البيت قديم.

A common Egyptian pronunciation is il-bēt ʔadīm.

A few helpful notes:

• الـ is usually pronounced il- or el- in Egyptian.
• بيت is pronounced bēt in Egyptian, not exactly like Standard Arabic bayt.
• The letter ق in قديم is often pronounced as a glottal stop in Cairene Egyptian, so قديم sounds like ʔadīm or simply adīm to English-speaking ears.

A very casual English-style spelling would be el beet adeem.

Because Arabic usually leaves out the present-tense verb to be.

So in Egyptian Arabic:

• البيت قديم literally looks like the house old
• but it naturally means The house is old

This is very normal in Arabic. In the present tense, sentences like this do not need a separate word for is.

If you want a past meaning, you do use a verb, for example:

• البيت كان قديم = The house was old

This is one of the most important differences for learners.

• البيت قديم = The house is old
• البيت القديم = the old house

Why?

In البيت قديم, قديم is the predicate of the sentence, so it does not take الـ.

In البيت القديم, القديم is a regular adjective directly describing البيت, so both words are definite and both take الـ.

So:

• noun + adjective without a second الـ can be a full sentence
• noun + adjective with matching الـ is a noun phrase

Because that is the normal Arabic word order for adjectives.

In English, you say:

• old house

But in Arabic, you say:

• بيت قديم
• literally house old

So Arabic adjectives usually come after the noun they describe.

That same after-the-noun pattern also helps explain this sentence.

بيت is masculine singular, and yes, that matters.

The adjective has to match the noun, so:

• بيت → masculine singular
• قديم → masculine singular

If the noun were feminine, the adjective would usually add ـة:

• العربية قديمة = The car is old

So in البيت قديم, the agreement is correct because both are masculine singular.

Yes. بيت can mean:

• house
• home
• sometimes even household, depending on context

So if the meaning shown to the learner is The house is old, that is fine. But in some contexts, The home is old could also be natural.

The written sentence البيت قديم works in both Egyptian Arabic and Standard Arabic.

The main differences are in pronunciation and formal grammar details:

• Standard Arabic pronunciation: al-baytu qadīmun
• Egyptian pronunciation: il-bēt ʔadīm

In Standard Arabic, full case endings may be added in careful speech or formal texts. In Egyptian Arabic, those endings are not used in everyday speech.

So the sentence is perfectly understandable in both, but an Egyptian speaker will pronounce it in the Egyptian way.

You would normally say:

• البيت مش قديم

This means The house is not old.

In Egyptian Arabic, مش is the usual way to negate sentences like this.

So:

• البيت قديم = The house is old
• البيت مش قديم = The house is not old

Very often, you can just use the same sentence with question intonation:

• البيت قديم؟

That means:

• Is the house old?

You may also hear a more explicit version like:

• هو البيت قديم؟

But in everyday speech, simple intonation is often enough.