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

This section is an excerpt from Mesopotamian Arabic § Varieties.[ edit ]

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

This section is an excerpt from Mesopotamian Arabic § Dialects.[ edit ]

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]

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

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

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

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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.


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