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Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic

(Redirected from Gelet Arabic)

Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic,[3] also known as Iraqi Arabic,[3] Mesopotamian Gelet Arabic,[4] or simply Mesopotamian Arabic[3] is one of the two main varieties of Mesopotamian Arabic, together with North Mesopotamian Arabic.[5][6]

Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic
Gilit Arabic
اللهجة العراقية
Native toIraq, Iran, Syria[1]
Speakers20 million (2021–2024)[2]
Dialects
Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3acm Mesopotamian Arabic
Glottologmeso1252

Relationship to North Mesopotamian

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This section is an excerpt from Mesopotamian Arabic § Varieties.[edit]

Mesopotamian Arabic has two major varieties: Gelet and Qeltu, also called "North Mesopotamian". Their names derive from the form of the word for "I said" in each variety.[7] Gelet Arabic is a Bedouin variety spoken by Muslims (both sedentary and non-sedentary) in central and Lower Mesopotamia and by nomads in the rest of Iraq. Qeltu Arabic is an urban dialect spoken by non-Muslims in this same region, including Baghdad, and by the sedentary population (both Muslims and non-Muslims) in Upper Mesopotamia.[8] Non-Muslims include Christians, Yazidis, and Jews, until most Iraqi Jews were exiled from Iraq in the 1940s–1950s.[9][10] Geographically, the gelet–qeltu classification roughly corresponds to respectively Upper Mesopotamia and Lower Mesopotamia.[11] The isogloss is between the Tigris and Euphrates, around Fallujah and Samarra.[11]

During the Siege of Baghdad in 1258, the Mongol Empire killed all Muslims in the city and environs.[12] However, sedentary Christians and Jews were spared, and Upper Mesopotamia was untouched.[12] In Lower Mesopotamia, sedentary Muslims were gradually replaced by Bedouins from the countryside.[12] This explains the current dialect distribution: in the south, inhabitants speak Bedouin varieties closer to Gulf Arabic; they are descended from Bedouin varieties of the Arabian Peninsula.[12][13] The exception is urban non-Muslims, who continue to speak pre-1258 Qeltu dialects. In contrast, in the north, Qeltu Arabic is widely spoken by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.[12]

Gelet/qeltu verb contrasts[14]
s-stemBedouin/geletSedentary/qeltu
1st sing.ḏạrab-tfataḥ-tu
2nd m. sing.ḏạrab-tfataḥ-t
2nd f. sing.tišṛab-īntǝšrab-īn
2nd pl.tišṛab-ūntǝšrab-ūn
3rd pl.yišṛab-ūnyǝšrab-ūn

Dialects

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This section is an excerpt from Mesopotamian Arabic § Dialects.[edit]

Gelet dialects include:[11]

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.[15] Other Arabic speakers cannot easily understand Moslawi and Baghdadi.[15] The Iraqi dialect is notable for its diversity and its general closeness to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), with Iraqis often capable of pronouncing classical Arabic with proper phonetics.

References

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  1. ↑ Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic at Ethnologue (28th ed., 2025) Closed access icon
  2. ↑ Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic at Ethnologue (28th ed., 2025) Closed access icon
  3. 1 2 3 "Glottolog 4.7 - Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic". glottolog.org. Retrieved 2023-01-01.
  4. ↑ Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic at Ethnologue (28th ed., 2025) Closed access icon
  5. ↑ Hassan, Qasim. "Reconsidering the Lexical Features of the south-Mesopotamian Dialects." Folia Orientalia 56 (2019).
  6. ↑ Jasim, Maha Ibrahim (2020). Tafxi:m in the vowels of Muslawi Qeltu and Baghdadi Gilit dialects of Mesopotamian Arabic (Thesis thesis). Newcastle University.
  7. ↑ Mitchell, T. F. (1990). Pronouncing Arabic, Volume 2. Clarendon Press. p. 37. ISBN 0-19-823989-0.
  8. ↑ 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.
  9. ↑ Holes, Clive, ed. (2018). Arabic Historical Dialectology: Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Approaches. Oxford University Press. p. 337. ISBN 978-0-19-870137-8. OCLC 1059441655.
  10. ↑ 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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)
  13. ↑ 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.
  14. ↑ 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.
  15. 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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