Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic

Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic
Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic
Gilit Arabic
اللهجة العراقية
Native to	Iraq,Iran,Syria
Speakers	17 million (2020–2023)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Mesopotamian Arabic Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic; ; ; ; ; ;
Dialects	Baghdadi Arabic; Shawi Arabic; Khuzestani Arabic; South Mesopotamian Arabic;
Writing system	Arabic Alpha bet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	acmMesopotamian Arabic
Glottolog	meso1252

Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic,^[2]also known asIraqi Arabic,^[2]Mesopotamian Gelet Arabic,^[1]or simplyMesopotamian Arabic^[2]is one of the two mainvarietiesofMesopotamian Arabic,together withNorth Mesopotamian Arabic.^[3]^[4]

Relationship to North Mesopotamian

Mesopotamian Arabic has two major varieties: Gelet Mesopotamian Arabic andQeltu Mesopotamian Arabic.Their names derive from the form of the word for "I said" in each variety.^[5]Gelet Arabic is aBedouin varietyspoken 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 includeChristians,Yazidis,andJews,until most Iraqi Jewsleft Iraq in the 1940s–1950s.^[7]^[8]Geographically, the gelet–qeltu classification roughly corresponds to respectivelyUpper MesopotamiaandLower Mesopotamia.^[9]The isogloss is between the riversTigrisandEuphrates,aroundFallujahandSamarra.^[9]

During theSiege of Baghdad(1258), theMongolskilled all Muslims.^[10]However, sedentary Christians and Jews were spared and northern Iraq was untouched.^[10]In southern Iraq, sedentary Muslims were gradually replaced byBedouinsfrom the countryside.^[10]This explains the current dialect distribution: in the south, everyone speaks Bedouin varieties close toGulf Arabic(continuation of the Bedouin dialects of theArabian 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
1stsg.	ḏạrab-t	fataḥ-tu
2ndm.sg.	ḏạrab-t	fataḥ-t
2ndf.sg.	tišṛab-īn	tǝšrab-īn
2ndpl.	tišṛab-ūn	tǝšrab-ūn
3rdpl.	yišṛab-ūn	yǝšrab-ūn

Dialects

Gelet dialects include:^[9]

Gilit
- Northwestern Mesopotamian group
  - Shāwi dialects(includingUrfaandal-Raqqah)
  - Rural dialects of northern and central Iraq.
- Central Iraqi Group
  - Baghdad Arabic
  - The surrounding area around Baghdad
- Southern Iraqi andKhuzestani Arabicgroup
  - Urban dialects
  - Rural dialects
  - Marshland dialectsof theMarsh Arabsof theMesopotamian Marshes

Baghdadi Arabicis 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]