Arabic+Influence+on+the+Spanish+Language

= **Arabic Influence on the Spanish Language ** = Meshal Alobaydullah

Contents:

 * ** Introduction **
 * ** Background **
 * ** Influence in Lexicon **
 * ** Other Areas of Influence **
 * ** Recent Arabic Influence **
 * ** References **

Introduction
Since its inception, the Spanish language has been influenced by a variety of languages. Those languages range from the Visigothic language of the Indo-European east Germanic branch to the many languages spoken by the natives of the Americas, namely [|Quechua]and [|Guaraní]. By diversifying the origins of the Spanish language, this varied group of languages has helped in enriching the Spanish language and in positioning it as the world language that it is today. 

Spanish contact with each of the speech communities involved came as a result of special circumstances in each case, including settlement, colonization, trade, invasion and occupation. Languages which have had the greatest influence on the Spanish language include sister Romance languages, [|Celtiberian dialects], Basque, and Arabic. Arabic is arguably the greatest contributor to the Spanish language that is not of Indo-European origin. Arabic contributions have mainly affected the lexicon of the Spanish language.

Background
The modern-day Spanish language evolved as a dialect from Vulgar Latin or common Latin in the 8th-9th century in an area that later became known as the [|Kingdom of Castile], the small Christian state in the northern part of the Iberia Peninsula. The Spanish language is still commonly referred to as Castilian (or //Castellano//, in Spanish).

Since its early development, the Castilian language had come into contact with other languages with which it shared the Iberian Peninsula. Through the centuries, the Castilian language was minimally to majorly influenced by languages which arrived to Iberia of different origins including the East Germanic Visigothic, the language isolate Basque, the Semitic language of Arabic, and a disputed earlier influence from the languages of Pre-Roman invasion Iberia such as Celtiberian.



The Iberian Peninsula was invaded by the Arab-Moor Muslims in the early 8th century. They ruled most of the Iberian Peninsula through a continuation of different states or Caliphates with often changing borders due to on-and-off wars with neighboring states in the Christian north. The Muslim domination of Iberia lasted for over seven hundred years extending from 711 to 1492 AD when the last Moorish stronghold of Granada fell to the Christian [|Reconquista] and all Arabs, Moors, and Jews were forced to convert to Roman Catholic Christianity or leave the Peninsula.

 It is generally agreed upon among linguists and historians alike that for the longest period of Muslim rule over Iberia, the spoken language used for everyday communication was Mozarabic, a Hispano-Romance language and a vernacular of Latin heavily influenced by Arabic which was the spoken language of the Mozarabs, i.e. native Iberians who were conquered and later Arabized and who composed the majority of inhabitants at the time, while Arabic remained the language of the Moors and was reserved for the local elites and used for literary and religious purposes.

As such, the Arabic language was already present on the Iberian Peninsula during the early stages of the development of the Castilian language, and as the two speech communities came into more contact, through conquest and trade, they bestowed greater cultural and linguistic influence on each other. The majority of linguists believe that most of the Arabic influence on Spanish was received through speakers of Mozarabic as opposed to being directly received from Arabic, and because Mozarabic was still a fundamentally Latin dialect itself, this has resulted in Spanish dictionaries having synonyms of both Arabic and Latin origin coexisting in peace and receiving near-equal attention and use by Spanish speakers.

Influence in lexicon
The overwhelming majority of Arabic influence on the Spanish language was in the field of lexicon. It is estimated, for example, that Arabic words and their derived forms account up to 8% of the Spanish dictionary (Lapesa, 1942/1981), making Arabic the largest “foreign” contributor to the Spanish lexicon. Although the number is disputed, it is said there are over four thousand Arabic loanwords that exist in the Spanish dictionary and another thousand derived forms, according to Lapesa. Other estimates, such as that of the Spanish etymological dictionary //Diccionario crítico etim////<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">ológico castellano e hispánico // by Joan Corominas (1954, 1980) and the Spanish Royal Academy dictionary of //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Real Academia de la Lengua Española //, put the number between 1000-1,200 borrowings excluding arabisms of derived forms and for place names.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Loanwords were borrowed into almost all lexical fields of the Spanish language but the majority were incorporated in areas of the military, architecture, jurisprudence and legal matters, leisure, food and beverage names, and in the scientific fields of chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Although the majority of loanwords are not in use today, hundreds are still included in everyday communication. Some of which speakers of Spanish may have never thought to be of Arabic origin such as the words // ojalá // (hopefully), // baño // (bathroom), // azúcar // (sugar), and the preposition // hasta // (until).



<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">[|List of Arabic borrowings provided by Wikipedia and based on the etymological dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish language.]

<span style="color: #000080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Other areas of influence
<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;"> <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">The Arabic influence on the Spanish language did not reach many linguistic areas outside of lexicon. The only field in which considerable Arabic influence could be noticed is the expressions nowadays used by native speakers of Spanish, many of which have their origins in Arab culture and have been “calqued” or translated word-for-word from the Arabic language. Those expressions are mostly religious in nature and have long been incorporated into the Roman Catholic rites of Iberia, making the historical background of the region even more distinguishable and the religious practices of the region more unique. The expressions include but are not limited to “//si Dios quiere//” from the Arabic “//law sha’a Allah//” (God willing), “//que Dios guarde//” from the Arabic “//hamaka Allah//” (may God guard thee), “//bendito sea Dios//” from the Arabic “//al-hamdu lillah//” (Praise be to God), and the well-known “// ojalá //” which is a corruption of the original Arabic “//Inshallah//” and has the same meaning as “//si Dios quiere//”. Other Arabic calques which are now primarily used for secular purposes include the famous “ "¡ // Ole // !” now used for expressing approval but originally borrowed from the Arabic “//wallah//” (I swear by God or literally: "and God").

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Another non-lexical feature borrowed from Arabic is the Spanish suffix <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">-í <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">which is based on the Arabic suffix used to denote relation to a place, region, family, or religion. The Arabic language has this suffix in two forms: one masculine and the other feminine. The Spanish language, however, only borrowed the masculine form “-í” and used it for both genders, abandoning the feminine form “-iya” or "-ía". Examples would be the use of the word " <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">marroquí" <span style="color: #222222; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 21px;"> to refer to someone from Morocco or "andalus <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> í" to refer to someone from Andalusia.

<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 21px;">There are, disputably, no other morphological or syntactical borrowings from Arabic.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 21px;">Recent Arabic influence
<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">The Spanish language continues to adopt borrowings from a variety of languages including Arabic. Modern Arabic borrowings in the Spanish language include those that were acquired as a result of Spanish contact with the Arabic spoken vernacular of Morocco during the Spanish protectorate over Morocco in the 19<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">th and 20<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">th century, of which Spain still maintains the two North African cities of [|Ceuta and Melilla]. Other relatively recent borrowings include religious terms such as //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Ayatolá //(Ayatollah), //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Chiita // (Shiite), and //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Jihad //.



<span style="color: #000080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">References
“Arabic influence on the Spanish language.” //<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia //. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 July 2004. Web. 5 Dec. 2011. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_influence_on_the_Spanish_language<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Corominas, Joan. //Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana//. Madrid: Gredos, 1954-1957.

Corominas, Joan. //<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico //. Madrid: Gredos, 1980-1991.

“Influences on the Spanish language.” //<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia //. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 July 2004. Web. 5 Dec. 2011. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influences_on_the_Spanish_language<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Lapesa, Rafael. //<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Historia de la lengua española //(9th ed.). Madrid: Gredos, 1942/1981.