Baghdad Arabic or the Muslim Baghdadi Arabic is the Arabic dialect spoken in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. During the last century, Baghdad Arabic has become the lingua franca of Iraq, and the language of commerce and education. The speech of Baghdadi Christians is constantly shifting in the direction of the Muslim Baghdadi Arabic. Arabic can mean: From or related to Arabia From or related to the Arabs The Arabic language; see also Arabic grammar The Arabic alphabet, used for expressing the languages of Arabic, Persian, Malay ( Jawi), Kurdish, Panjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Urdu, among others. ... Baghdad ( translit: ) is the capital of Iraq and of Baghdad Governorate. ...

An interesting sociolinguistic feature of Baghdad is the existence of three distinct dialects: Muslim, Jewish and Christian Baghdadi Arabic. Muslim Baghdadi belongs to a group called gilit dialects, while Jewish Baghdadi (as well as Christian Baghdadi) belongs to qeltu dialects. Jewish Baghdad Arabic is the Arabic dialect spoken by the Jews of Baghdad and other towns of Southern Iraq. ...

Baghdadi gilit Arabic, which is considered the standard Baghdadi Arabic, shares many features with Gulf Arabic and with varieties spoken in some parts of eastern Syria. Gilit Arabic is of Bedouin provenance, unlike Christian and Jewish Baghdadi, which is believed to be descendant of Medieval Iraqi Arabic. Until the 1950s Baghdad Arabic contained a large inventory of borrowings from English, Turkish or Persian through Turkish. A Bedouin man resting on a hillside at Mount Sinai Bedouin, derived from the Arabic (‎), a generic name for a desert-dweller, is a term generally applied to Arab nomadic pastoralist groups, who are found throughout most of the desert belt extending from the Atlantic coast of the Sahara via... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Persian, (local name: Fārsī or Pārsī), is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and by minorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Southern Russia, neighboring countries, and elsewhere. ...

During the first decades of the 20th century, when the population of Baghdad was less than a million, some inner city quarters had their own distinctive speech characteristics, maintained for generations. From about the 1960s, with the population movement within the city, and the influx of large numbers of people hailing mainly from the south, Baghdad Arabic has become more standardized, and has come to incorporate some rural and Bedouin features. The 1960s decade refers to the years from January 1, 1960 to December 31, 1969, inclusive. ...

Reference

• Kees Versteegh, et al. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, BRILL, 2006.