Influence of Arabic on other languages

Arabic has had a great influence on other languages, especially in vocabulary. The influence of Arabic has been most profound in those countries dominated by Islam or Islamic power. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages as diverse as Amharic, Tigrinya, Bengali, Hindi, Indonesian, Kazakh, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Malay, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Sindhi, Somali, Swahili, Turkish, Turkmen, Urdu, Uyghur, Uzbek as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (كتاب kitāb) is used in most of the languages listed, (exceptions are Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese, which use the Latin-derived words "libro," "llibre" and "livro"). Other languages such as Maltese[1] and Nubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary. Spanish has the largest Arabic influenced vocabulary outside the Islamic world due to Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula from 711 until 1492 known as Al-Andalus, although Spain's re-christianization and resulting loss of contact with Quranic Arabic has led to a significant shift in both meaning and pronunciation of Spanish words of Arabic etymology.

The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber taẓallit "prayer" < salat), academic terms (like Uyghur mentiq "logic"), to everyday conjunctions (like Urdu/Hindi/Punjabi lekin "but".) Most Berber varieties (such as Kabyle), along with Swahili, borrow some numbers from Arabic. Most religious terms used by Muslims around the world are direct borrowings from Arabic, such as ṣalāt 'prayer' and imām 'prayer leader'. In languages not directly in contact with the Arab world, Arabic loanwords are often mediated by other languages rather than being transferred directly from Arabic; for example many older Arabic loanwords in Hausa were borrowed from Kanuri.

Outside the Islamic world, there are more limited borrowings from Arabic, usually to denote vegetables and other articles in commerce, such as "aubergine", "alcohol" and also some other terms like "admiral". Among European languages, these mostly were transmitted through Turkish and Spanish.

English

Like other European languages, English contains many words derived from Arabic, often through other European languages, especially Spanish. Among them is every-day vocabulary like "sugar" (sukkar), "cotton" (quṭn) or "magazine" (maḫāzin). More recognizable are words like "algebra" (al-jabr), "alcohol" (al-kuhūl), "alchemy" ("al-kimiya"), "alkali", "cypher" and "zenith" (see list of English words of Arabic origin).

A more indirect form of influence is the use of certain Latinate words in an unclassical sense, derived from their use in Latin translations of medieval Arabic philosophical works (e.g. those of Averroes), which entered the scholastic vocabulary and later came into normal use in modern languages. Examples are "information" to mean the imparting or acquisition of knowledge (Arabic taṣawwur, mental impression or representation, from a root meaning "form") and "intention" (Arabic macnā, meaning). These words may almost be regarded as calques.

French

French is widely spoken as a second language in France's former colonies in the Maghreb. Therefore, the list of words that are used or incorporated into the French spoken in this region (as a result of code-switching, convenience or lack of an equivalent term in standard French) is potentially endless. Such arabisms, are accepted within the local context but would not normally be known by non-maghrebi French speakers.

Arabic-derived words have entered standard or metropolitan French from two main sources. As is the case for many other European languages, one principal source was Spanish. The other was directly from Maghrebi Arabic as a result of the occupation and colonisation of the Maghreb, particularly Algeria, in the 19th and 20th centuries. Examples of the latter include 'bled', a slang term for place of origin, following this word's usage in the Maghreb, as opposed to the Standard Arabic balad, 'country', along with the Maghrebi term 'kif kif' and 'tabeeb', a slang term for 'doctor'. A small number of Arabic terms have entered mainstream French as a result of immigration from North Africa which began after the independence of Algeria. Other slang terms such as "niquer" (to have sex) were taken from Oriental Arabic during Napoleon's occupation of Egypt.

Interlingua

Dozens of Arabic words occur in Interlingua, frequently because their co-occurrence in such languages as English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese can be used to verify their internationality. Many of these words entered Interlingua's vocabulary through Spanish. Arabic words in Interlingua include "algebra", "alcohol", "cifra" (cypher), "magazin", "sucro" (sugar), "zenit", and "zero".

Indonesian

In Indonesian, the loanwords from Arabic are mainly concerned with religion, in particular with Islam, but to a lesser extent Christianity. Words of Arabic origin include dunia (from Arabic: دنيا dunya = the present world), Sabtu (from Arabic: السبت as-sabt = Saturday), kabar (خبر ḵabar = news), selamat/salam (سلام salām = a greeting), Jum'at (الجمعة al-jumʿa = Friday), ijazah (إجازة ijāza = vacation), kitab (كتاب kitāb = book), tertib (ترتيب tartīb = orderly) and kamus (قاموس qāmūs = dictionary).

Christian usage

Allah (Arabic: الله), as it is mostly the case for Arabic speakers, is the word for God even in Christian Bible translations.

Many early Bible translators, when they came across some unusual Hebrew words or proper names, used the Arabic cognates. In the newer translations this practice is discontinued. They now turn to Greek names or use the original Hebrew Word. For example, the name Jesus was initially translated as 'Isa (Arabic: عيسى), but is now spelt as Yesus. Several ecclesiastical terms derived from Arabic still exist in Indonesian language.

The Indonesian word for bishop is uskup (from Arabic: اسقف usquf = bishop). This in turn makes the Indonesian term for archbishop uskup agung (literally great bishop), which is combining the Arabic word with an Old Javanese word. The term imam (from Arabic: امام imām = leader, prayer leader) is used to translate a Catholic priest, beside its more common association with an Islamic prayer leader. Some Protestant denominations refer to their congregation as jemaat (from Arabic: جماعة jamā'a = group, community). Even the name of the Bible in Indonesian translation is Alkitab (from Arabic: كتاب kitāb = book), which literally means "the Book".

Javanese

There are far fewer Arabic loanwords in Javanese than Sanskrit loanwords, and they are usually concerned with Islamic religion. Nevertheless, some words have entered the basic vocabulary, such as pikir ("to think", from the Arabic fikr), badan ("body"), mripat ("eye", thought to be derived from the Arabic ma'rifah, meaning "knowledge" or "vision"). However, these Arabic words typically have native Austronesian or Sanskrit alternatives: pikir = galih, idhĕp (Austronesian) and manah, cipta, or cita (from Sanskrit); badan = awak (Austronesian) and slira, sarira, or angga (from Sanskrit); and mripat = mata (Austronesian) and soca or netra (from Sanskrit).

Portuguese

Between the 9th and the 14th centuries Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. Following the expulsion of the Arabs from Portugal during the Reconquista, the native population who spoke the Lusitanian-Mozarabic, kept some Arabic words from Mozarabic. Words of Arabic origin are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include common words such as aldeia "village" from الضيعة aḍ-ḍīcah, alface "lettuce" from الخس al-khass, armazém "warehouse" from المخزن al-makhzan, and azeite "olive oil" from الزيت az-zayt. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá "God willing". The Algarve is al-gharb, the west. The frequency of Arabic toponyms increases as one travels south in the country.

Sicilian

In AD 535, Emperor Justinian I made Sicily a Byzantine province, and for the second time in Sicilian history, the Greek language became a familiar sound across the island (Hull, 1989). As the power of the Byzantine Empire waned, Sicily was progressively conquered by Saracens from North Africa, from the mid 9th to mid 10th centuries. The Arabic language influence is noticeable in around 500 Sicilian words, most of which relate to agriculture and related activities (Hull and Ruffino). This is understandable since the Saracens introduced to Sicily the most then-modern irrigation and farming techniques and a new range of crops – nearly all of which remain endemic to the island to this day.

Some words of Arabic origin:

Spanish

The Spanish language has been influenced by Arabic as a result of the long Islamic presence within the Iberian Peninsula, beginning with the Islamic conquest in 711-718 AD until the conquest of the last Islamic Kingdom in 1492 AD. Modern day Spanish, also called Castilian, gradually evolved from Vulgar Latin centuries after the Muslim conquest and was thus influenced by Arabic from its inception. Arabic influence increased when the expanding Kingdom of Castile spread southward, conquering territory from Muslim kingdoms during the Christian Reconquista. The Mozarabs, that had lived under Muslim rulers and had spoken their own varieties of Arabic-influenced romance (known today by scholars as the Mozarabic languages), probably had a formative influence on the language and indirectly contributed Arabic vocabulary. The presence of Mozarabic refugees can explain the presence of Arabic toponyms in areas of Northern Spain where Islamic rule was shorter. The only Iberian Muslim kingdom in which Arabic was the sole language at all levels of society was the Kingdom of Granada in the time of the Nasrid dynasty.

In many cases, both Arabic and Latin derived words are used interchangeably by Spanish speakers. For example, aceituna and oliva (olive), alacrán and escorpión (scorpion), jaqueca and migraña (headache) or alcancía and hucha (piggy bank). The influence of Arabic, whether directly or through Mozarabic, is more noticeable in the Spanish dialects of southern Spain, where the Arabic influence was heavier and of a much longer duration. The same difference also exists between Catalan and Valencian and Galician and Portuguese.

The Arabic influence can be seen in hundreds of toponyms but with a few minor exceptions, its influence on Spanish is primarily lexical. It is estimated that there are over two thousand Arabic loanwords and three thousand derivatives in the Spanish dictionary. In the Middle Ages, Spanish was the main route by which Arabic words entered other West European languages. The majority of these words are nouns, with a more limited number of verbs, adjectives, adverbs and one preposition. A few everyday Arabic loanwards include rincón (corner, from rukkan), aceite (oil, from az-zayt), and alcalde (mayor, from al-qādī), ahorrar (to save, from hurr), tarea (task, from tariha) and hasta (until, from hatta).

Turkish

Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, regarded as the cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative and literary languages of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic (usually by way of Persian), as well as non-Arabic Persian words: a leading example of a Perso-Arabic influenced Turkic language was Chagatai, which remained the literary language of Central Asia until Soviet times. During the course of over six hundred years of the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299–1922), the literary and official language of the empire was a mixture of Turkish, Persian and Arabic, which differed considerably from the everyday spoken Turkish of the time, and is termed Ottoman Turkish.

After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, and following the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1932, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents.[3] By banning the usage of replaced loanwords in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language, thus diminishing but by no means erasing the Arabic influence on Turkish.

Valencian

Arabic has notably influenced Valencian variety of the Catalan language spoken in Spain south of Catalonia proper. Due to more than 8 centuries of Arabic dominion in the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus), hundreds of words from many fields (including Arabic inventions) have been adapted into Catalan; among many are séquia ("irrigation ditch"), nòria ("whaterwheel, noria"), algorfa ("loft"), magatzem ("warehouse"), alfàbia ("earthenware jar"), barnús ("bathrobe"), aladroc ("anchovy"), dacsa ("corn"), safanòria ("carrot"), carxofa ("artichoke"), albergínia ("aubergine"), xirivia ("parsnip"), alfals ("alfalfa"), albercoc ("apricot"), tramús ("lupin"), corfa ("bark, peel"), xara ("thicket"), matalaf/matalàs ("mattress"), alacrà ("scorpion"), fardatxo ("lizard") alfàb(r)ega ("basil"), etc. and expressions such as a la babalà ("randomly, to God's will") and a betzef ("abundance, plenty").

Toponymy

Most places of the Land of Valencia have retained their name in Arabic, such as Alicante/Alacant, Alzira, Almassora, etc. Also, a great number of places have the Arabic roots Beni, Bena and Bene, which mean "son of" or "sons of":

See also

References

  1. ↑ Maltese language - Britannica Online Encyclopedia
  2. ↑ This etymology is based on the books Mafioso by Gaia Servadio; The Sicilian Mafia by Diego Gambetta; and Cosa Nostra by John Dickie
  3. ↑ See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform.

[1]

  1. ↑ http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/36927272/jassemcasemarkings-libre.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1426438299&Signature=cYr6nQGiS%2FeWEvYPkvnImwoXykA%3D
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