Identification of the Phonological Modifications of Turkish Loanwords Borrowed into Basri Arabic Dialect: A Sociolinguistic Study

The heterogeneity of the community has a great influence on the speech of Basri dialect speakers of Arabic. Basrah as a cosmopolitan city had been a target for different types of nations and communities due to its strategic location at the top of the Arab Gulf and being the only port to Iraq. The variety of nations, cultures and languages has a great impact on the linguistic features of the Basri Arabic. The mixture of these languages and cultures in Basrah has created a linguistic tension between the systems of the source languages and that of the Arabic spoken in Basrah. This has led to the formation of a dialect distinct to the city and is so different from all the other dialects spoken in the rest of Iraq. This paper will display the influence of Turkish language only on the Basri dialect and the modifications applied by the native Basri speakers of Arabic in the process of nativization of these loanwords.