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
Muslim Baghdadi Arabic, Iraqi Arabic
اللهجة البغدادية
Native to	Iraq, eastern Syria, Kuwait, parts of eastern Arabia, Khuzestan Province in Iran
Region	Baghdad, Basra
Native speakers	About 15.7 million speakers (2014-2016)[1]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Iraqi Arabic Baghdadi Arabic
Dialects	Baghdadi Arabic
Writing system	Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	acm – Mesopotamian Arabic
Glottolog	meso1252
red - Baghdadi Arabic

An interesting sociolinguistic feature of Baghdadi Arabic is the existence of three distinct dialects: Muslim, Jewish and Christian Baghdadi Arabic. Muslim Baghdadi belongs to a group called gilit dialects, while Jewish Baghdadi (as well as Christian Baghdadi) belongs to qeltu dialects. The latter two thus are more related to North Mesopotamian-Anatolian Arabic than Iraqi Arabic.

During the first decades of the 20th century, when the population of Baghdad was less than a million, some inner city quarters had their own distinctive speech characteristics, maintained for generations. From about the 1960s, with the population movement within the city, and the influx of large numbers of people hailing mainly from the south, Baghdad Arabic has become more standardized, and has come to incorporate some rural features and Modern Standard Arabic loanwords.

Distinct features of Muslim Baghdadi Arabic include the use of 'ani' as opposed to the fusha 'ana' meaning 'I am' and the addition of the suffix 'ich' to verbs with female direct objects, e.g. 'ani gilitlich' meaning 'I told you' whereas North Mesopotamian-Anatolian Arabic speakers would say: 'ana qeltolki'.