The Arabic Language

raḥ-
. 
The most common continuous aspect marker in the Mesopotamian 
qǝltu
dialects 
is some form derived from 
qāʿid
‘sitting’ > 
qa-, 
for example, 
qa-ykǝtbōn 
‘they are 
writing’, 
qad-áktǝb 
‘I am writing’ in Jewish Baġdādī (Mansour 2006: 239).
In the 
gilit
dialects, there are three short vowels, /i/, /u/, /a/, but these do not 
continue directly the Classical vowels. The vowel /a/ has been preserved in closed 
syllables, but in open syllables it has changed into /i/ or /u/, depending on the 
phonetic environment, for example, 
simač
< 
samak
‘fish’ as against 
buṣal
< 
baṣal
‘onion’. Short /i/ and /u/ have been preserved only in some environments, whereas 
in others they are both represented by either /i/ or /u/, for example, 
ḥāmuḏ̣
< 
ḥāmiḏ̣
‘sour’, as against 
gilit
< 
qultu
‘I said’. In the 
gilit
dialects, the interdentals have been 
preserved, and the reflex of both /ḍ/ and /ḏ̣/ is realised accordingly as /ḏ̣/.
Characteristic of all ʿIrāqī dialects is the conditioned affrication of both /q/ > 
/g/ and /k/ near front vowels (possibly a Bedouin feature; cf. above, p. 194); in 

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The Dialects of Arabic 
203
the Muslim dialect of Baghdad, however, only /k/ is affricated, for example, 
čān
< 
kāna
‘he was’ as against 
yikūn
< 
yakūnu 
‘he is’. In the pronominal suffix of the 
second-person singular, this leads to a distinction between masculine 
-(a)k
and 
feminine 
-(i)č
, for example, 
bētak
‘your [masculine] house’ as against 
bētič
‘your 
[feminine] house’.
Where the 
qǝltu
dialects usually preserve consonant clusters -CC at the end 
of the word, the 
gilit
dialects insert an epenthetic vowel, 
i
or 
u
depending on the 
environment, for example, 
čalib
< 
kalb
‘dog’, 
gaḷub
< 
qalb
‘heart’, and in the keyword 
for these dialects 
gilit
< 
qultu
. In consonant clusters -CCC-, an epenthetic vowel is 
inserted after the first consonant, for example, 
yuḏ̣rubūn
> 
yuḏ̣rbūn
[elision of 
the unstressed 
u
] > 
yuḏ̣urbūn
[epenthesis] ‘they hit’. The verbal paradigm of the 
Muslim dialect of Baghdad illustrates this phenomenon, as shown in Table 11.4.
kitab 
kitbaw 
yiktib 
yikitbūn
kitbat
tiktib 
kitábit 
kitabtu 
tiktib 
tikitbūn
kitabti 
 
tikitbīn
kitabit 
kitabna 
ʾaktib 
niktib
Table 11.4 The verbal paradigm of Muslim Baġd
ā
d
ī
In the verbal inflection, the Classical Arabic type of perfect verb 
faʿala
has devel
-
oped in accordance with the vowel rule given above into 
fiʿal
or 
fuʿal
depending 
on the environment, for example, 
ḏ̣
urab
as against 
simaʿ
. In the inflection of the 
verb, the endings of the weak and the strong verbs have been levelled to a large 
degree. In some cases, this has led to the introduction of weak endings in the 
strong verb, as in many Bedouin dialects, for example, 
ḏ̣
urbaw
‘they hit’, 
kitbaw
‘they wrote’, in which the ending 
-aw
is derived from the inflection of the weak 
verb, cf. 
bičaw
‘they cried’. Some of the 
qǝltu
dialects go even further in this direc
-
tion and eliminate completely the distinction between weak and strong verbs (cf. 
above, pp. 135f.). In the Muslim dialect of Baghdad, the continuous aspect marker 
is 
dā-
, the future marker 
raḥ-
, as in most Mesopotamian dialects. The participle 
is used for the perfect aspect (as in Uzbekistan Arabic), as in (2) from the Muslim 
dialect of Baghdad:
(2) 
wēn 
ḏ̣āmm 
i
flūs-a
 
where 
put.PART.3ms 
money-3ms
 
‘Where did he put his money?’ (Fischer and Jastrow 1980: 155)
Of special interest are the dialects spoken in the Iranian province of Khuzestan 
(called in Arabic ʿArabistān). Although the political developments of the last few 
decades have turned this area into a linguistic enclave, relations between the 
Arabs living there and their co-tribesmen in Iraq have never been completely 

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204
The Arabic Language
disrupted. The Bedouin dialects in this region continue the Arabian dialect area 
(p. 192), but the sedentary dialects closely resemble the 
gilit
dialects of Mesopo
-
tamia, in particular, the dialects around Baṣra. As may be expected, the Arabic 
dialects of Khuzestan use many Persian loans, many of them in the administra
-
tive domain (e.g., 
dānīšgāh
< Persian 
dānešgāh
‘university’; 
ʾɪdāra
< Persian 
edāre
‘office’), but also frequent words, such as 
hassɪt
< Persian 
hast
‘there is, there are’; 
hīč
< Persian 
hīč
‘nothing’. In phonology, Ingham notes that in final position two 
high vowels /i/ and /u/ are distinguished, but in non-final position these have 
merged into one, transcribed by him as /ɪ/. In the morphology, the presence of a 
clitic interrogative 
-man
‘what, who’ may be noted, as in (4) and (5):
(4) 
šɪ́fɪt-man
 
see.PERF.2ms-who
‘Who did you see?’
(5) 
trīd 
tíštɪrī-man
want.IMPERF.2ms 
buy.IMPERF.2ms-who
‘Which do you want to buy?’
In some verbal forms, especially before pronominal suffixes, a suffix 
-an
occurs, 
for example, 
ʾašūfan
‘I see’; 
ʾāḫḏanha
‘I shall take her’.
Text 5 Jewish Arabic from
 ʿ
Aqra (after Jastrow 1990: 166–7)
1. 
ǝzzawāj mālna, ida wēḥǝd kār-rād fad 
bǝnt, nǝḥne ʿǝddna mā kān aku yǝmši 
maʿa, yǝji, yǝmši, laʾ
1. Our wedding, when somebody loved 
a girl, it was not the case with us that 
he could go out with her, come and 
go, no.
2.
 bass kān aṛāha faz-zāye, zāytayn, kān 
tīqǝlla, kūrrīd nǝji nǝṭlǝbki, mǝn ǝmmki 
w-abūki
2. But when he had seen her once, twice, 
he told her: ‘We want to come and ask 
for your hand, from your mother and 
father’.
3.
 hīya tǝqǝllu … ida hīya kān tǝskīm, hīya 
kānǝt rāḍye, kān yǝmšawn ʿǝnd ǝmma 
w-abūwa, ǝmmu w-abūhu, w-ǝḫtu, 
w-ḫawātu flān yǝmšawn, yǝʿmǝlūn 
kāvōd, yǝʿmǝlūn qadǝr wēḥǝd šān ellāḫ
3. She told him … if she agreed, they 
went to her mother and father, his 
mother and father and his sister or 
sisters went, they honoured them, 
they paid each other respect.
4.
 yǝmšawn ʿǝnd ǝmma w-abūwa, yǝqǝl -
lūlǝm kūrrīd bǝntkǝm, tǝʿṭawna šān 
ǝ́bǝnna, ǝ́bǝnna kīrīda, w-bǝntkǝm-ǝš 
kūtrīdu
4. They went to her mother and father, 
and told them: ‘We want you to give 
your daughter to our son, our son 
loves her and your daughter loves 
him, too’.

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The Dialects of Arabic 
205
Text 6 Khuzestan Arabic (Khorramshahr) (after Ingham 1973: 550)
1.
 halmēlām šlōn ɪysawwūna?
1. This fishtrap, how do they make it?
2.
 ʿala šāṭi maṯal šaṭṭ farɪd makān ɪdgūm 
dgɪṣṣlak ɪssaʿaf
2. On the bank of for instance a river, 
a place, you stand and cut off for 
yourself the palm fronds.
3.
 ʾɪlḫūṣ māla dgɪṣṣa ʾawwal
3. You cut off their leaves first.
4.
 hannōḅa dnabbɪč ɪlwɪḥda yamm ɪṯṯānya 
lamman ma ṣṣīr hēč mɪṯl ɪlḫɪṣṣ
4. Then you fix one beside the other 
so that it becomes like this, like a 
woven garden fence.
5.
 ɪlḫɪṣṣ maṯal mnɪlmadda tɪṣʿad ɪssɪmač 
yɪṣʿad u mɪn yɪnzɪl hāḏa ssɪmač yqɪḏ̣ḏ̣
a 
bhāḏa bɪlmēlām
5. Then for instance when the high 
tide comes, the fish come up, and 
when the fish go down it catches 
them with the fishtrap.