Mesopotamian Arabic has two major varieties: Gelet andQeltu, also called "North Mesopotamian". Their names derive from the form of the word for "I said" in each variety.^[7] Gelet Arabic is aBedouin variety spoken by Muslims (both sedentary and non-sedentary) in central andLower Mesopotamia and by nomads in the rest of Iraq. Qeltu Arabic is an urban dialect spoken by non-Muslims in this same region, includingBaghdad, and by the sedentary population (both Muslims and non-Muslims) inUpper Mesopotamia.^[8] Non-Muslims includeChristians,Yazidis, andJews, until most Iraqi Jewswere exiled from Iraq in the 1940s–1950s.^[9][10] Geographically, the gelet–qeltu classification roughly corresponds to respectivelyUpper Mesopotamia andLower Mesopotamia.^[11] The isogloss is between theTigris andEuphrates, aroundFallujah andSamarra.^[11]

During theSiege of Baghdad in 1258, theMongol Empire killed all Muslims in the city and environs.^[12] However, sedentary Christians and Jews were spared, and Upper Mesopotamia was untouched.^[12] In Lower Mesopotamia, sedentary Muslims were gradually replaced byBedouins from the countryside.^[12] This explains the current dialect distribution: in the south, inhabitants speak Bedouin varieties closer toGulf Arabic; they are descended from Bedouin varieties of theArabian Peninsula.^[12][13] 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.^[12]

Gelet dialects include:^[11]

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.^[15] Other Arabic speakers cannot easily understand Moslawi and Baghdadi.^[15] 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.

1. ^Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic atEthnologue (28th ed., 2025)
2. ^Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic atEthnologue (28th ed., 2025)
3. ^^abc"Glottolog 4.7 - Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic".glottolog.org. Retrieved2023-01-01.
4. ^Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic atEthnologue (28th ed., 2025)
5. ^Hassan, Qasim. "Reconsidering the Lexical Features of the south-Mesopotamian Dialects."Folia Orientalia 56 (2019).
6. ^Jasim, Maha Ibrahim (2020).Tafxi:m in the vowels of Muslawi Qeltu and Baghdadi Gilit dialects of Mesopotamian Arabic (Thesis thesis). Newcastle University.
7. ^Mitchell, T. F. (1990).Pronouncing Arabic, Volume 2.Clarendon Press. p. 37.ISBN 0-19-823989-0.
8. ^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.
9. ^Holes, Clive, ed. (2018).Arabic Historical Dialectology: Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Approaches. Oxford University Press. p. 337.ISBN 978-0-19-870137-8.OCLC 1059441655.
10. ^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.
11. ^^abcAhmed, Abdulkareem Yaseen (2018).Phonological variation and change in Mesopotamia: a study of accent levelling in the Arabic dialect of Mosul (PhD thesis). Newcastle University.
12. ^^abcdeHoles, 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)
13. ^Al-Wer, Enam; Jong, Rudolf (2017). "Dialects of Arabic". InBoberg, 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.
14. ^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.
15. ^^abCollin, 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.

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