Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic

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Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic
Gilit Arabic
اللهجة العراقية
Native to Iraq, Iran, Syria [1]
Speakers17 million (2020–2023) [1]
Dialects
Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3 acm Mesopotamian Arabic
Glottolog meso1252

Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic, [2] also known as Iraqi Arabic, [2] Mesopotamian Gelet Arabic, [1] or simply Mesopotamian Arabic [2] is one of the two main varieties of Mesopotamian Arabic, together with North Mesopotamian Arabic. [3] [4]

Contents

Relationship to North Mesopotamian

Mesopotamian Arabic has two major varieties: Gelet Mesopotamian Arabic and Qeltu Mesopotamian Arabic. Their names derive from the form of the word for "I said" in each variety. [5] Gelet Arabic is a Bedouin variety spoken by Muslims (both sedentary and non-sedentary) in central and southern Iraq and by nomads in the rest of Iraq. Qeltu Arabic is an urban dialect spoken by Non-Muslims of central and southern Iraq (including Baghdad) and by the sedentary population (both Muslims and Non-Muslims) of the rest of the country. [6] Non-Muslims include Christians, Yazidis, and Jews, until most of them left Iraq in the 1940s–1950s. [7] [8] Geographically, the gelet–qeltu classification roughly corresponds to respectively Upper Mesopotamia and Lower Mesopotamia. [9] The isogloss is between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, around Fallujah and Samarra. [9]

During the Siege of Baghdad (1258), the Mongols killed all Muslims. [10] However, sedentary Christians and Jews were spared and northern Iraq was untouched. [10] In southern Iraq, sedentary Muslims were gradually replaced by Bedouins from the countryside. [10] This explains the current dialect distribution: in the south, everyone speaks Bedouin varieties close to Gulf Arabic (continuation of the Bedouin dialects of the Arabian Peninsula), [10] [11] with the exception of urban Non-Muslims who continue to speak pre-1258 qeltu dialects while in the north the original qeltu dialect is still spoken by all, Muslims and Non-Muslims alike. [10]

Gelet/qeltu verb contrasts [12]
s-stemBedouin/geletSedentary/qeltu
1st SGḏạrab-tfataḥ-tu
2nd m.SGḏạrab-tfataḥ-t
2nd f.SGtišṛab-īntǝšrab-īn
2nd pl.tišṛab-ūntǝšrab-ūn
3rd pl.yišṛab-ūnyǝšrab-ūn

Dialects

Gelet dialects include: [9]

Baghdadi Arabic is Iraq's de facto national vernacular, as about half of population speaks it as a mother tongue, and most other Iraqis understand it. It is spreading to northern cities as well. [13] Other Arabic speakers cannot easily understand Moslawi and Baghdadi. [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arabic</span> Semitic language and lingua franca of the Arab world

Arabic is a Central Semitic language of the Semitic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic, including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic, which is derived from Classical Arabic. This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā or simply al-fuṣḥā (اَلْفُصْحَىٰ).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Semitic languages</span> Branch of the Afroasiatic languages

The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Aramaic, Hebrew, and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Malta, and in large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history, who derived the name from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Culture of Iraq</span> Overview of the culture of Iraq

The culture of Iraq or the culture of Mesopotamia is one of the world's oldest cultural histories and is considered one of the most influential cultures in the world. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, historically known as Mesopotamia, is often referred to as the cradle of civilisation. Mesopotamian legacy went on to influence and shape the civilizations of the Old World in different ways such as inventing writing, mathematics, law, astrology and many more fields. Iraq is home to diverse ethnic groups who have contributed to the wide spectrum of the Iraqi Culture. The country is known for its poets، architects، painters and sculptors who are among the best in the region, some of them being world-class. The country has one of the longest written traditions in the world including architecture, literature, music, dance, painting, weaving, pottery, calligraphy, stonemasonry and metalworking.

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Judeo-Arabic dialects are ethnolects formerly spoken by Jews throughout the Arab world. Under the ISO 639 international standard for language codes, Judeo-Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage under the code jrb, encompassing four languages: Judeo-Moroccan Arabic (aju), Judeo-Yemeni Arabic (jye), Judeo-Iraqi Arabic (yhd), and Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic (yud).

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mesopotamian Arabic</span> Continuum of mutually intelligible varieties of Arabic

Mesopotamian Arabic or Iraqi Arabic is a group of varieties of Arabic spoken in the Mesopotamian basin of Iraq, as well as in Syria, Kuwait, southeastern Turkey, Iran, and Iraqi diaspora communities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iraqis</span> Citizens or residents of Iraq

Iraqis are people who originate from the country of Iraq.

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Baghdadi Arabic is the Arabic dialect spoken in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. During the 20th century, Baghdadi Arabic has become the lingua franca of Iraq, and the language of commerce and education. It is considered a subset of Iraqi Arabic.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethnic groups in Syria</span>

Arabs represent the major ethnicity in Syria, in addition to the presence of several, much smaller ethnic groups.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">North Mesopotamian Arabic</span> Arabic dialect of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey

North Mesopotamian Arabic, also known as Moslawi, Mardelli, Mesopotamian Qeltu Arabic, or Syro-Mesopotamian Arabic, is one of the two main varieties of Mesopotamian Arabic, together with Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic.

Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic is a variety of Arabic spoken by Jews formerly living in Libya.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Varieties of Arabic</span> Family of language varieties

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peninsular Arabic</span> Varieties of Arabic of the Arabian Peninsula

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Western Egyptian Bedawi Arabic, also known as Sahil Maryut Bedouin Arabic, is a group of Bedouin Arabic dialects spoken in Western Egypt along the Mediterranean coast, west to the Egypt–Libya border. Ethnologue and Glottolog classify Western Egyptian Bedawi Arabic as a Libyan Arabic dialect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anatolian Arabic</span> Arabic varieties of Southeastern Turkey

Anatolian Arabic encompasses several qeltu varieties of Arabic spoken in the Turkish provinces of Mardin, Siirt, Batman, Diyarbakır, and Muş, a subset of North Mesopotamian Arabic. Since most Jews and Christians have left the area, the vast majority of remaining speakers are Sunni Muslims and the bulk live in the Mardin area. Most speakers also know Turkish and many, especially those from mixed Kurdish-Arab villages, speak Kurdish. Especially in isolated areas, the language has been significantly influenced by Turkish, Kurdish, and historically Turoyo.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed Access logo transparent.svg
  2. 1 2 3 "Glottolog 4.7 - Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic". glottolog.org. Retrieved 2023-01-01.
  3. Hassan, Qasim. "Reconsidering the Lexical Features of the south-Mesopotamian Dialects." Folia Orientalia 56 (2019).
  4. Jasim, Maha Ibrahim (2020). Tafxi:m in the vowels of Muslawi Qeltu and Baghdadi Gilit dialects of Mesopotamian Arabic (Thesis thesis). Newcastle University.
  5. Mitchell, T. F. (1990). Pronouncing Arabic, Volume 2. Clarendon Press. p. 37. ISBN   0-19-823989-0.
  6. Jasim, Maha Ibrahim (2022-12-15). "The Linguistic Heritage of the Maṣlāwī Dialect in Iraq". CREID Working Paper 18. doi: 10.19088/creid.2022.015 .
  7. Holes, Clive, ed. (2018). Arabic Historical Dialectology: Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Approaches. Oxford University Press. p. 337. ISBN   978-0-19-870137-8. OCLC   1059441655.
  8. Procházka, Stephan (2018). "3.2. The Arabic dialects of northern Iraq". In Haig, Geoffrey; Khan, Geoffrey (eds.). The Languages and Linguistics of Western Asia. De Gruyter. pp. 243–266. doi:10.1515/9783110421682-008. ISBN   978-3-11-042168-2. S2CID   134361362.
  9. 1 2 3 Ahmed, Abdulkareem Yaseen (2018). Phonological variation and change in Mesopotamia: a study of accent levelling in the Arabic dialect of Mosul (PhD thesis). Newcastle University.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 Holes, Clive (2006). Ammon, Ulrich; Dittmar, Norbert; Mattheier, Klaus J.; Trudgill, Peter (eds.). "The Arabian Peninsula and Iraq/Die arabische Halbinsel und der Irak". Sociolinguistics / Soziolinguistik, Part 3. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter: 1937. doi:10.1515/9783110184181.3.9.1930. ISBN   978-3-11-019987-1.
  11. Al‐Wer, Enam; Jong, Rudolf (2017). "Dialects of Arabic". In Boberg, Charles; Nerbonne, John; Watt, Dominic (eds.). The Handbook of Dialectology. Wiley. p. 529. doi:10.1002/9781118827628.ch32. ISBN   978-1-118-82755-0. OCLC   989950951.
  12. Prochazka, Stephan (2018). "The Northern Fertile Crescent". In Holes, Clive (ed.). Arabic Historical Dialectology: Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Approaches. Oxford University Press. p. 266. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198701378.003.0009. ISBN   978-0-19-870137-8. OCLC   1059441655.
  13. 1 2 Collin, Richard Oliver (2009). "Words of War: The Iraqi Tower of Babel". International Studies Perspectives. 10 (3): 245–264. doi:10.1111/j.1528-3585.2009.00375.x.