North Mesopotamian Arabic | |
---|---|
Moslawi Arabic Mardelli Arabic Qeltu Mesopotamian Arabic Syro-Mesopotamian Arabic | |
لهجة موصلية | |
Native to | Iraq, Syria, Turkey [1] |
Speakers | 12 million (2024) [2] |
Afro-Asiatic
| |
Dialects | |
Arabic alphabet | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | ayp |
Glottolog | nort3142 |
ELP | North Mesopotamian Arabic |
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North Mesopotamian Arabic, also known as Moslawi (meaning 'of Mosul'), Mardelli (meaning 'of Mardin'), Mesopotamian Qeltu Arabic, or Syro-Mesopotamian Arabic, is one of the two main varieties of Mesopotamian Arabic, together with Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic. [3]
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. [4] 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. [5] Non-Muslims include Christians, Yazidis, and Jews, until most Iraqi Jews were exiled from Iraq in the 1940s–1950s. [6] [7] Geographically, the gelet–qeltu classification roughly corresponds to respectively Upper Mesopotamia and Lower Mesopotamia. [8] The isogloss is between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, around Fallujah and Samarra. [8]
During the Siege of Baghdad (1258), the Mongols killed all Muslims. [9] However, sedentary Christians and Jews were spared and northern Iraq was untouched. [9] In southern Iraq, sedentary Muslims were gradually replaced by Bedouins from the countryside. [9] 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), [9] [10] 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. [9]
s-stem | Bedouin/gelet | Sedentary/qeltu |
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1st sg. | ḏạrab-t | fataḥ-tu |
2nd m.sg. | ḏạrab-t | fataḥ-t |
2nd f.sg. | tišṛab-īn | tǝšrab-īn |
2nd pl. | tišṛab-ūn | tǝšrab-ūn |
3rd pl. | yišṛab-ūn | yǝšrab-ūn |
Qeltu dialects include: [8]
The peripheral Anatolian Arabic varieties in Siirt, Muş and Batman are quite divergent.[ citation needed ]
Cypriot Arabic shares a number of common features with North Mesopotamian Arabic, and one of its pre-Cypriot medieval antecedents has been deduced as belonging to this dialect area. [13] [14] However, its current form is a hybrid of different varieties and languages, including Levantine Arabic and Greek. [13]
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