On the whole, the Jews of Iraq spoke Arabic, with a few small communities in the North speaking Kurdish or Aramaic. The Arabic of the Jews of Baghdad and Basra, however, is quite different from the dialects of the Moslems and Christians of those cities, for a strong trace of the Aramaic spoken by their ancestors is to be noted, after only the most superficial observations, in the structure, especially in the syntax, of Judeo-Baghdadi.