Qaf-Ghayn interchange in Mesopotamian Arabic is a phonological case of changing the Qaf sound to the Ghayn sound and vice versa. For example, the word (Qabagh) would be pronounced (Qabaq) in some areas of Mesopotamian Arabic. Mesopotamian Arabic is spoken from southern Turkey down to the Arab-inhabited areas of Syria, in most of the Arab-inhabited areas of Iraq, and finally in Ahwaz (Iran).
The phenomenon used to be clearly present among rural inhabitants; therefore, it used to be mocked by city dwellers, who took it as an indicator of a less civilized background. A few months ago, I listened to an interview with Izzat Al-Shahbandar, an Iraqi politician from Baghdad, who refused to comment on the selection of Haybat Al-Halbusi (from Anbar province) as chief of the oil and gas committee in parliament; he just said (Qaz and Ṭagha) (Taqa means energy), referring to Al-Halbusi’s accent. He said it to suggest that Al-Halbusi was unfit for the post.
A similar interchange happens in Persian, which leads some people to assume that it is an effect of Persian on the Iraqi dialect. Personally, I doubt that. Although the phenomenon is more common in Ahwaz, it is still very clear in Sunni rural areas, which have been isolated from the effects of Persian since the Abbasid era.
Searching more about this type of interchange, I found that it also exists in north and northeast Sudan, among the Bedouins of Yemen, and in areas around Ghardaïa state in Algeria, where people convert only Ghayn to Qaf, so they call their state (Qardaya). There is also a special case in Beni Suef in Egypt, where people change only specific words; for example, the verb (Yaqdir), which means (can), is pronounced (Yaghdir). It is also worth mentioning that people in Sudan mock this accent too and consider it uncivilized, according to Abdulmonim Al-Fia.
To study this phenomenon in Mesopotamian Arabic, I created a map of all the areas where people use this interchange in their accents. I watched many videos from the selected cities and asked people who live in those cities or have visited them. The map shows that this type of interchange is found across Mesopotamia, and that it is not heard in the accents of city dwellers, except in Ahwaz.
What makes people think that this phenomenon is related to Persian is that Persian speakers do the same with Qaf and Ghayn, but the reason in Persian is different: older forms of the language did not have the letter Qaf at all, so all the Persian words that include Qaf today are either Arabic or Turkish loanwords.
My final assumption is that Qaf-Ghayn interchange is an old phenomenon that could be heard in older Arabic accents, which are unfortunately not recorded enough because a standard form of Arabic was used in writing.
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