Regional and Social Factors in the Dialect Geography of Southern Iraq and Khūzistān

Abstract

The following is an attempt to relate the distribution of linguistic variants in the spoken Arabic of southern Iraq and Khūzistān to certain geographical areas on the one hand and to certain demographically isolatable groups on the other. These factors correlate in certain cases with political regions of earlier times. The geographical areas are relatable to communication patterns of preautomobile times and to some extent group around the main waterways of the area, the Tigris, Euphrates, Shaṭṭ al-'Arab, and Kārūn. The demographic groupings involved in particular what may be referred to as degree of sedentari-zation and also degree of contact with the nomad populations in the desert to the west of the Euphrates. It is true that in some cases the social and regional groupings were coextensive; however, the distinction between the two is maintained in the treatment because the linguistic features correlating with demographic groups could be shown to have similar demographic relevance in other areas of Mesopotamia, while the features regarded as primarily of regional relevance were relevant only to the area under investigation.

Community, dialect and urbanization in the Arabic-speaking Middle East

“…40 Blanc (1964, Irwin (1963), Woodhead and Beene (1967). 41 Ingham (1973Ingham ( , 1976 on southern Iraq; 1982 on north-east Arabia). 42 Blanc (1964: 25).…”

New Perspectives on the Urban–Rural Dichotomy and Dialect Contact in the Arabic gələt Dialects in Iraq and South-West Iran

“…Even though a number of studies on g@ l@ t dialects has been published since Blanc's classification of the Iraqi dialects into q@ ltu and g@ l@ t in his seminal work on Baghdadi Arabic (Blanc 1964), they are still few. Among those who rely on freshly gathered data are: Hassan (2016aHassan ( , 2016bHassan ( , 2017Hassan ( , 2020Hassan ( , 2021, Mahdi (1985), Denz and Edzard (1966) and Abu-Haidar (2002) on South Iraqi Arabic; Ingham (1973Ingham ( , 1976, Leitner (2019Leitner ( , 2020 and Bettega and Leitner (2019) on Khuzestani Arabic; and Salonen (1980) on al-Shirqat (Širqāt . )/Assur Arabic.…”

Folia Orientalia

“…However, besides these anthropological frameworks, some purely lexical approaches on the southern and southeastern varieties deserve to be mentioned at this place. These frameworks can be divided into four broad categories: word lists (Edzard 1967, Denz & Edzard 1966), glossaries (Thesiger 1967, van Ess 1938, Meißner 1903, dictionaries (Woodhead & Beene 1967), 1 or short sections dealing with some southern lexical features (Ingham 2009(Ingham , 2007(Ingham , 2000(Ingham , 1973. As indicated previously, the focus of this study will mainly be on Ingham's lexical accounts of the southern continuum; the other frameworks, however, will be consulted for comparative reasons in order to prove the distribution of certain lexical features in various parts of the country.…”

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The purposes of this paper are threefold. The first and the most general purpose is to provide an update of Ingham's analysis of the southern lexical features that is based on data gathered more than forty years ago (Ingham 1973). On this basis, I will reconsider the lexical link postulated by Ingham (2009Ingham ( : 101, 2007 between the southern gilit-dialects continuum, on the one hand, and the dialects of the Gulf Coast, on the other hand.

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“…The first and the most general purpose is to provide an update of Ingham's analysis of the southern lexical features that is based on data gathered more than forty years ago (Ingham 1973). On this basis, I will reconsider the lexical link postulated by Ingham (2009Ingham ( : 101, 2007 between the southern gilit-dialects continuum, on the one hand, and the dialects of the Gulf Coast, on the other hand. The second purpose is to reconsider the hitherto maintained lexical frontiers of the southern continuum suggested by Ingham (1994), discussing a range of items that so far have always been treated as 'southern', though they are widely spread in other gilit-and, to a less extent, in qeltu-dialects in the western and northern parts of Iraq.…”