Baghdadi Arabic

Baghdadi Arabic
Muslim Baghdadi Arabic, Iraqi Arabic
اللهجة العراقية
Native to	Iraq, eastern Syria, Kuwait, parts of eastern Arabia, Khuzestan Province in Iran
Region	Baghdad, Basra
Native speakers	About 15.7 million speakers (2014-2016)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Iraqi Arabic Baghdadi Arabic
Dialects	Baghdadi Arabic
Writing system	Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	acm – Mesopotamian Arabic
Glottolog	meso1252
red - Baghdadi Arabic

Baghdadi Arabic is the Arabic dialect spoken in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. During the last 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.

An interesting sociolinguistic feature of Baghdadi Arabic is the existence of three distinct dialects: Muslim, Jewish and Christian Baghdadi Arabic. Muslim Baghdadi belongs to a group called gilit dialects, while Jewish Baghdadi (as well as Christian Baghdadi) belongs to qeltu dialects. The latter two thus are more related to North Mesopotamian-Anatolian Arabic than Iraqi Arabic.

Muslim Baghdadi Arabic, which is considered standard Baghdadi Arabic, shares many features with varieties spoken in some parts of eastern Syria. Gilit Arabic is of Bedouin provenance, unlike Christian and Jewish Baghdadi, which is believed to be descendant of Medieval Iraqi Arabic. Until the 1950s, Baghdad Arabic contained a large inventory of borrowings from English, Turkish, Persian or Kurdish language. The inclusion of Mongolian and other Turkic elements in the Baghdad Iraqi Arabic dialect should also be mentioned, because of the political role a succession of Mongol-Turkic dynasties played in Iraqi history after Baghdad was invaded by Mongol-Turkic colonizers in 1258 that made Iraq became part of Ilkhanate.

During the first decades of the 20th century, when the population of Baghdad was less than a million, some inner city quarters had their own distinctive speech characteristics, maintained for generations. From about the 1960s, with the population movement within the city, and the influx of large numbers of people hailing mainly from the south, Baghdad Arabic has become more standardized, and has come to incorporate some rural Bedouin features and Modern Standard Arabic loanwords.

Distinct features of Muslim Baghdadi Arabic include the use of 'ani' as opposed to the fusha 'ana' meaning 'I am' and the addition of the suffix 'ich' to verbs with female direct objects, e.g. 'ani gilitlich' meaning 'I told you' whereas North Mesopotamian-Anatolian Arabic speakers would say: 'ana qeltolki'.

Phonology

Vowels

The vowel phoneme /eː/ (from standard Arabic /aj/) is usually realised as an opening diphthong, for most speakers only slightly diphthongised [ɪe̯], but for others a more noticeable [iɛ̯], such that, for instance, lēš [why] will sound like leeyesh. There's a vowel phoneme that evolved from the diphthong (/aw/) to resemble more of a long (/o:/) sound, as in words such as kaun [universe] shifting to kōn.

The Vowel Phonemes of Baghdadi Arabic

	Short		Long
	Front	Back	Front	Back
Close	/ɪ/	/u/	/iː/	/uː/
Mid			/eː/	/oː/
Open	/æ/		/aː/

Consonants

Even in the most formal of conventions, pronunciation depends upon a speaker's background. Nevertheless, the number and phonetic character of most of the 28 consonants has a broad degree of regularity among Arabic-speaking regions. Note that Arabic is particularly rich in uvular, pharyngeal, and pharyngealized ("emphatic") sounds. The emphatic coronals (/sˤ/, /tˤ/, and /ðˤ/) cause assimilation of emphasis to adjacent non-emphatic coronal consonants. The phonemes /p/ ⟨پ⟩ and /v/ ⟨ڤ⟩ (not used by all speakers) are not considered to be part of the phonemic inventory, as they exist only in foreign words and they can be pronounced as /b/ ⟨ب⟩ and /f/ ⟨ف⟩ respectively depending on the speaker.

Baghdadi Arabic consonant phonemes

		Labial	Dental	Denti-alveolar		Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
				plain	emphatic1
Nasal		m		n
Stop/Affricate	voiceless	(ps)		t	tˤ	t͡ʃ	k			ʔ
	voiced	b		d	ʤ ~ ʒ		g
Fricative	voiceless	f	θ	s	sˤ	ʃ	x ~ χ		ħ	h
	voiced	(v)	ð	z	ðˤ		ɣ ~ ʁ		ʕ
Tap			ɾ ~ ɹ
Approximant				l	(ɫ)	j	w

Phonetic notes:

• /p/ and /v/ occur mostly in borrowings from Persian, and may be assimilated to /b/ or /f/ in some speakers.
• /ɡ/ is pronunciation of /q/ in Baghdad Arabic and the rest of southern Mesopotamian dialects.
• The gemination of the flap /ɾ/ results in a trill /r/.

See also

• Baghdad Arabic (Jewish)
• North Mesopatamian Arabic

References

• Kees Versteegh, et al. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, BRILL, 2006.
• Abū-Haidar, Farīda (1991). Christian Arabic of Baghdad. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. ISBN 9783447032094.

Specific