Baghdadi Arabic is the

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...

spoken in

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

, the capital of

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

. During the last century, Baghdadi Arabic has become the

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

of Iraq, and the language of commerce and education. It is considered a subset of

Iraqi Arabic Mesopotamian Arabic, ( ar, لهجة بلاد ما بين النهرين) also known as Iraqi Arabic ( ar, اللهجة العراقية), or Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic (as opposed to North Mesopotamian Arabic, Qeltu Mesopotamian Arabic) is a contin ...

Phonology

Vowels

The vowel phoneme (from standard Arabic ) is usually realised as an opening diphthong, for most speakers only slightly diphthongised , but for others a more noticeable , such that, for instance, ''lēš'' hywill sound like ''leeyesh'', much like a

drawl A drawl is a perceived feature of some varieties of spoken English and generally indicates slower, longer vowel sounds and diphthongs. The drawl is often perceived as a method of speaking more slowly and may be erroneously attributed to laziness ...

in English. There's a vowel phoneme that evolved from the diphthong () to resemble more of a long () sound, as in words such as ''kaun'' niverseshifting to ''kōn''. A schwa sound is mainly heard in unstressed and stressed open and closed syllables.

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 Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provid ...

, pharyngeal, and

pharyngealized Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound. IPA symbols In the International Phonetic Alphabet, pharyngealization can be indicated ...

(" emphatic") sounds. The emphatic coronals (, , and ) cause assimilation of emphasis to adjacent non-emphatic coronal consonants. The phonemes ⟨ پ⟩ and ⟨ 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 ⟨ ب⟩ and ⟨ ف⟩ respectively depending on the speaker.Teach Yourself Arabic, by Jack Smart (Author), Frances Altorfer (Author)Hans Wehr, ''

Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic The ''Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic'' is an Arabic-English dictionary compiled by Hans Wehr and edited by J Milton Cowan. First published in 1961 by Otto Harrassowitz in Wiesbaden, Germany, it was an enlarged and revised English version of ...

'' (transl. of ''Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart'', 1952) Phonetic notes: * and occur mostly in borrowings from Persian, and may be assimilated to or in some speakers. * is heard in borrowings of non-Arabic languages. * is pronunciation of // in Baghdad Arabic and the rest of southern Mesopotamian dialects. *The gemination of the flap /ɾ/ results in a trill /r/.

References

Sources

Kees Versteegh Cornelis Henricus Maria "Kees" Versteegh (; born 1947) is a Dutch academic linguist. He served as a professor of Islamic studies and the Arabic language at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands until April 2011. Versteegh graduated from R ...

, et al. ''Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics'', BRILL, 2006. * *

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

See also

References

Sources

Further reading