Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic

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Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic
Gilit Arabic
اللهجة العراقية
Native toIraq, Iran, Syria[1]
Speakers17 million (2020–2023)[1]
Dialects
Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3acm Mesopotamian Arabic
Glottologmeso1252

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]

Relationship to North Mesopotamian[edit]

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 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-stem Bedouin/gelet Sedentary/qeltu
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

Dialects[edit]

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]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
  2. ^ a b c "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. ^ a b c 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. ^ a b c d e 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. ^ a b 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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