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Welcome to Wikipedia Masry. This page is written in English to give an introduction on this Wikipedia to non-Masry speakers
Wikipedia Masry is a project to create an encyclopedia in Masry, the language spoken by millions in Egypt.
The language
Masry, Masri, or Egyptian Arabic is spoken by more than 100 million people in Egypt and other countries; it has ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-3 codes arz. Wikipedia Masry aims to provide a general encyclopedia to speakers of this language in an accessible way following popular written style.
Masry developed from the merger of many languages used in Egypt over many centuries, including, amongst others, Egyptian, Coptic, Greek, Italian, Turkish, and Arabic.
Masry is different enough from standard Arabic to be considered a language of its own, with unique vocabulary and a different grammar. Masry is understood by many non-Egyptians making the benefits of having Wikipedia Masry extend beyond the suggested numbers, yet still benefit readers who use terms that relate to their day to day life rather than to classical literature used only by academics. Text on Wikipedia Masry is written using the Arabic script, but there is one page for writing articles in Masry using the latin alphabet. This is for people who can speak Masry but can only write in the Latin alphabet.
Start of Wikipedia Masry
Wikipedia Masry was proposed on 30 March 2008, and the project started on 2 April 2008. The proposal was approved in July 2008 and the URL started in November 2008. Initially the pages were moved from incubator, from then new pages were added to the main url.
Rules of writing
There is a page on How to write on Wikipedia Masri and for anyone who can read Egyptian Arabic it gives some guidelines on how to write.
The most prestigious form of written Masry is that used in Cairo[1]; however, this is not a firm rule and discussion is always open. Subject to the approval of the community, any viable idea is welcome. Please feel free to put your opinion on the related discussion page.
A suggestion was made as early as 1948 to write Masry in the Latin alphabet; therefore, although not favoured by the majority, there are some Masry articles written this way.
The majority of articles are written using the modified Arabic alphabet mentioned in the page linked above, yet writing in the Latin alphabet is not forbidden by any means. The aim is to find the best way to go forward and not to discourage any new editor.
Once again, welcome to Wikipedia Masry.