[2] Aramaic was the lingua franca in Mesopotamia from the early 1st millennium BCE until the late 1st millennium CE, and as may be expected, Mesopotamian Arabic shows signs of an Aramaic substrate.

[3] The Gelet and the Judeo-Iraqi varieties have retained features of Babylonian Aramaic.

[9] In southern Iraq, sedentary Muslims were gradually replaced by Bedouins from the countryside.

[9] Gelet dialects include:[8] Qeltu dialects include:[8] Baghdadi Arabic is Iraq's de facto national vernacular, as about half of the population speaks it as a mother tongue, and most other Iraqis understand it.

[14][15] Mesopotamian Arabic also retains influences from Persian, Turkish, and Greek.