لو الفيشة مش في البريزة، اللمبة مش هتشتغل.

لو means if.

In Egyptian Arabic, لو is the normal everyday way to introduce a condition:

• لو الفيشة مش في البريزة... = If the plug isn’t in the socket...

A learner may know إذا from Modern Standard Arabic, but in everyday Egyptian, لو is much more common in sentences like this.

Because in Arabic, the present-tense verb to be is usually not spoken.

So:

• الفيشة في البريزة literally: the plug in the socket
• actual meaning: the plug is in the socket

When you negate it, you add مش:

• الفيشة مش في البريزة = the plug isn’t in the socket

This is very normal in Egyptian Arabic.

مش is a very common Egyptian negation word meaning not / isn’t / doesn’t / won’t, depending on the sentence.

It appears twice because two different things are being negated:

1. الفيشة مش في البريزة
   = the plug isn’t in the socket

2. اللمبة مش هتشتغل
   = the lamp won’t work / won’t turn on

So each clause gets its own negation.

These are common everyday Egyptian words for electrical items:

• الفيشة = the plug
• البريزة = the wall socket / outlet

These are very useful household vocabulary words in Egyptian Arabic. A learner coming from Standard Arabic may not recognize them immediately, so they are worth memorizing as common colloquial terms.

Because in fast, natural speech, في + ال often merges:

• في البريزة → fil-bireeza / fil-bareeza

So the i at the end of في connects directly to the l of the article ال.

Also, in Egyptian Arabic, the definite article is usually pronounced el- or il-, not al- as in careful Standard Arabic pronunciation.

هتشتغل means it will work, it will operate, or in this context it will turn on.

It is built from:

• تشتغل = it works / it operates (feminine singular)
• هـ / ه = future marker, meaning will

So:

• هتشتغل = it will work

This comes from the verb اشتغل / يشتغل, which often means to work, to function, or to operate in Egyptian Arabic.

Because اللمبة is a feminine singular noun.

In Arabic, verbs agree with the subject. For a feminine singular subject in the present/future pattern, the verb often starts with تـ.

So:

• اللمبة تشتغل = the lamp works
• اللمبة هتشتغل = the lamp will work

Even though lamp is an inanimate object, it still takes feminine agreement because the noun لمبة is grammatically feminine.

Because this sentence is talking about the future/result: it won’t work / won’t turn on.

In Egyptian Arabic, future negation is very commonly formed with:

• مش + هـ-verb

So:

• مش هتشتغل = it won’t work

By contrast, ما...ش is extremely common with many past and present verbs, but here مش هتشتغل is the natural everyday way to express the future negative.

A useful comparison:

• اللمبة مش هتشتغل = the lamp won’t work
• اللمبة ما بتشتغلش = the lamp doesn’t work / isn’t working

Those are related, but not exactly the same.

Because Arabic often uses definite nouns when the objects are understood from the situation.

Here, the sentence is talking about the relevant plug, outlet, and lamp in the situation being discussed. So using ال- sounds very natural.

English can do something similar:

• If the plug isn’t in the socket, the lamp won’t work.

So the definiteness matches English quite well in this sentence.

Yes. You can also say:

• اللمبة مش هتشتغل لو الفيشة مش في البريزة.

That still means the same thing:

• The lamp won’t work if the plug isn’t in the socket.

Putting the لو clause first is very common because it sets up the condition before the result, but both orders are natural.

In Egyptian Arabic, لمبة can refer to a lamp, a light bulb, or just the light in everyday speech, depending on context.

In this sentence, it means the thing that is supposed to light up or function electrically. So English might translate it as:

• lamp
• light
• bulb

The exact best choice depends on the situation, but the Arabic sentence itself is completely natural.