Iraqi Arabic...

The Iraqi dialect of Arabic seems to be an interesting hybrid of languages.. Besides being mainly Arabic, it contains words from the following languages: Turkish, Persian, English, and French.

Iraqi Arabic is almost incomprehensible and unintelligable to other Arabs...

Examples of words of English origin:

EN: puncture ------> IA: penchar
EN: dashboard ----> IA: dashbool
EN: silensor -------> IA: salansa
EN: ball-bearing ---> IA: bolberin
EN: battery -------> IA: batry


Examples of words of French origin:

FR: maquillage -----> IA: mikyaj (makeup)
FR: boucle ---------> IA: bukla (curl)
FR: douche --------> IA: doosh (shower)
FR: canapé ---------> IA: kanafa (sofa)
FR: tournevis ------> IA: darnafees (screwdriver)


Examples of words of Turkish origin:

TR: adabsiz -------> IA: adabsiz (ill-mannered)
TR: çakiç ----------> IA: chakooch (hammer)
TR: dondurma ----> IA: Dondirme (ice cream)
TR: belki ----------> IA: belki (hopefully)


Examples of words of Persian origin:

PE: panka ---------> IA: panka (fan)
PE: chirpaya -------> IA: chirpaya (bed)
PE: sarsaree -------> IA: sarsaree (impolite)
PE: kosh -----------> IA: khosh (good)



Persian and Turkish have left their influence due to approximately 400 years of Iraq being under the control of each Turkey and Iran through the Ottoman/Seljuk and Safavid/Sasanid empires respectively...

English left its influence due to approximately 50 years of Iraq being under the control of the United Kigdom through the British empire...

French left its influece due to its former status as the world's lingua franca, before being superceded by English.

Are you sure? I know an Iraqi who is always talking to people from other Arab countries fluently with no problems.

Oh yes, I believe you... Iraqis are able to shift to a more "international" register of Arabic and make themselves more understandable to other Arabs by avoiding to use the local and obscure words... and instead, employ more generic and pan-Arabic words. So, in other words, Iraqis will try to sound more like them...

Usually, Iraqis understand almost entirely what other Arabs are saying and are able to communicate with them by making some modifications, however, other Arabs will not be able to understand what Iraqis are saying (if Iraqis insist on using their indigenour inventory of vocabulary.)

Make that "indigenous"...

<< English left its influence due to approximately 50 years of Iraq being under the control of the United Kigdom through the British empire...

French left its influece due to its former status as the world's lingua franca, before being superceded by English. >>

-- Iraq was a British colony in the 20'-30's, whilst the French occupied Lebanon and Syria. So English is logically much more present in Iraq than French ever was.

However I'm not that surprised that French words sneaked in in Iraqi dialectal Arabic. For some reason, French became in the 20's of the past century the favourite second language of all Christians in the Middle-East, while English was strongly associated to Judeo-Islamic culture.

Since America set up an Islamic regime in Iraq, Christian elites have been slaughtered or forced to emigrate, and English is now absolutely prevalent there.