Experdize Egyptian Doctor - Applied

How to play: this is a language game wearing an Egyptian عيادة. You are the الدكتورة, and you are not running the surgery — the surgery runs itself: she walks to the couch, the monitor, the laboratory bench and the medicine cabinet on her own, and files cards at reception and washes her hands when nobody is waiting. What you do is read Egyptian and answer two questions for every patient.

Take as long as you like. There is no time limit and nothing to beat the clock to: a session is 10 questions, and it ends the moment you answer the last one. One question is up at a time, and the whole surgery stands still whenever anybody is talking — nobody walks, nobody comes in and no patience bar moves — so you can read every line as slowly as you need. If a row of answers is up, choosing one starts the surgery again; if there is no row — she says she is on it, somebody grumbles, somebody says thank you — tap the play button on the speech bubble when you have finished reading it. The stopwatch at the top counts up rather than down: it is your result, not your deadline, and your fastest run at each session is kept.

1 — What is wrong with them? A patient describes their symptoms: البلع بيوجعني اوي. — “it really burns when I swallow.” Pick the diagnosis off the row along the bottom. ⚠ Half the complaints name the illness and half only describe it, so you cannot get through by matching words alone. And the wrong answers are not random, they are the mistakes worth making once: وجع في الراس headache, وجع في البطن stomach ache, وجع في الضهر back pain and وجع في السنان toothache — one word of pain and four parts of the body, so reading only the first word is a one-in-four guess. Pick the wrong one and she is not stopped: she examines for it, finds it is not that, and walks back to look again — which costs her the trip, in front of you.

⚠ The bodies all begin the same way. Egyptian names a pain by its body, and every body carries a “my” ending the learner has to read past: راسي (my head), بطني (my stomach), ضهري (my back), سناني (my teeth) all shout بتوجعني — “hurts me”. Both the على / في framing and the body word are what part them, so matching a single syllable is a one-in-four guess, and the voice is the surest way through.

2 — What do you prescribe? She examines and asks herself المريض عنده التهاب الحلق. نكتب إيه؟ — “the patient has a sore throat; what shall I prescribe?” Pick the medicine. ⚠ Several of the twelve begin with the same word: دوا سخونية something for a fever, دوا وجع pain medicine, دوا الضغط blood pressure tablets, دوا حساسية an antihistamine. It is دوا — medicine — and then what it is for, which is how an Egyptian pharmacy names everything on its shelves, and it means you have to read past the first word every time. And several of the twelve are not medicines at all (مجتري a drip, جبس a plaster cast, ضمادة a dressing, راحة rest), so looking for دوا and stopping does not work either.

⚠ The register is free. Egyptian has no kinship “who for” — everybody old and young says أنا, and the lesson instead is the everyday register the surgery is spoken in: every consultation opens أنا تعبان يا دكتور (“I am worn out, doctor”), the body carries its owner in the ending (بطني بتوجعني, my stomach hurts me), and the medicine is named for what it does rather than by a brand. There is no kinship honorific to get wrong and nothing to sound curt — only the Ya-Doctor address that marks seniority.

The sessions are the words, and the waiting room is the session. They climb together. The Difficulty row is how much of each line is written: Beginner writes the say-it-like-this and the English under every line, Intermediate the say-it alone, Advanced the Egyptian with nothing under it. The Session row is who is in the waiting room and what can be wrong with them: session 1 is هدى and كريم with fevers, coughs and aches; session 2 brings محمد, sore throats and flu; session 3 الحاجة فاطمة, cuts, dizziness and toothache; session 4 منة, food poisoning and allergies; and session 5 الحاج عيد, broken bones and blood pressure. From session 3 what was said fades a few seconds later — tap whoever said it to hear it again, free but for the time, which is the one tap left on the floor. And somebody is sent down the corridor for a blood test and comes back with the slip.

You cannot lose a session. Somebody who waits too long gives up and goes to the pharmacy instead — that costs you the care and your streak, and they say so — but nothing ends the session except answering its last question. What varies is your time and how many you got right.