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Spanish etymology - Arabic influence? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Al-Malik Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member United Kingdom arabicgenie.com Joined 7134 days ago 221 posts - 294 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, German*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Dutch, French, Arabic (classical) Studies: Mandarin, Persian | Message 1 of 16 22 February 2006 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Recently I came across web sites that claim that between 10 % to 28% of Spanish words are of Arabic origin. In many cases such as alcohol, arroz, azúcar and tarifa this seems to make intuitive sense. But with other words such as embarazada, mono (monkey), baño etc. I find it difficult to believe that they are really of Arabic origen. Would be interesting to follow this up, but I haven't yet found a good etymological resource for Spanish. So if anyone can recommend anything I'd be happy...
EDIT: a link to a sample of Spanish words with supposedly Arabic origins:http://www.verdeislam.com/vi_03/VI_307.htm Edited by Al-Malik on 22 February 2006 at 3:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Linas Octoglot Senior Member Lithuania Joined 6912 days ago 253 posts - 279 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Lithuanian*, Russian, Latvian, French, English, German, Spanish, Polish Studies: Slovenian, Greek, Hungarian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese | Message 2 of 16 22 February 2006 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is an islamist web site and they are likely to inflate the fugures of arabic element in Spanish. I have seen figures about 1000-2000 words but many of the are rarely used. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7103 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 3 of 16 23 February 2006 at 3:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well I usually find that the RAE on-line dictionary is good enough for the etymology of Spanish words. So if I look up arroz I find the following:
arroz. (Del ár. hisp. arráwz, este del ár. clás. āruz[z] o aruz[z], y este del gr. ὄρυζα). Baño is from latin: baño. (Del lat. balnĕum). Embarazada's etymology is more uncertain: embarazar. (Del port. o leon. embaraçar, der. de baraça, lazo, quizá voz de or. celta; cf. irl. ant. barr, copete). Mono's derived from another word via haplology: mono, na. (Haplología de maimón). Maimón: maimón. (Del ár. clás. maymūn, fausto). 1. m. mico (ǁ mono). So it's one out of three. Andy. EDIT: There's a couple of characters from the RAE dictionary entries that seem to require some other encoding for display. Unforunately, I have no idea what that encoding might be. Edited by Andy E on 23 February 2006 at 3:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7103 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 4 of 16 23 February 2006 at 3:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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Strange that the site claims the following ...
El equipo de redacción de Verde Islam quiere, con la publicación de términos castellanos de origen árabe, extraídos de la última versión del Diccionario de la Real Academia Española de la Lengua, contribuir al conocimiento del patrimonio histórico español de origen islámico.... ... when I've just looked up two items in the same source and found no such thing. Andy. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7376 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 16 23 February 2006 at 3:52am | IP Logged | |||||
Andy, could you cite a few examples of such discrepancies and the exact edition of the dictionary you are using? Thanks 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7103 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 6 of 16 23 February 2006 at 4:22am | IP Logged | |||||
François, I'm using the on-line version which I'm assuming is as up-to-date as it's likely to get. The discrepancies are as noted in my previous posts. Al-Malik posted three words which appeared on the site as being of Hispano-Arabic origin. Of those, only one (mono) has an Arabic origin, baño is Latin and embarazada is of Portuguese or leonés derivation with a postulated Ibero-Celtic origin (hence the possible link with Old Irish). Andy. Edited by Andy E on 23 February 2006 at 4:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Al-Malik Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member United Kingdom arabicgenie.com Joined 7134 days ago 221 posts - 294 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Dutch, French, Arabic (classical) Studies: Mandarin, Persian | Message 7 of 16 23 February 2006 at 5:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks Andy, this is very useful and interesting! An online version of the Diccionario de la RAE can be found here.
Regarding baño they offer a second more specialised meaning of which I was unaware: baño 1. (De origen incierto; cf. ár. bunayya, edificio.) m. Especie de corral grande o patio con aposentillos o chozas alrededor, en el cual los moros tenían encerrados a los cautivos. Regarding embarazar the edition hosted at the above website offers the following: embarazar: 1. (Del ár. baraza, oponerse, cortar el paso, con el pref. en-. ) tr. Impedir, estorbar, retardar una cosa. In at least one case, though, the RAE dictionary hosted on the above website seems to be wrong. They claim the following about paraíso: paraíso: (Del lat. paradisus; este del gr. par§deisoj , y este del ár. paìridaeza, cercado.) It is vastly improbable that an Arabic word would begin with a "p" sound and just as improbable that it would contain so many (root) letters. As it turns out my suspicion was justified and "pairidaeza" is definitely not an Arabic word. Actually it is of Persian (Avestan) origin. In fact paraíso and our paradise seem to derive from this word, first adopted by the Greeks as "paradeisos" and then subsequently transferred into Latin as "paradisus". See here or here for example. Interestingly enough, the dictionary at www.rae.es gives the correct etymological account of the word. So it seems that the etymological explanations vary from edition to edition? At least they should be taken with a grain of salt. Edited by Al-Malik on 23 February 2006 at 5:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Al-Malik Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member United Kingdom arabicgenie.com Joined 7134 days ago 221 posts - 294 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Dutch, French, Arabic (classical) Studies: Mandarin, Persian | Message 8 of 16 23 February 2006 at 5:31am | IP Logged | |||||
It's probably nitpicking, but I try to refrain from using the word "Islamist" these days, as it is usually associated with extremism, such as "the Islamist movement Hizb-ut-Tahrir". I don't see verdeislam.com as promoting extremism so I'd rather call it Islamic. Although you are probably right that, being an Islamic website, they might have reason to inflate the proportion of Arabic words. However, until now I have only found one word (viz. paraíso) that was falsely claimed to have Arabic roots. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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