ana ma barif 'arabee

June 2, 2009 9:02 AM

Arabic, but not MSA: Do you know of a decent one-week crash course in Egyptian colloquial in Cairo or Alexandria?

I know it's a very short amount of time, but a friend and I would like to study in Egypt for a week around the end of June. Learning some of the essentials quickly in a more formal setting would be terribly helpful, as we live in the region and need some help with basic survival language. (We're in a differing dialect region, but one that's close enough that it would all be useful.) I'm having trouble distinguishing the credible from the terrible online, and any advice would be really appreciated.

If it's important to know, we both feel relatively comfortable with the alphabet.

I'm posting anonymously for (slightly silly) security concerns.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

posted by anonymous to Writing & Language (3 answers total)

I don't think that the Arabic Language Institute at the AUC has one-week courses, but there are a lot of private tutors who hang around there that might be able to help you.
posted by proj at 9:25 AM on June 2, 2009

Call the School of Continuing Ed at AUC. They are usually very flexible about tutoring and can probably find a good teacher for you even though you aren't looking for a traditional class.
posted by bluedaisy at 9:34 AM on June 2, 2009

There was a colloquial school across the river in Imbaba when I was there years ago. I think I found out about it by asking other students at AUC. Maybe there's a Cairo forum out there.
posted by atchafalaya at 5:07 PM on June 2, 2009