On another level one differentiates between
three categories of local population: the actual Egyptians, the Bedouin, with
their characteristic way of dressing, and the dark-skinned Egyptian Nubians,
who are often confused in Egyptian perceptions with the Sudanese immi-
grants. At the beginning of the twenty-first century the languages and dialects
of the marginal groups are quickly disappearing owing to the assimilation of
these groups into the main bulk of the Egyptian population. This process has
been accelerated by rural–urban migration, formal education and more impor-
tantly also by the impact of television. The Cairene dialect, which used to be
the language of a minority a century ago, has become the standard language
of the country. Though Egyptian Arabic with all its various dialects is a lan-
guage of its own, it is not perceived as such by Egyptians, who use classical
Arabic at school and in the mosque, and consider this the real Arabic language.
Literature produced by Egyptian writers of international renown, like Naguib
Mahfouz, the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for literature, which is written
in classical Arabic, is irrelevant to the local population. However, local groups
of musicians and poets who use the vernacular language enjoy great popular-
ity at a regional level, though they do not enjoy high esteem among the more
educated. It is one of the dilemmas of the country that the people’s spoken
language finds no real acceptance in formal education, so that a person must
necessarily be at least bilingual to belong to the educated class.