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 Iraqi Jews were exiled from 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] except 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 sg.ḏạrab-tfataḥ-tu
2nd m.sg.ḏạrab-tfataḥ-t
2nd f.sg.tišṛab-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 the 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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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). "The Arabian Peninsula and Iraq". In Ammon, Ulrich; Dittmar, Norbert; Mattheier, Klaus J.; Trudgill, Peter (eds.). The Arabian Peninsula and Iraq/Die arabische Halbinsel und der Irak. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. p. 1937. doi:10.1515/9783110184181.3.9.1930. ISBN   978-3-11-019987-1.{{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
  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. Vol. 1. 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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