# Iraqi Arabic Pronunciation - The Closest to MSA?



## Andrew___

Hi guys,

In my opinion the pronunciation in the Iraqi dialect is the closest to MSA, which is an attractive feature of this dialect.

I share a small office space with 2 Iraqi employees, so I hear this dialect day-in, day-out. 

It is wonderful to hear the pronunciation of the ج، ق and ظ in the MSA way. It is true that ك sometimes becomes "ch", but I think on the whole one can say that this dialect comes closest to the MSA pronunciation in comparison to the other dialects.

May I ask if anyone agrees/disagrees with this point of view?


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## Mahaodeh

True, they pronounce the ظ as it should be in MSA, but then people in the Levant pronounce the ض closer to MSA while in Iraq they pronounce it identical to ظ!

Maybe some people have a hard time pronouncing the ق but the vast majority in most dialects pronounce it very well.

I don't share this view with you, I don't know if you have already mentioned that to the two Iraqis you work with or not but I think that they would be surprised of your opinion too.

The problem with the Iraqi dialect is in the overall tone; it may not be as clear as the Egyptian tone but they do have quite a heavy tone which makes their overall accent sound incorrect. They use a lot of تضخيم (most of their ل are pronounced as it is in the word الله when in fus7a I don't believe that there are more than half a dozen cases like that, as one example), and in some areas, especially going down towards the south, they seem to have a sort of Persian accent, not 100% Persian but quite influenced.

I personally judge by listening to them speak MSA; based on that I find that the closest are the North African dialects, especially Tunisian followed by Morrocan, then a close runner up is Levantine. The furthest away is Egyptian, followed by Bahraini then Iraqi.


Having said that, a non-native speaker's view is definitly a fresh one worth taking into consideration; but I can't help but feel surprised!


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## Andrew___

Many thanks Maha for your views on this point. I am rather surprised by your view I must admit 



Mahaodeh said:


> I don't know if you have already mentioned that to the two Iraqis you work with or not but I think that they would be surprised of your opinion too.


 
Yes, I raised this point of view with them recently. One of them had a pain in her back and said !!ظهري, which was the trigger which sparked the discussion on this point. That individual seemed to agree strongly with me that it is closest to MSA in pronunciation, and the other Iraqi did not seem to have a strong opinion about it either way. 

The first individual in fact goes as far as to say that Iraqi per se is the closest to MSA (not just the pronunciation, but vocab too), although I don't tend to agree with that point of view.


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## HBZ55

I'm interested about the Dhad and Dha2 debate. Here in Tunisia, we pronounce both exactly the same, in fact, I don't even know the difference between them. Can anyone explain how these letters differ from each other?


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## Mahaodeh

The ظ should be the way it's pronounced in Iraq; the ض should be the way it's pronounced in AshShaam. Most native speakers seem to mix them up; in Iraq, they tend to say ظربني while in the Levant they tend to say ضهري!! You are not alone in this , but out of curiousity, how do you pronounce it in Tunis?


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## المعتصم

in Palestine we have three pronouncing ways - madani(cities), qurawi(villages) and maqdisi (alquds villages)

in madani they say ق as ء , some ظ as ض (a few people say ذ asز )
in qurawi they say some ك as ch, some ض as ظ
in maqdisi they say ق as ك
but here when people speak SA they pronounce every letter as it realy is


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## mini91

Yes I agree with Maha on her point that North African dialects have a good way of pronuncing certain letters e.g Qaf is pronounced the correct way but in Morocco and in some parts of Algeria they sometimes pronounce it as Gaf and even as Kaf. Generally in most dialects the accent is the main factor that may prevent it from sounding like FuS7a, but that's just my own opinion


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## clevermizo

I would just like to add that the merger of ض and ظ is an ancient phenomenon. This is why many dialects pronounce them the same. The ancient ض according to Sibawayh's description is definitely not the modern pronunciation, but a voiced _lateral fricative_, thus being slightly similar to ظ and leading to a merger. Most urban dialects of the Levant and Egypt started to pronounce ظ and ض with the sound [D] and this eventually became the standard sound for ض (for reasons I'm unsure of). In these dialects a "new" pronunciation of ظ [Z] (an emphatic version of ز ) took the place of the fus7a ظ in some borrowings from fus7a and some dialect words, although the most common pronunciation is D (ض). 

This new colloquial sound [Z] is used even with words that etymologically have ض : maZbuuT , biZ-ZabT, etc from the root ضـ بـ ط. So actually even in the Levant ظ and ض are more or less still completely merged, although the "major" pronunciation is that of modern standard ض [D]. 

This merger of ظ and ض into either [Dh (Arabia/Bedouin/Iraq/N. Africa/etc)] or [D/Z (Levant/Egypt/etc)] is so universal that really I think it must have occurred in the dialects of ancient tribes before they spread out of the Peninsula.


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## Andrew___

Mahaodeh said:


> I personally judge by listening to them speak MSA; based on that I find that the closest are the North African dialects, especially Tunisian followed by Morrocan, then a close runner up is Levantine. The furthest away is Egyptian, followed by Bahraini then Iraqi.



Hi Maha, may I ask whether you inteded to single out Bahraini here?  I presume you meant all Gulf dialects when you said this.  

Also, would you class Hijazi as equally as distant from the MSA pronunciation as Egyptian is?


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## WadiH

Andrew,
All of the features you've listed are shared with the dialects of the Gulf.  Also, it is only the dialect of northern Iraq (Mosul) that pronounces the qaf as [q] uniformly.  In the rest of Iraq, it is rendered [q], [g], or [j] depending on the word (again, much like the dialects of places like Kuwait and Al-Hasa).

I don't think it's that interesting to be "closest to MSA" phonologically.  MSA is largely an artificial construct, and there's no evidence that any group of people sounded exactly like it.  There was always within Arabia as much phonological diversity as there is in the Arabic-speaking world today.  I'm reminded of an observation I came across regarding an old survey of the dialects of the Arabian Peninsula to the effect that nearly every phonological phenomenon that you can find in the Arabic world can also be found spoken by at least one group of people somewhere in Arabia today.

As Clevermizo alluded to in his post, the reports of the old grammarians about Classical (or "Old") Arabic do not correspond exactly to MSA.  Clevermizo mentioned ض, but qaf is another example.  The MSA pronunciation is [q], which is unvoiced, but according to Sibawayh the "correct" pronunciation was "voiced," making it closer to a [g].


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## Andrew___

Many thanks Wadi for your nice post.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> All of the features you've listed are shared with the dialects of the Gulf.



Is that true Wadi?  I live in the UAE, and they often pronounce the ج as ي (such as in رجال), and they often pronounce the letter ق as a "g" sound (such as قال).

Whereas the Iraqi dialect which I hear at work (Baghdadi) does not seem to do either of these.


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## Mahaodeh

I have to agree a little with each of you a disagree a little with each. While many of the qaafs are indeed pronounced gaaf in Iraqi Arabic, many are in fact pronounced qaaf and some kaaf, very few jeem. I also agree that most of the time jeem is pronounced yaa' in Gulf Arabic.
 
On the other hand, I do agree with Wadi about the other features being shared with Gulf Arabic, especially the ظ and the way the jeem is pronounced when it's not rendered yaa'. I'll have to add the thaa' ث to that list too.
 
Regarding Bahraini, yes, I did deliberately single out Bahraini, for some reason their dialect is very heavy, it has a tone that is very close to Persian - I'm not talking about how single letters are pronounced, I'm referring to the overall tone.


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## WadiH

Andrew___ said:


> Is that true Wadi?  I live in the UAE, and they often pronounce the ج as ي (such as in رجال)



Well sure, but by the same token, Iraqis pronounce a lot of their _kafs_ as "_ch_" and a lot of their _qafs_ as j's, and that's not "correct" under MSA either.

By the way, the j=y phenomenon is also an ancient feature that predates Islam, and was most associated with the tribe of Bani Tamim.  For example, one large tribe was known as بني يربوع, even though the word يربوع is often rendered in Classical Arabic (as well as in many dialects) as جربوع.



> and they often pronounce the letter ق as a "g" sound (such as قال).



Well, unless you're thinking of the dialect of Mosul in the far north of Iraq, Iraqis generally pronounce قال as _gal_.  Actually, I would say most qafs in Iraqi are either rendered [g] or they became [j] via [g] through affrication (a topic we've talked about here on several threads in the context of _kaskasa/kashkasha_).  Some examples of Iraqi [g] that come to mind:

قال and its derivatives
قمر
قلب
قصد
قعد and its derivatives
نقدر

And of course there are the affricated _g_'s in words like شرجي (from شرقي, meaning "eastern")
جاسم (which comes from قاسم and is found as a personal name all along the Gulf coast down to Oman)
جدر (from قدر, meaning "pot")

In Kuwait and Al-Hasa, many qafs are rendered [q] in much the same way as in Iraq, e.g. قديم and قلق.  I think in all these dialects, words that contain [q] tend to be recent borrowing from MSA or they tend to be religious terms like قرآن, while the more basic (?) vocabulary tends to contain [g]/[j].


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## Mahaodeh

Wadi Hanifa said:


> قال and its derivatives
> قمر
> قلب
> قصد
> قعد and its derivatives
> نقدر


 
Actually, I've never heard قصد with a gaaf, always with a qaaf. But I agree with the rest and I do agree that most are actually pronounced gaaf.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> I think in all these dialects, words that contain [q] tend to be recent borrowing from MSA or they tend to be religious terms like قرآن, while the more basic (?) vocabulary tends to contain [g]/[j].


 
I have to disagree with this; some are not even fus7a, yet they are pronounced with a qaaf (ex. قندرة، قريولة) others are tranditionally used with a qaaf and are not borrowings from MSA or religious words or even recent words (ex. صديق، قماش، قبل (بمعنى رضي وليس بمعنى أمام)، بقى وغيرها), I never counted or surveyed anything but I think that there are more instances of qaaf being pronounced qaaf than jeem. Also, don't forget that some are even pronounced kaaf (ex. وقت = وكت).


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## WadiH

Mahaodeh said:


> Actually, I've never heard قصد with a gaaf, always with a qaaf.



On second thought you're probably right about that one.  Although the current Iraq goalkeeper's name is spelled كاصد, and I'm pretty sure it's because it's pronounced gassid (I notice Iraqis render the [g] with a Persian كـ instead of a ق).



> I have to disagree with this; some are not even fus7a, yet they are pronounced with a qaaf (ex. قندرة، قريولة)



I should have been more careful regarding Iraq.  Iraq does have a have a layer of medieval Arabic that is still apparent in the dialects of Iraqi Jews and in northern Iraq, which pronounces ق as [q] (this is the case throughout Al-Shaam of course, though in the big cities it turned into a _hamza_).  So there should be more [q]-words than in Kuwait for example.  But the bedouin/Arabian layer is quite visible in Iraqi Arabic, I think, and that's where a lot of these [g]'s and [j]'s come from, as well as a lot of Iraqi expressions that are similar to ones you find in Najd and eastern Arabia.

By the way, the Gulf also has a layer of old urban Arabic in places like Qatif, Oman, and Bahrain, where the [q] appears in some words as well.



> others are tranditionally used with a qaaf and are not borrowings from MSA or religious words or even recent words (ex. صديق، قماش، قبل (بمعنى رضي وليس بمعنى أمام)، بقى وغيرها),



Well, a lot of these words (from my experience with Khaliji and Arabian dialects) were not traditionally used as regular parts of the lexicon until relatively recently.  People from prior generations had other words for قبل and صديق.  It could be the same situation in Iraq with some of these words as well, or they could be inherited from the Middle Ages like I mentioned above.



> I never counted or surveyed anything but I think that there are more instances of qaaf being pronounced qaaf than jeem. Also, don't forget that some are even pronounced kaaf (ex. وقت = وكت).



Well I always hear it as _wagget_ even though Iraqis spell it in Arabic as وكت (they also render قال as كال and so on), but perhaps I haven't listened closely enough.


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## suma

My own experience or exposure to Iraqi dialect was not good. Years ago I attended Islamic study classes with native speakers from all over the Arab world. This guy was Iraqi Kurd and spoke fluent Arabic, lived in Baghdad. However I could not understand a single word whenever he spoke  which always troubled me, because I did have similar difficulty understanding the other dialects.


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## Hemza

mini91 said:


> Yes I agree with Maha on her point that North African dialects have a good way of pronuncing certain letters e.g Qaf is pronounced the correct way but in Morocco and in some parts of Algeria they sometimes pronounce it as Gaf and even as Kaf. Generally in most dialects the accent is the main factor that may prevent it from sounding like FuS7a, but that's just my own opinion



I don't know why it is stuck in people minds that in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, every ق is qaaf. Actually, only urban dialects/dialects influenced by urban speeches contain more qaaf than gaaf (when it is not a glottal stop in few places). Otherwise, gaaf is overwhelmingly used elsewhere (the exception may be Northern Tunisia). In Morocco and Algeria, most words are said with gaaf in rural/bedouin dialects(which make up the majority of the dialects) as well as in Southern Tunisia. It is even more prevalent in Mauritania and Libya.
The only exception I know may be Jijel in Algeria, where ق is pronounced like ك

Also, the ض and ظ matter is easy:

Urban Moroccan/urban Algerian (or more broadly, non Hilalian dialects) :  both ض and ظ are pronounced ض
The rest: both ض and ظ are pronounced ظ

According to my exposure to other dialects, the Maghrebi ظ sounds like the Arabian/Iraqi/rural shaami one and not like the Egyptian/Sudanese/urban shaami one which sounds more like en emphatic ز or sometimes, like a ز (at least, to my non native ears)


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## She'lock Holmes

I have to point out that many Levantines living in the Gulf usually learn to use a ظ consonant quite naturally in many words where it is used in MWA, but their (mostly) word-usage and grammar structure keeps its Levantine flavour. Although this might sound like a little 'Iraqi' influence to Levantines in the Levant.

I believe that Levantine Arabic is the closest dialect to spoken-MWA but I've noticed that Morrocans are generally better at maintaining a pure form of it than most Arabophones. Iraqi or Gulf Arabic would probably be the closest to what real Classical Arabic dialects were like though as spoken-MWA is an artificial dialect.


suma said:


> My own experience or exposure to Iraqi dialect was not good. Years ago I attended Islamic study classes with native speakers from all over the Arab world. This guy was Iraqi Kurd and spoke fluent Arabic, lived in Baghdad. However I could not understand a single word whenever he spoke  which always troubled me, because I did have similar difficulty understanding the other dialects.


Iraqi Arabic always puzzles us and some would even - jokingly - refer to it as 'the Iraqi language' here


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## Mahaodeh

As someone who is half Iraqi and half Palestinian and is quite well exposed to both dialects, I can tell you that they are much closer than they seem at first glace. The main difference is in the tone more than anything else. Iraqi Arabic shares more vocabulary with the Lebanon than the UAE for example.

On the other hand, Iraqi Arabic does have some vocabulary that is unique to it. This probably has to do with its location on the 'edge' of the Arabic speaking world with very close relations to Turkey and Iran.


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## Hemza

She'lock Holmes said:


> Iraqi Arabic always puzzles us and some would even - jokingly - refer to it as 'the Iraqi language' here



This is something which any speaker of a dialect may say about other dialects as soon as they don't get a word or a sentence forgetting that Arabic has a very large lexicon to talk about more or less the same thing. I may just take as example myself with the vocabulary I learnt (Maghrebi) and my Egyptian friend, we both talk Arabic (in our own ways) but for many many things, we use different words to talk about a single thing but both remain dialects of Arabic, colloquial Arabic. In this way, Iraqi is not different from other dialects, it shares some features with its neighbouring dialects (Syrian and Levantine more broadly in a hand and Najdi/Gulf dialects on the other) and does have its own features and even features/vocabulary shared with non neighbouring areas (i.e. Egypt, Sudan, the Maghreb, the Hijaz, Yemen, Oman). The most astonishing example which comes to my mind is probably this word used in Eastern Syria I've come across in a video, which is قحز (ga77az) which is also used with the same meaning in Morocco (pronunced by some كحز) but apparently ignored even by Algerians.

The same goes for every dialects of Arabic.

As @Mahaodeh said, I also notice Iraqi shares a lot with neighbouring dialects (especially Levantine), much more than people usually expect. Even Levantine itself isn't one monolithic group and Eastern Syrian looks more like Iraqi than it looks like Beiruti speech. What makes Iraqi peculiar may be, is the tone. I recently met a Palestinian girl from Eastern Jerusalem area and I noticed almost all her ك are pronounced "ch". I told her "you sound a bit Iraqi" and she looked very puzzled that I could compare her accent and dialect with Iraqi to which she replied "عراقي؟ ثقييييل العراقي. أنا باحجي هيك؟"


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## She'lock Holmes

Hemza said:


> The same goes for every dialects of Arabic.


That's true and I fully agree with what @Mahaodeh has said; but that doesn't change that the average Levantine has serious issues with this dialect. Yes, it is not that hard to get used to it, but the majority don't have a reason to and wouldn't.



Hemza said:


> Eastern Syrian looks more like Iraqi than it looks like Beiruti speech


This eastern Syrian dialect is actually - linguistically speaking - considered part of Iraqi dialects even if it's in current Syria.



Hemza said:


> I recently met a Palestinian girl from Eastern Jerusalem area and I noticed almost all her ك are pronounced "ch". I told her "you sound a bit Iraqi" and she looked very puzzled that I could compare her accent and dialect with Iraqi to which she replied "عراقي؟ ثقييييل العراقي. أنا باحجي هيك؟"


Palestinian accents have great variability compared to other accents (which is not surprising as Palestine could possibly be the most-immigrated-area-to in the history). And the huge diaspora of Palestinians does help too.


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## Aloulu

I think in Tunisia we come pretty close to pronouncing all the Arabic letters as they should be pronounced. The only exception might be ظ and ض. I think we pronounce both as ض. However, rural Tunisian dialect pronounces "qaaf" in the bedouin way; "gaaf". Nevertheless "urban Tunisian Arabic", where "qaaf" is properly pronounced, is much more "fashionable" and the rural Tunisians speaking with the bedouin "gaaf" are often looked down upon.


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## Hemza

Aloulu said:


> I think in Tunisia we come pretty close to pronouncing all the Arabic letters as they should be pronounced. The only exception might be ظ and ض. I think we pronounce both as ض.



 It is the opposite, you (Tunisians) pronounce it both ظ


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