Abstract
Italians and Italian Language in Egypt in the Twentieth Century.
Abdelhaleem Hussein
Faculty of Languages and Translation, Aswan University
In his speech at the University of Rome in 1927, King Fouad expressed gratitude of all Egyptians to Italy and Italians efforts that leads to the success of the first university for public education in Egypt, "the Egyptian University," which then turned into "the University of Cairo." Italians had a great and significant role in the success of this ambitious Egyptian project. Many famous Italians, such as professors Carlo Alfonso Nallino, and Gerardo Meloni, carry on the educational process in this nascent university.
In the twentieth century, the Italian community in Egypt have formed representing all categories of Italian society; professors, doctors, engineers, workers and artisans. At that time, involvement of Italians in the Egyptian society was very welcomed, on the contrary, the presence of British and the French was perceived with suspicion. In this period, the Italian community in Egypt was very large and created a lot of newspapers of its own language, e.g. "Lo spettatore egiziano", "Il manifesto giornaliero", "Il progresso d'Egitto", "Il Nilo", "Il Messaggero Egiziano", and many others.
Therefore, in the twentieth century, the Italian language has spread widely in Egypt, and has a pronounced influence on the Egyptian dialect. Italian terms were mixed within the Egyptian dialect of the social sphere and extended to foods and kitchen fields, and from the field of sewing to the field of medicine, etc. Many of these terms are still of use until now, for example, "Agenda", "comodino", " fattura", "antica", "carro", "limonata", "pizza", "torta", "vaniglia", "cioccolata", "crema", "primo", "parruca", "roba vecchia", "locanda", "medaglia", "lista", "posta", ect.
