How to Learn Iraqi Arabic

Xavier Bisits
Nov 7 · 12 min read

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.

This post is an attempt to remedy that.

In 2019, I spent five months working for a German pontifical foundation, 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.

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.

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.

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:

  • Available courses for learning Iraqi Arabic
  • Other resources for practicing the language (e.g., TV, podcasts)
  • Some strategic questions about learning this dialect

An overview of Iraqi Arabic

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.

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.

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).

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:

  • hadha vs. haad (this)
  • shwakit vs. yimta (when)
  • shlon vs. kif (how)
  • hwaya vs. ktir (much)
  • zen vs. mnih (good)

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 language proper, if using “language” in the European sense of the word.

The difference between Iraqi Arabic and Levantine Arabic is probably analogous to the difference between Spanish and Portuguese — learning one helps a lot if you want to learn the other, but the differences aren’t trivial.

Iraqi Arabic has two variants, Baghdadi Arabic (red) and Moslawi Arabic (dark blue):

Baghdadi Arabic is here represented in red, while Moslawi Arabic is represented in blue. Variants of Badawi Arabic are shown in green, although these areas are effectively desert with few inhabitants. Kurdish is yellow and Gulf Arabic is purple.
  • Baghdadi Arabic or Standard Iraqi Arabic: This is the Arabic as spoken by educated Muslims in Baghdad, and is what all Iraqi Arabic resources teach. It is the prestige dialect, and understood everywhere in Iraq, except some parts of Kurdistan where very few people speak Arabic. Essentially the same as the Arabic spoken in Kuwait. Sometimes, this is referred to as “gilit” Arabic (gilit = I said).
  • Moslawi Arabic or North Mesopotamian Arabic: This is the Arabic spoken in Mosul and some surrounding areas. It is not radically different from Baghdadi Arabic and is declining these days, due not only to the exodus from Mosul but also due to the adoption of Baghdadi Arabic as the prestige dialect by young people. It is not taught in any resources, to my knowledge. I lived in an area that historically spoke Moslawi rather than Baghdadi. Sometimes, this is referred to as “qeltu” Arabic (qeltu = I said). As Mosul used to be the center of Christianity in Iraq, it is closely related to the “Christian” and “Jewish” dialects of Arabic that used to be spoken in the Christian and Jewish districts of Baghdad. My understanding is that this is effectively defunct, nowadays — not least due to the fact that there are no longer any minority neighborhoods in Mosul or Baghdad.
Young Syriac Orthodox people in Bartella, Iraq, near Mosul. Iraqi Christians are indigenous to the country, not recent converts. Prior to 2003, they were 1.5 million. Now, after 16 years of flight caused by Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and institutionalized religious discrimination, some experts suggest there may be as few as 120,000.

The differences between the two are probably analogous to the difference between Swedish and Danish — very slight, overall. In Mosul and surrounding towns, I found that most people either spoke a mix of Baghdadi and Moslawi Arabic or adjusted to Baghdadi Arabic when speaking to me.

Resources: Textbooks

These are the only available Iraqi Arabic courses available, to my knowledge, ranked in order of usefulness:

  1. Modern Iraqi Arabic (2006). Strengths: Good grammar, excellent overviews of common expressions, well-structured, accompanied by Arabic script as well as transliteration in Latin characters, good drills. Weaknesses: Dialogues are recorded in only voice, the author’s, in a slightly affected accent, which isn’t great for listening practice, no answers for the drills. 4.5/5.
  2. Beginner’s Iraqi Arabic (2005). Strengths: Realistic dialogues with multiple actors, good grammar notes. Weakness: No Arabic transcription, few drills. 4/5.
Anti-Saddam graffiti in one of Saddam Hussein’s abandoned palaces. Most resources in Iraqi Arabic date from either the 1960s or the 2004–2006 period, before the country descended into civil war.
  1. A Basic Course in Iraqi Arabic (1969). Strengths: Excellent grammar and drills. Weakness: Antiquated in some instances, quite dry, and difficult to find the MP3 files that accompany the textbook. 3.5/5
  2. Defense Language Institute (1983). Strengths: Free, helpful pronunciation drills, recordings in different voices, an entertaining throwback to the Cold War. Weaknesses: Assumes prior knowledge of Modern Standard Arabic, poor quality PDF that is hard to read, antiquated accents in recordings. 2/5.
  3. Defense Language Institute Headstart2 (2016). Strengths: The tackiness of this online learning platform is only surpassed by its irritating overview of Iraqi culture, which includes such non-sequiturs as: “In 1982, Kurdish became the second official language in Iraq, because around 90% of Kurds are Muslims.” Weaknesses: Everything. 1/5.
  4. Mango Languages (2019). Strengths: Slick platform. Weaknesses: Only five short units, and relies heavily on Arabic script without supplying transcription for people who aren’t familiar with it. 1/5

Although some of these resources are rather old, I was told that they were basically representative of Iraqi Arabic as spoken today. The accents in the recordings, however, seem a little harsher, and it’s worth taking care to make sure you’re not learning expressions that had their vogue in the 1970s. (To illustrate, the reverse problem exists for Iraqi learners of English, who might tell you that something happens “once in a blue moon” but couldn’t tell you what “I can’t even” means.)

Resources: Exercises

These don’t exist for Iraqi Arabic (e.g., 50 Drills to Master Your French Conjugations and the like). For these, you either need to draw upon the limited exercises in the courses above or have a teacher who can create and prepare exercises.

Resources: Grammars

  1. A Short Reference Grammar of Iraqi Arabic (1963). Strengths: The only real comprehensive grammar of Iraqi Arabic available. Weaknesses: Slightly outdated.
  2. Iraqi Arabic vs. Standard Dialect (2006). Strengths: Up to date. Weaknesses: Assumes prior knowledge of MSA, and is formatted very poorly, making it difficult to read.

Resources: Listening resources with translations

  • GLOSS: A very useful array of dialogues and recordings in many dialects, including Iraqi Arabic, with transcriptions and translations. Useful for studying accents and practicing listening, after having completed one of the courses above. Recordings are classified by topic and difficulty. Most of these recordings, however, are too difficult to be used before finishing a period of intensive study.
  • Talk in Arabic: A paid resource, with ~15 videos and audio recordings in Iraqi Arabic. It’s not a great ROI on your money, but the texts are easy, and there’s so little out there it’s probably worth acquiring.

Resources: Listening resources without translations

  • The Albasheer Show: A current affairs comedy talk show, like the Daily Show, but for Iraq. The presenter is outspoken on political issues and lives in Jordan for security reasons. The first-ever episode had English subtitles, but none of the subsequent ones have. To be honest, I find it very difficult to understand since he speaks quickly and in outrageous slang, but it has lots of pictures, and a great laugh track, so you can kind of tell what it’s going on.
The presenter of the Albasheer Show.
  • The Project: A trashy but decently entertaining podcast about health and fitness, which has some episodes that are spoken in a mix of Arabic and English. Produced by Kuwaitis and expats in Kuwait, but close enough to Iraqi Arabic for it to be useful, and certainly more useful than any podcasts produced in Levantine Arabic.
  • Zengeen: An economics talk show that can be downloaded from Google Podcasts or Apple Podcasts. The only podcast in Iraqi Arabic that is currently produced to my knowledge. Produced by an Iraqi emigrant living in America, who hosts the popular Iraqi-language YouTube channel, “Inside America”. Fun but you can tell the hosts have no background in economics.

Resources: TV and film

For obvious reasons, Iraq doesn’t have a booming film and TV industry, but there are a couple of opportunities. Regrettably, although there are a million films about Iraq, the vast majority are mostly in English. (Because they are about American soldiers.)

  • Passion in Baghdad (no subtitles): A recent Baghdad TV series, a romance. Every single episode follows the same plot: the same man and the same woman fall in love in various ways. The language isn’t very complicated, the actors speak slowly, and the plot is always the same, so it’s perfectly primed for ears still getting used to the sound of Arabic. The episodes range from the absurd (the man falls in love with the river Tigris, who is represented by the woman) to the regrettably realist, including the common experience of bombings and violence that few Iraqis can say they’ve personally avoided since 2003.
Each episode, this couple falls in love.
  • Salam Shabab (subtitles): A dry reality TV show about young Iraqis competing in various competitions, to build peace together. The dialogue is simple, however, and this is the only TV show I’m aware of that is fully subtitled, so it’s very helpful. The show was funded by the United States Institute for Peace, an ill-fated attempt to bring some order to the country they invaded.

Resources: Vocabulary

Many language learners use software called Anki to memorize a large amount of vocabulary in a short amount of time. This software uses spaced repetition, so you are forced to recall a word as you are on the verge of forgetting it.

Anki has many shared decks, but only a couple dedicated to Iraqi Arabic, and these were of questionable quality. I created the following decks, which can be found publicly using the following links:

I memorized the vocabulary with the help of mnemonics, as is generally recommended. Most of these cards have audio attached to them, which is also critical to using time effectively while using flashcards.

I also have a flashcard deck based upon Modern Iraqi Arabic, with all audio, the leading Iraqi Arabic textbook. I can’t publish it publicly for copyright reasons, but you can message me for a private copy.

General advice specific to learning Iraqi Arabic

  • Be aggressive. Especially in Erbil, many people speak English, or think they speak English, and would like to practice with you. In order to get in any practice, unless I was convinced that someone was fluent or close to fluent in English, I had to be pretty aggressive and tell people explicitly I didn’t want to speak English. This definitely slows down interactions, but the practice is critical, given that — unlike with English — there are extremely limited opportunities otherwise to practice the language.
Although most expats live in Ankawa, the Christian district of Erbil, it’s a terrible place to learn Iraqi Arabic, which isn’t the first language of most of the three main groups who live there. Most Chaldean families speak Neo-Aramaic as their first language, all Kurdish families speak Kurdish as their first language, and the large expat population communicates almost exclusively in English.
  • Learn Iraqi Arabic first, then Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). I’m generally in agreement with the perspective that although MSA is great, it’s not the language being used by the people around you, and if you’re living in a country, it’s most urgent to understand the everyday spoken rather than literary form. (Many people in the Arabic world praise the linguistic qualities of MSA, but at the same time they never speak MSA to their friends and family.) I found it helpful to begin studying MSA, but only after I had done extensive dialect study. If you’re learning Iraqi Arabic after having learned MSA, I would begin with the above-referenced grammar that describes the differences between MSA and Iraqi.
  • Learn to write in Arabic script. It’s pretty tedious learning how to write in a new script, but as soon as I started to practice writing, it became much easier for me to read, and grasp all the writing that surrounds you in ordinary life: menus, street signs, billboards, document headers. Being able to read basic writing around you reinforces vocabulary and helps to make everything less alien.
Street art in Baghdad.
  • Get a teacher. Because there are distinctively few resources available for Iraqi Arabic, and those that exist often have errors or are outdated, if you have a grammatical question or are trying to figure out if an expression is antiquated, Google is useless. For this reason, to make sure that you are learning the correct material, it’s helpful for you to have a native Iraqi teacher, who can answer these questions. My teacher, to my knowledge, wasn’t specifically trained in teaching Iraqi Arabic, but she developed her own teaching materials and had a very strong grasp of the language, even though it’s not taught as a language per se in any context within Iraq. I found my teacher via posting on Facebook. We would typically structure our lessons as follows: questions based on study throughout the week, reviewing a dialogue, correcting homework, and reviewing the teacher’s material. If you are outside of Iraq, there is a large, well-educated diaspora, especially in Australia and the United States, who might be in a position to assist.

Iraqi Arabic has its challenges, but — especially relative to Europe and certain other places in the Middle East (e.g., Lebanon) —very few locals speak English, so learning the local dialect improves communication and free movement immeasurably. I had a great time in Iraq, at least in part because I was able to travel and speak to people without constantly needing to needle an English-speaking friend into accompanying me.

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