This entry addresses Italian loanwords in some Arabic dialects, especially Egyptian Arabic (the dialect of Cairo, with some mention of Alexandria) and Tunisian Arabic (the dialect of Tunis). Because of its proximity, Tunisia has always been in contact with Italy; likewise, the dialect of Libya has been strongly influenced by Italian, but not much is known about it, and after Rossi (1933) the topic has hardly been studied. For Italian borrowings in some Oriental dialects, see Abou Abdallah (1981), Butros (1973), and Behnstedt (1996).

In the centuries when the Arab civilization f…