North Mesopotamian Arabic, also known as Moslawi (meaning 'of Mosul'), Mardelli (meaning 'of Mardin'), Mesopotamian Qeltu Arabic, or Syro-Mesopotamian Arabic, is one of the two main varieties of Mesopotamian Arabic, together with Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic.
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👉 North Mesopotamian Arabic in the context of Mosul
Mosul is a major city in northern Iraq, serving as the capital of Nineveh Governorate. It is the second largest city in Iraq overall after the capital Baghdad. Situated on the banks of Tigris, the city encloses the ruins of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh—once the largest city in the world—on its east side.
Due to its strategic and central location, the city has traditionally served as a hub of international commerce and travel in the region. It is considered as one of the historically and culturally significant cities of the Arab world. The North Mesopotamian Arabic spoken in Mosul is known as Maslawi and is widely spoken in the region. Together with the Nineveh Plains, Mosul is a historical center of the Assyrians. The surrounding region is ethnically and religiously diverse; a large majority of the city is Arabs, with Kurds, Assyrians, Turkmens, Shabaks, and other minorities comprising the population. Sunni Islam is the largest religion but there are a sizeable number of Christians and Yazidis as well as adherents of other Muslim sects such as Twelver Shi'ism and Shabakism, and in the past, Iraqi Jews. Mosul and its surrounding region are significant in biblical history.
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North Mesopotamian Arabic in the context of Central Asian Arabic
Central Asian Arabic or Jugari Arabic (Arabic: العربية الآسيوية الوسطى) refers to a set of four closely related varieties of Arabic currently facing extinction and spoken predominantly by Arab communities living in portions of Central Asia. These varieties are Bactrian (or Bakhtāri/Baxtāri) Arabic, Bukharan (or Bukhāri/Buxāri) Arabic, Qashqa Darya (or Kashka-darya) Arabic, and Khorasani (or Xorasāni) Arabic.
The Central Asian Arabic varieties are markedly different from all other Arabic language varieties, especially in their syntax and to a lesser extent, morphology, which have been heavily influenced by the surrounding Western Iranian and Turkic languages. They are, however, relatively conservative in their lexicon and phonology. While they bear certain similarities with North Mesopotamian Arabic, they constitute an independent linguistic branch of Arabic, the Central Asian family.
North Mesopotamian Arabic in the context of Resh
Resh /rɛʃ/ is the twentieth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician rēš 𐤓, Hebrew rēš ר, Aramaic rēš 𐡓, Syriac rēš ܪ, and Arabic rāʾ ر. It is related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪇, South Arabian 𐩧, and Ge'ez ረ. Its sound value is one of a number of rhotic consonants: usually [r] or [ɾ], but also [ʁ] or [ʀ] in Hebrew and some North Mesopotamian Arabic dialects.
In most Semitic alphabets, the letter resh (and its equivalents) is visually quite similar to the letter dalet (and its equivalents). In the Syriac alphabet, the letters became so similar that now they are only distinguished by dots; resh has a dot above it, and the otherwise identical dalet has a dot below. In the Arabic alphabet, rāʼ has a longer tail than dāl. In the Aramaic and Hebrew square alphabet, resh is a rounded single stroke while dalet is two strokes that meet at right angles.