Jump to content

North Mesopotamian Arabic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
North Mesopotamian Arabic
Moslawi Arabic
Mardelli Arabic
Qeltu Mesopotamian Arabic
Syro-Mesopotamian Arabic
لهجة موصلية
Native toIraq, Syria, Turkey[1]
Speakers12 million (2024)[2]
Dialects
Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3ayp
Glottolognort3142
ELPNorth Mesopotamian Arabic

North Mesopotamian Arabic, also known as Moslawi (meaning 'of Mosul'), Mardelli (meaning 'of Mardin'), Mesopotamian Qeltu Arabic, or Syro-Mesopotamian Arabic, is one of the two main varieties of Mesopotamian Arabic, together with Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic.[3]

Relationship to Gilit Mesopotamian

[edit]
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.[4] 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.[5] Non-Muslims include Christians, Yazidis, and Jews, until most Iraqi Jews were exiled from Iraq in the 1940s–1950s.[6][7] Geographically, the gelet–qeltu classification roughly corresponds to respectively Upper Mesopotamia and Lower Mesopotamia.[8] The isogloss is between the Tigris and Euphrates, around Fallujah and Samarra.[8]

During the Siege of Baghdad in 1258, the Mongol Empire killed all Muslims in the city and environs.[9] However, sedentary Christians and Jews were spared, and Upper Mesopotamia was untouched.[9] In Lower Mesopotamia, sedentary Muslims were gradually replaced by Bedouins from the countryside.[9] 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.[9][10] 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.[9]

Gelet/qeltu verb contrasts[11]
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]

Qeltu dialects include:[8]

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.[12] Other Arabic speakers cannot easily understand Moslawi and Baghdadi.[12] 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.

The peripheral Anatolian Arabic varieties in Siirt, Muş and Batman are quite divergent.[citation needed]

Cypriot Arabic shares a number of common features with North Mesopotamian Arabic, and one of its pre-Cypriot medieval antecedents has been deduced as belonging to this dialect area.[13][14] However, its current form is a hybrid of different varieties and languages, including Levantine Arabic and Greek.[13]

Aramaic substrate

[edit]
This paragraph is an excerpt from Mesopotamian Arabic § Substrate.[edit]
Mesopotamian Arabic, especially North Mesopotamian Arabic, has a significant Eastern Aramaic substrate,[15] and through it also has significant influences from the ancient languages of Mesopotamia, Sumerian and Akkadian. Eastern Aramaic dialects flourished and became the lingua franca throughout Mesopotamia when it was Achaemenid Assyria and then in the Hellenistic period, where varieties such as Syriac, Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, Mandaic, and Hatran Aramaic came to being.[16][17] Mesopotamian Arabic also was influenced by New Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Koine Greek.[18]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ North Mesopotamian Arabic at Ethnologue (28th ed., 2025) Closed access icon
  2. ^ North Mesopotamian Arabic at Ethnologue (28th ed., 2025) Closed access icon
  3. ^ North Mesopotamian Arabic at Ethnologue (28th ed., 2025) Closed access icon
  4. ^ Mitchell, T. F. (1990). Pronouncing Arabic, Volume 2. Clarendon Press. p. 37. ISBN 0-19-823989-0.
  5. ^ 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.
  6. ^ Holes, Clive, ed. (2018). Arabic Historical Dialectology: Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Approaches. Oxford University Press. p. 337. ISBN 978-0-19-870137-8. OCLC 1059441655.
  7. ^ 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.
  8. ^ 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.
  9. ^ a b c d e 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)
  10. ^ 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.
  11. ^ 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.
  12. ^ 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.
  13. ^ a b Versteegh, Kees (2001). The Arabic Language. Edinburgh University Press. p. 212. ISBN 0-7486-1436-2.
  14. ^ Owens, Jonathan (2006). A Linguistic History of Arabic. Oxford University Press. p. 274. ISBN 0-19-929082-2.
  15. ^ del Rio Sanchez, Francisco (2013). "Influences of Aramaic on dialectal Arabic". In Sala, Juan Pedro Monferrer; Watson, Wilfred G. E. (eds.). Archaism and Innovation in the Semitic Languages: Selected Papers. Oriens Academic. ISBN 978-84-695-7829-2.
  16. ^ Smart, J. R. (2013). Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Language And Literature. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315026503. ISBN 978-1-136-78805-5.
  17. ^ R. J. al-Mawsely, al-Athar, al-Aramiyyah fi lughat al-Mawsil al-amiyyah (Lexicon: Aramaic in the popular language of Mosul): Baghdad 1963
  18. ^ Afsaruddin, Asma; Zahniser, A. H. Mathias, eds. (1997). Humanism, Culture, and Language in the Near East: Studies in Honor of Georg Krotkoff. Penn State University Press. doi:10.5325/j.ctv1w36pkt. ISBN 978-1-57506-020-0. JSTOR 10.5325/j.ctv1w36pkt.
Stub icon

This article related to the Arabic language is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Stub icon

This Iraq-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Stub icon

This Iran-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Stub icon

This Syria-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Stub icon

This Turkey-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=North_Mesopotamian_Arabic&oldid=1285799139"