02/01/2020
Did you know?
Article 1
In a series of short articles called “Did you know”, we will try to highlight the “borrowing” of words between Arabic and English languages. Arabic words entered the English language through a number of ways. In the early 8th century, Arab fighters invaded and took control of the Iberian Peninsula, or what is modern day Spain and Portugal. These forces were known as the Moors. During their occupation, their language spread throughout the area, and entered Latin, the language spoken by the locals. Over the next several centuries, Christian-led forces took control of the Iberian Peninsula. However, by this time, the language spoken there had been forever influenced by the Arabic language. Many of these words have survived. As Latin began to influence English, some of the Arabic words were passed on. To this day, many words commonly used in English have Arabic roots.
Suppose you are to visit a friend and they will offer you some coffee, you might hear the following sentence: Would you like coffee with sugar, or with syrup, or do you fancy sherbet lemon? You might reply: No, thanks. I'd rather sit on the divan and watch the Arsenal football match in Gibraltar. One might say, so what! What are you trying to say?
Well, all the above nouns are derived from Arabic and here they are:
Coffee (Arabic: qahwa) Coffee drinking originated in Yemen in the 15th century. The word qahwa (itself of uncertain origin) produced Turkish kahve. Turkish phonology does not have a /w/ sound, and the change from w to v in going from Arabic qahwa to Turkish kahve can be seen in many other loanwords going from Arabic into Turkish (e.g. Arabic fatwa -> Turkish fetva). The Turkish kahve produced Italian Caffe. The latter word-form entered most Western languages in the early 17th century. The Western languages of the early 17th century also have numerous records where the word-form was taken directly from the Arabic, e.g. cahoa in 1610, cahue in 1615, cohwa in 1619. Cafe mocha, a type of coffee, is named after the port city of Mocha, Yemen, which was an early coffee exporter
Sugar (Arabic: sukkar or sheker. The word is ultimately from Sanskritic sharkara = "sugar". Cane sugar developed in ancient India originally. It was produced by the medieval Arabs on a pretty extensive scale although it always remained expensive throughout the medieval era. Among the earliest records in England are these entries in the account books of an Anglo-Norman abbey in Durham: year 1302 "Zuker Marok", 1309 "succre marrokes", 1310 "Couker de Marrok", 1316 "Zucar de Cyprus. In Latin the early records are about year 1100 spelled zucharum and zucrum. The Latin form sucrum or the French form sucre = "sugar" produced the modern chemistry terms sucrose and sucrase.
Syrup, Sherbet (Arabic: sharāb) a word with two senses in Arabic, "a drink" and "syrup". Medieval Arabic medical writers used it to mean a medicinal syrup, and this was passed into Latin in the late 11th century as siropus | siruppus | syrupus with the same meaning. The change from sound /sh/ to sound /s/ in going from sharāb to siroppus reflects the fact that Latin phonology did not use an /sh/ sound ever. The -us of siroppus is a carrier of Latin grammar and nothing more. In late medieval Europe a sirup was usually medicinal. Separately from syrup, in the 16th century the same Arabic rootword re-entered Western European languages from Turkish. Turkish sherbet | shurbet = "a sweet lemonade" entered with that meaning into Italian and French as "sorbet" and directly into English as "sherbet". The Turkish was from the Arabic word-form sharba(t).
Divan (Arabic: Diwan) originally is a piece of couch-like sitting furniture or, in some countries, a box-spring based bed. Divans received this name because they were generally found along the walls in Middle Eastern council chambers of a bureau called divan or diwan. The divan in the sense of a sofa or couch entered the English language in 1702 and has been commonly known in Europe since about the middle of the 18th century. It was fashionable, roughly from 1820 to 1850
Arsenal (Arabic: dār sināʿa) literally "house of manufacturing" but in practice in medieval Arabic it meant government-run manufacturing, usually for the military, most notably for the navy. In the 12th century the word was adopted to designate a naval dockyard, a place for building ships and military armaments for ships, and repairing armed ships. In 16th-century French and English an arsenal was either a naval dockyard or an arsenal, or both. In today's French arsenal continues to have the same dual meanings as in the 16th century
Gibraltar (Arabic: Jabal Tariq) the mount of Tariq ibn Ziyad who led a large army and crossed the Strait of Gibraltar from the North African coast, consolidating his troops at what is today known as the Rock of Gibraltar
Publisher: linguamax.co.uk
