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.^[2]

Baghdadi Arabic
اللهجة البغدادية
Native to	Mesopotamia
Region	Baghdad
Native speakers	About 15.7 million speakers (2014-2016)^[1]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Mesopotamian Gilit Baghdadi Arabic
Writing system	Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	acm – Mesopotamian Arabic
Glottolog	meso1252
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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, much like a drawl in English. 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. A schwa sound [ə] is mainly heard in unstressed and stressed open and closed syllables.

The Vowel Phonemes of Baghdadi Arabic

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

Consonants

Even in the most formal of conventions, pronunciation depends upon a speaker's background.^[3] 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.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[4][5]

Baghdadi Arabic consonant phonemes

		Labial	Dental	Coronal		Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
				plain	emphatic
Nasal		m		n
Stop/Affricate	voiceless	(p)		t	tˤ	t͡ʃ	k	(q)		ʔ
	voiced	b		d	d͡ʒ		g
Fricative	voiceless	f	θ	s ~ ɕ	sˤ	ʃ	x ~ χ		ħ ~ ʜ	h
	voiced	(v)	ð	z ~ ʑ	ðˤ		ɣ ~ ʁ		ʕ ~ ʢ
Tap			r
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.
• [q] is heard in borrowings of non-Arabic languages.
• /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 Jewish Arabic
• North Mesopotamian Arabic

References

1. "Arabic, Mesopotamian Spoken - Ethnologue". Ethnologue. Simons, Gary F. and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2017. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Twentieth edition. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
2. Hann, Geoff (7 August 2015). Iraq : the ancient sites & Iraqi Kurdistan : the Bradt travel guide. ISBN 9781841624884. OCLC 880400955.
3. Holes (2004:58)
4. Teach Yourself Arabic, by Jack Smart (Author), Frances Altorfer (Author)
5. Hans Wehr, Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (transl. of Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart, 1952)

Sources

• 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.
• Holes, Clive (2004). Modern Arabic : structures, functions, and varieties. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. ISBN 978-1-58901-022-2.

Further reading

• Palva, Heikki (2009-01-01). From Qəltu To Gələt: Diachronic Notes On Linguistic Adaptation In Muslim Baghdad Arabic. Brill. ISBN 978-90-474-2559-5.