التغيير ده صعب.

In Egyptian Arabic, the usual pattern is:

• noun + demonstrative

So:

• التغيير ده = this change

This may feel backwards to an English speaker, but it is completely normal in Egyptian Arabic.

Compare:

• Egyptian Arabic: التغيير ده
• Standard Arabic: هذا التغيير

So the sentence uses the Egyptian pattern, not the Standard Arabic one.

Because in Egyptian Arabic, when you use ده / دي / دول after a noun, the noun is normally definite.

So the structure is:

• الـ + noun + ده

That means Arabic is doing something closer to:

• the change, this

But the natural English translation is simply:

• this change

So التغيير ده is the normal way to say this change in Egyptian Arabic.

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

So:

• التغيير ده صعب

literally looks like:

• this change difficult

but it means:

• This change is difficult

This is very common in both Egyptian Arabic and Standard Arabic.

If you wanted past tense, you would use a verb, for example:

• التغيير ده كان صعب = This change was difficult

Because this is a nominal sentence:

• التغيير ده = the subject
• صعب = the predicate

So the sentence order is:

• subject + predicate

Here, the predicate happens to be an adjective.

Also, Arabic adjectives normally come after the noun they describe. So even if you were making a noun phrase, the adjective would still follow:

• التغيير الصعب = the difficult change

But in your sentence, صعب is not part of the noun phrase التغيير ده. It is the predicate: is difficult.

Because التغيير is grammatically masculine singular, so the adjective also stays masculine singular:

• التغيير ده صعب

If the noun were feminine, the adjective would usually be feminine too:

• المشكلة دي صعبة = This problem is difficult

So this is just normal agreement.

It is Egyptian Arabic.

The biggest clue is ده, which is the Egyptian masculine singular demonstrative used in speech.

A Standard Arabic version would more likely be:

• هذا التغيير صعب

Other spoken-Egyptian features include:

• no case endings
• everyday word order and pronunciation
• the demonstrative placed after the noun

A common Egyptian pronunciation is:

• it-taghyiir da saʿb
• or et-taghyiir da saʿb

A few notes:

• التغيير: the الـ is pronounced with assimilation here, because ت is a sun letter, so you hear something like it-t or et-t
• ده is usually pronounced da in Egyptian
• صعب is often written in transliteration as saʿb or sa3b

The sound ع in صعب is difficult for English speakers at first, so an approximate pronunciation is fine in the beginning.

Yes.

• التغيير صعب = The change is difficult
• التغيير ده صعب = This change is difficult

So ده adds the idea of this.

In conversation, leaving out ده can still sound natural if the listener already knows which change you mean.

In Egyptian Arabic, you can negate this kind of sentence with مش:

• التغيير ده مش صعب

That means:

• This change is not difficult

This is the normal Egyptian way to negate adjective predicates like صعب.

Because colloquial Arabic spelling is not always perfectly fixed in informal writing.

You may see:

• ده
• دا
• da

For Egyptian Arabic, the pronunciation is usually closer to da than to deh.

So if a learner sees different spellings, they are usually looking at the same word.