Spanish's Arab Connection

When you think of European culture, one of the first things that may come to your mind is the renaissance. Many of the roots of European culture can be traced back to that glorious time of art, science, commerce and architecture. But did you know that long before the renaissance there was a place of immense sophistication and beauty in Muslim Spain?

Not only was Muslim Spain artistic, scientific and commercial, but it also exhibited incredible tolerance, imagination and poetry. Moors, as the Spaniards call the Muslims, populated Spain for over 700 years (711 - 1492 AD).

If you speak either Spanish or English, you probably know more Arabic than you think you do.

After Latin and English, Arabic is probably the biggest contributor of words to the Spanish language, and a large portion of English-Spanish cognates (words that the two language share) that don't come from Latin come from Arabic.

The English words you're most likely to think of as Arabic origin are those that start with "al-," words such as "algebra," "Allah," "alkali" and "alchemy," and they exist in Spanish as algebra, Ala, alkali and alkimia, respectively. But these are not the only Arabic words in Spanish. A variety of other types of common words such as "coffee,' "zero" and "sugar" (cafe, cero and azucar in Spanish) also come from Arabic.

The etymology of English words goes beyond the scope of this article, but the introduction of Arabic words in Spanish began in the eighth century, although even before then, some words of Latin and Greek originally had roots in Arabic.

 

People living in what is now Spain spoke Latin at one time but over the centuries Spanish and other Romance languages such as French and Italian gradually differentiated themselves. The Latin dialect that eventually became Spanish was highly influenced by the the Arabic-speaking Moors in 711. For many centuries, Latin/Spanish and Arabic existed side by side, and even today many names of Spanish places retain Arabic roots. e.g. The name Gibraltar derives from the Arabic Jabal-al-Tarik [mount of Tarik].

There are nearly 5000 words of Arabic origin in Spanish. Following are just some of the most common Arabic origin Spanish words you'll come across. As you can see, many of the words also are a part of English. Although it is believed that the English words like "alfalfa" and "alcove," which originally were Arabic, entered English by way of Spanish (alfalfa and alcoba), most Arabic words in English probably entered English by other routes.