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How to Learn Iraqi Arabic

Xavier Stephen Bisits

12 min read·<br>Nov 7, 2019

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Around 30,000,000 people speak Iraqi Arabic as their native language, and most of the remaining 7,000,000 people in Iraq speak it as a second language. In spite of this, there are few resources devoted to the language — especially relative to Levantine Arabic and Egyptian Arabic, its more popular cousins.<br>This post is an attempt to remedy that.<br>In 2019, I spent five months working for a German organization, mostly based in Iraq. Although I spent some time in Ankawa, I was mostly based in Baghdeda, Iraq’s largest Catholic city, around 20 minutes from Mosul. Although Iraqi Arabic is the primary language in neither of these locations — with most Christians speaking Neo-Aramaic — it was the lingua franca in both locations.<br>Press enter or click to view image in full size

Outside Baghdeda, Iraq.The goal: In this period, I hoped to learn enough Iraqi Arabic to be able to get around by myself, and have conversations about life, work, and family. Prior to arriving in Iraq, I had spent about a month studying Levantine Arabic, but otherwise, I had never studied Arabic.<br>The method: I used the resources described in this article to study Iraqi Arabic fairly intensively, for 2–3 hours each day for at least the first two months. For around two months, I also had an Iraqi Arabic teacher, and later in my stay, I studied Modern Standard Arabic with a professional teacher.<br>The outcome: My Iraqi Arabic is shoddy, without a great accent or any semblance of elegance — but decent enough to be able to make myself understood in most situations, and understand what’s going on, as long as the topic isn’t about politics or philosophy. Reviews of my Arabic range from “the best Iraqi Arabic I’ve ever heard from a foreigner” to “terrible”. The US government’s Foreign Service Institute classifies Arabic as a Category 5 language, i.e., “exceptionally difficult for a native English speaker”, so I think I’ve come a decent way in a short period. Towards the end of my stay, I learned a small amount of Modern Standard Arabic with an excellent local teacher, as well as writing.

The outcome.The purpose of this post: There are few resources for learning Iraqi Arabic, which is (surprise) not a particularly desirable dialect. At various points, I’ve studied French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and Hungarian, but nothing rivals Iraqi Arabic in terms of the utter lack of guidance on how to learn this language. Most foreigners in Iraq never make a conscious attempt to learn Iraqi Arabic, because they tend to be stationed there for short periods, and other dialects of Arabic are generally considered more useful. While I was in Iraq, I met at least a hundred foreigners — but to my knowledge, only one of them, a Chinese man working for an oil company in Baghdad, had made any effort to learn the language. This makes sense, but it’s a shame.

John Filson, who lived for two years in Ankawa, is the only person who has accrued some level of Internet fame for learning Iraqi Arabic as a foreigner. I speak a fraction as well as he does.In this post, I hope to give guidance on:<br>Available courses for learning Iraqi Arabic<br>Other resources for practicing the language (e.g., TV, podcasts)<br>Some strategic questions about learning this dialect<br>An overview of Iraqi Arabic<br>Many Iraqis— as many people in the Arabic world — often claim that the difference between Iraqi Arabic and its neighbors is similar to the distinction between “dialects” of English — Australian, British, and American.<br>This is a terrible analogy, in my opinion. When I moved to the United States from Australia, there wasn’t a huge amount to adjust to: 5–6 commonly used words that are spelled differently (“color” vs. “colour”), virtually no grammatical differences, a handful of important vocabulary differences (“candy” vs. “lolly”), and some differences in the pronunciation of vowels.<br>The differences between Iraqi Arabic and adjacent dialects are more major. There are sounds that don’t exist in other dialects (e.g., “ch”, “p”), as well as totally different verb conjugations, even when the word is related (e.g., “she spoke” is “hichat” in Iraqi Arabic, but “hikyit” in Levantine Arabic).<br>Press enter or click to view image in full size

The protester’s sign to the left uses Iraqi Arabic, rather than Modern Standard Arabic.Likewise, many if not most of the most common words either have different origins or have evolved into materially different words. Compare Iraqi Arabic and Levantine Arabic:<br>hadha vs. haad (this)<br>shwakit vs. yimta (when)<br>shlon vs. kif (how)<br>hwaya vs. ktir (much)<br>zen vs. mnih (good)<br>Although in the Arab world people generally refer to Iraqi Arabic as a “dialect” or “the colloquial”, it’s better to think of it as a...