syrian (Damascus to Hama) North Syrian Arabic (Aleppo) Rural Palestinian (Palestine down to Bethlehem), west Jordan. Urban Palestinian (Hebron, Jerusalem, Haifa, Nablus, Jaffa, Nazareth, …) Bedouin Palestinian dialects in the southern Margins (Palestine, Jordan)