Arabic-L:PEDA:GMU's offering of Iraqi dialect

[Dilworth Parkinson]

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arabic-L: Thu 27 Aug 2009
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
[To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu]
[To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to
listserv at byu.edu with first line reading:
            unsubscribe arabic-l                                      ]

-------------------------Directory------------------------------------

1) Subject:GMU's offering of Iraqi dialect

-------------------------Messages-----------------------------------
1)
Date: 27 Aug 2009
From:Stephen Franke <shfranke at hotmail.com>
Subject:GMU's offering of Iraqi dialect

Greetings again... ahalan wa sahalan...

Thank you for your kind and informative note (shaakoo maakoo?).

Re the Basrawi dialect

Bruce Igham at SOAS wrote a descriptive article some yeas back about  
what he termed an "Mesopotamian Arabic dialect."

He based his research around the al-Basra - Hillah - Um Qasr area and  
extended his findings to include the common or shared features in the  
colloquial Kuwaiti dialect spoken there. From his article, I most  
remember [1] the change in pronunciation of the initial "k" => "ch" =  
"chaif Haalak?" and "j" => "yaa" as in "waaid zain", and [2] the  
presence of numerous Persian loanwords, especially about agricultural,  
nautical/maritime, and commercial subjects.

I'll search my files and send you the PDF, as it no longer appears  
online.

Re the Maslawi dialect

If you have access to a Russian translator, several dialectology and  
ethnographic studies of the Maslawi dialect [alongside the local !  
dialects of Kurdish] were published by linguists and other academics  
in the Oriental Studies Institutes (esp. those in the Tashkent,  
Moscow, and St. Petersburg institutes) of the Academy of Sciences of  
the former Soviet Union. All publications are in the Russian language;  
the tables of phonetic transliteration are a touch complex to render  
into close-matching English equivalents via IPA.

One available source of primary research into Maslawi is the large and  
responsive Iraqi Kurdish populations located here in southern  
California, especially those in Orange and San Diego counties. Most of  
the adults -- especially those over 50 -- are fully bilingual and were  
most helpful to me in clarifying Maslawy Arabic.

Since you are in northern VA, you might contact the head office of the  
nation-wide NGO, Kurdish Human Rights Watch, based in Fairfax and ask  
for referrals to articulate bilingual sources.

Re the Baghdadi dialect

To reinforce your class instruc! tion, GMU might get the CDs of two  
theatrical performances, with all dialogue in the Baghdadi dialect, as  
performed by Iraqi American troupes in the Detroit/Warren, MI area.

They are entitled (here hoping that the Arabic text conveys OK):
ساعة السودة الجيت لامريكا
                               عروس من بغداد

The producer of both CDs is:

Spring Production, Inc., with two outlets in Michigan:

Oak Park, MI 48237 Tel: 248-543-1010
Detroit, MI 48303 Tel: 313-368-5090

An Iraqi American friend runs a CD and DVD store for the Arabophone  
communities in Orange County, CA. He recommended those two CDs to  
support a familiarization course I conducted a fe! w years ago (while  
my students enjoyed the drama and the actors' movements on stage, that  
heavy dialect was beyond most of them, maa shaa' Allah wa kaan...).

Hope this helps. Khair, in shaa' Allah.

Regards,

Stephen H. Franke
San Pedro, California

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of Arabic-L:  27 Aug 2009
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/arabic-l/attachments/20090827/768d631e/attachment.htm>