New Vocabulary

xalaaS (خلاص) - that's it
3aayiz (عايز) - want
faakir (فاكر) - remembering
taani (تاني) - again, another
bit'uul (بتقول) - you say
bititkallim (بتتكلّم) - to talk
eh (ايه) - what?
mish (مش) - not
illi (اللي) - which, that, that which

gah (جه) - to come
gaab (جاب) - to bring
ba3ad (بعد) - to get far away, to go away
nasa (نسى) - to forget
ba'a (بقى) - to be, to become, to get
3amal (عمل) - to do

For those who are familiar with Standard Arabic or a dialect of Arabic other than Egyptian, this song is ideal for illustrating many of the basic aspects of Egyptian Arabic that can be challenging if you have no experience with the dialect. However, if you learn a few basic points about Egyptian colloquial you will find that is it not so different from the version of Arabic that you know.

Pop music is one of the portals to the world of spoken Arabic. Music of the Arabic-speaking world is typically sung in dialects as opposed to Standard Arabic, and many singers regardless of origin sing in Egyptian dialect of Cairo due to the size of the Egyptian market and the relative familiarity that people have with this dialect. The song "ma xalaaS (ما خلاص)" by Samira Said is a case in point. Samira Said was born in Morocco but has since moved to Egypt to become one of the more successful pop artists in the Arab world today. The song's title, "ma xalaaS (ما خلاص)," contains the very common word "xalaaS (خلاص)," which means "that's it," or "it's over." It has both the connotations as "that's all" and "it's done" just like the phrase "that's it" in English. This word is not explicitly Egyptian but can be found much more in colloquial speech because saying "that's it" is a very idiomatic aspect of speech not found in written Arabic. The "ما" adds emphasis to the phrase to the effect of "it's soooo over" or something along those lines.