Practice Iraqi Arabic with Native Speakers from Iraq

Iraqi Arabic isn't the Arabic of the news or the textbooks. In Baghdad you'll hear the qaf turned into a hard 'g' (so qalb, heart, becomes galb) among Muslim Baghdadis, while Christian and Jewish Baghdadis historically kept the qeltu dialect with the qaf intact, closer to what you still hear in Mosul today. That north-south, community-based split is one of the first things a beginner notices once they start listening to real speakers instead of MSA recordings.

Grammatically, Iraqi Arabic has its own workhorse word: aku (there is) and maku (there isn't), which don't exist in this form in Levantine or Egyptian Arabic and are said to trace back to the region's Akkadian substrate. You'll also hear k regularly softened to ch in everyday words (kalb, dog, becomes chalb), a feature shared with some Gulf dialects because of the historic trade and migration links along the Gulf coast, especially in Basra.

Address isn't marked with a formal/informal split like tu/usted in Spanish, but Iraqi Arabic does mark gender constantly in the 'you' form (inta for a man, inti for a woman) and has its own respectful terms like hadretak for someone you want to address politely, an older man, a boss, a stranger you're asking for help. Basra's speech leans toward Gulf Arabic due to its proximity to Kuwait and the Gulf; Mosul's leans toward Syrian Arabic; Baghdad sits in the middle and is what most people mean when they say 'Iraqi Arabic.'