# Persian in Arabic



## mansio

I know there are thousands of Arabic words in Farsi. I learned from the "Usted" thread that there are also Farsi words in Arabic. Does anyone know the average percentage or number of those words in Arabic?
Is there a list of those words on the internet?
Thanks.


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## MarcB

http://www.mihanfoundation.org/literature/arabicliterature2.html 
In Eastern khaliji ﺵﻭﺨ and I believe أكو


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## ayed

-- Birwaz" a frame or rim "

--al-Ostath/al-Istath " a teacher or a engineer or a scholar …etc. That is, any one who is good at his own profession"

--Handaz(s)ah"Geometry

_*(Lisan al-Arab--The Tongue of Arab, by Ibn Mandhoor, 1232 ~ 1311 A.C)*_​


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## mansio

Thank you MarcB and Ayed


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## ayed

welcome Mansion.
There are many words but as you know some business tackled me.
Thanks


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## Alijsh

There are also thousands of Persian words in Arabic. Arabic usually Arabizes loanwords for reasons such as the sound is not found in Arabic, to adapt it to its word system so that they can make new words by taking that word in their special word formation patterns, etc. Therefore, it's not usually easy to detect Persian words in Arabic. An interesting fact is that some Persian words have gone to Arabic and again their Arabized form have returned to the language. Such words have been considered Arabic in Persian dictionaries.

*bashgah.net/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=23845* and *bashgah.net/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=23846* talk about a work done by an Arab author which lists 3000 Persian words in Arabic. The Persian translator of this book says he will list 5000 words. In those pages the following books have been mentioned.

الکلمات الفارسیه فی المعاجم العربیه – جهینه نصر علی – طلاس – برج دمشق - 2003

معجم المعربات الفارسیه: منذ بواکیر العصر الحاضر - محمد التونجی‏

***
At the bottom of this page you can see a few of Persian loanwords in Arabic: *hamshahrionline.ir/News/?id=8748*

(Since my posts are less than 30 I can't add URLs correctly. Please add *www* and other things to the the links)

***
Please note that I'm quoting what I have read. If you have any sort of disagreement, etc. I'm not the one that must receive them.

Regards


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## Abu Rashid

> I learned from the "Usted" thread that there are also Farsi words in Arabic



I think the word تلميذ (tilmeeth) is also from Persian, it means student, and seems probably related to استاذ in Persian. The proper Arabic words are معلم و طالب muallim and taalib.


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## PVS

There are some Persian words in Arabic but not as much as  some have  mentioned above. The thing is, many Persian scholars and Arab scholars  of Persian origin have made claims that some purely Arabic and even very  Semitic words are originally Persian !! Which i find to be pure non  sense as the Persian language is not even a Semitic language.

  The fact is, those so called " originally Persian" words have made it to  Persia before the Arabs invaded Persia in the 7th century. Those words  made it to Persia through trade and interaction between Persians and many Semitic  nations such as the Assyrians, Jews, Arabs in Yemen and the Tanukhids  Arabs who invaded parts of Persia even prior to Islam.  And  by the way, some of those  so called  "Persian words" that were really passed to  Arabic are not originally Persian either but they were borrowed by the  Persians from other central and Southern Asian languages, however, it is  hard to get any of those so called scholars to say so. 

Remember that just because someone or  some people wrote something in books does not make it necessarily true.  in many parts of the world there is a strong sense of national pride or  even chauvinism. keep that in mind.


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## rayloom

PVS said:


> The thing is, many Persian scholars and Arab scholars  of Persian origin have made claims that some purely Arabic and even very  Semitic words are originally Persian !!



Can you list some examples of such words or such scholars?



> The fact is, those so called " originally Persian" words have made it to  Persia before the Arabs invaded Persia in the 7th century. Those words  made it to Persia through trade and interaction between Persians and many Semitic  nations such as the Assyrians, Jews, Arabs in Yemen and the Tanukhids  Arabs who invaded parts of Persia even prior to Islam.  And  by the way, some of those  so called  "Persian words" that were really passed to  Arabic are not originally Persian either but they were borrowed by the  Persians from other central and Southern Asian languages, however, it is  hard to get any of those so called scholars to say so.



Also do you have any examples of such words considered Persian but are ultimately not, where scholars (ancient or modern) have said otherwise? (and as you make it appear to be deliberate)


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## Josh_

Abu Rashid said:


> I think the word تلميذ (tilmeeth) is also from Persian, it means student, and seems probably related to استاذ in Persian. The proper Arabic words are معلم و طالب muallim and taalib.


The origin of the Arabic word تلميذ has always troubled me. I agree that the word itself does not seem genuinely Arabic, but that may be because the base root whence it comes (ل-م-د) is not used in Arabic (except for that one word, of course, and the resultant verb تَلْمَذَ, which I imagine, came from the noun). The root is, however, undeniably Semitic as it occurs in other Semitic languages. The Arabic word is actually the cognate of the Hebrew תלמיד (_talmeed_) meaning student, which comes from the root ל-מ-ד (_l-m-d_) meaning 'to learn' or 'to be(come) accustomed to'.  In fact, the word 'Talmud' (תלמוד) comes from the same root. The root also occurs in Aramaic.  There are other Hebrew words that derive from the same root.  You can see some here on page 540 0f the "Brown Driver Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon."

The root is also listed in the American Heritage Dictionary's list of  Semitic roots.

As for how the word come into Arabic, I  do not know. I suppose it's possible it came by way of Hebrew or  Syriac.


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## Abu Rashid

Wow that's a 4 year old post you're responding to Josh.

Yes I am aware that the root l-m-d exists in other Semitic languages, with derivatives also in Ugaritic and Amharic (አስለመደ), but that's not the root in Arabic, it's with ذ.

It could be a borrowing from either Aramaic or Hebrew, both of which have dialects where د is pronounced as ذ in some circumstances. But I highly doubt it's a native Arabic retention of this root.



			
				Josh said:
			
		

> You can see some here on page 540 0f the "Brown Driver Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon."



That link doesn't goto that page. I have a copy of the BDB anyway, but its entry for this root doesn't tell us anything about the Arabic تلميذ. Gesenius' lexicon does mention an Arabic root for this entry though, لدم, which supposedly means to train (teach?) an animal through whipping it.


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## Josh_

Abu Rashid said:


> Wow that's a 4 year old post you're responding to Josh.


Yes, I realize it's an older post, and I also figured that your knowledge and understanding had changed in the meantime (since I know you've been studying Hebrew), but since it had been bumped to the top I figured I'd post anyway for the benefit of others. I see another forum member had done that to a years old post of mine just recently.


> Yes I am aware that the root l-m-d exists in other Semitic languages, with derivatives also in Ugaritic and Amharic (አስለመደ), but that's not the root in Arabic, it's with ذ.


Actually, that was a mistake on my part. I meant to write ل-م-ذ, but was thinking of the Hebrew root while writing the Arabic. 



> It could be a borrowing from either Aramaic or Hebrew, both of which have dialects where د is pronounced as ذ in some circumstances. But I highly doubt it's a native Arabic retention of this root.


Yes, I definitely agree.



> That link doesn't goto that page. I have a copy of the BDB anyway, but its entry for this root doesn't tell us anything about the Arabic تلميذ.


Hmm.  It goes to it when I click the link.  It first goes to the first page and then jumps to page 540.  
True, it doesn't tell us anything about تلميذ. However, my intention here was just to point out other Hebrew words that come from that root. Again, for the benefit of those who may not know or those who are curious.



> Gesenius' lexicon does mention an Arabic root for this entry though, لدم, which supposedly means to train (teach?) an animal through whipping it.


Interesting.  I did not look in Gesenius' Lexicon. 

Out of curiosity, before I posted yesterday, I looked up the root ل-م-ذ on the baheth.info site and was returned with two short entries:

From the Lisan Al-Arab:

                           لَمذَ: لغة في لمج.                     

And from Al-Qamus Al-MuHiit:

                           لمَذَ: لَمَجَ، لغةٌ فيه.                     

I am not sure how to translate لغة here, but لَمَجَ means to eat from the sides of the mouth. Regardless, however, there is no obvious connection there with the word تلميذ.

There is also no obvious connection with اللمد which means, according to the Lisan Al-Arab, التَّواضُعُ بالذُّلِّ (to abase oneself in humiliation).

So I definitely agree that it is most likely not an Arabic retention of this root.


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## WadiH

There are also Persian borrowings in vernacular Arabic that have not made it into MSA, especially in Iraqi, Gulf, Najdi, and even Hejazi dialects.  However, many of these are falling into disuse in the era of mass education and mass media.  Some examples:

خوش = good
خاشوقة = spoon (becoming rare in Saudi Arabia)
دريشة = window (giving away to شبّاك)
ميوه = fruit (almost extinct in Saudi Arabia but still used in Iraq)
هَمْ = also (used in Iraq and Kuwait)


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## Abu Rashid

Josh said:
			
		

> and I also figured that your knowledge and understanding had changed in the meantime (since I know you've been studying Hebrew)



Yes definitely. Although it's more what I've learnt about other Semitic languages in this time that leads me to believe it's not an Arabic retention but a borrowing. I was aware of Hebrew talmud at the time, but I figured it was probably just a Hebrew borrowing from Persian also, as a large part of the talmud was written in Persian-influenced land (Iraq/Iran). But the cognates in Ugaritic & Amharic suggest the Hebrew words are retentions of a Semitic root.



			
				Josh said:
			
		

> Actually, that was a mistake on my part. I meant to write ل-م-ذ, but was thinking of the Hebrew root while writing the Arabic.



If the root were ل-م-ذ then we'd expect to find it as למז in Hebrew, and with zayn in Amharic also (as it underwent the same merger as Hebrew of dhal->zayn), and with dhal in Ugaritic, which did not merge this phoneme, although in some late Ugaritic texts dhal did merge with dal, so that alone wouldn't be decisive.



			
				Josh said:
			
		

> Hmm. It goes to it when I click the link. It first goes to the first page and then jumps to page 540.



For me it just shows the front cover and information about purchasing the book for Google eBooks, strange, maybe it's to do with me being outside the U.S.


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## إسكندراني

Why are you all looking for لمذ? Shouldn't you be looking for تلمذ? I've never seen a noun follow a pattern تِفعيل!


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## Abu Rashid

As the word exists with a tri-literal root (جذر ثلاثي) in other Semitic languages, we'd expect that if it is in Arabic, the same root would exist.


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## rayloom

The root seems to be l-m-d throughout the other Semitic languages. The dhal in Arabic could be the result of the borrowing process. Phonology isn't my strongest point, but in Aramaic, the /d/ is one of the BeGeD KeFeT allophones, where the dal would shift to a dhal in certain situations.
So if we wanted to look for a cognate, we should look at the root l-m-d in Arabic as well. The root in Arabic means: اللَّمْدُ التواضعُ بالذلِّ "to humiliate oneself", or "to humble oneself through humiliation" (not sure if the latter is good English )
Is it possibe to derive a semantic connection somehow from that?

In the book Hebrew in Its West Semitic Setting, the author says (regarding the root l-m-d, which exists in many other Semitic languages listed by the author): "The entries related to study and learning may all derive ultimately from Hbr". 
(He says that even though the root with that meaning exists in Akkadian and Ugaritic).
Whether that be true or not, it seems that the meaning "to learn" was a later development in the meaning of the root. (Reminds me of the development of the root t-r-g-m to mean "to interpret/translate" in Akkadian)


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## suma

NOt sure if it's been mentioned already? But  تلميذ    looks alot like the Hebrew word Talmud, which is a Jewish sacred book which I've heard means something about learning?
In any case that I think would support the semitic origins of  تلميذ  unless it could be shown that both Arabic and Hebrew borrowed it from Persian?


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## PVS

Wadi Hanifa said:


> There are also Persian borrowings in vernacular Arabic that have not made it into MSA, especially in Iraqi, Gulf, Najdi, and even Hejazi dialects.  However, many of these are falling into disuse in the era of mass education and mass media.  Some examples:
> 
> خوش = good
> خاشوقة = spoon (becoming rare in Saudi Arabia)
> دريشة = window (giving away to شبّاك)
> ميوه = fruit (almost extinct in Saudi Arabia but still used in Iraq)
> هَمْ = also (used in Iraq and Kuwait)



we are talking about Fusha Arabic not dialects here. if we want to to talk about dialects then there are many Farsi  , kurdish and turkish words specially in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. 

the words you have listed above might be common words in southern Iraq, Eastern parts of Syria, maybe Kuwait and other small states on the shores of the Arabian gulf. but they are not common in Saudi , Yemen and most of Oman. Maybe some small communities in the last three countries i have listed above use those words you have listed. I am talking about small communities who are connected to southern Iraq (and to Iran) due to religious reasons and may be some other small communities who traded with southern Iraq and Syria.


rayloom said:


> Can you list some examples of such words or such scholars?
> 
> Also do you have any examples of such words considered Persian but are ultimately not, where scholars (ancient or modern) have said otherwise? (and as you make it appear to be deliberate)



Some fellow members have already showed us in the last few replies a couple of words that Persians keep saying that they were borrowed from their language when they were really not. And believe me the more you carefully study those so called " originally Persian words" you will find out that many are not. 

yes, there are Persian words in the Arabic language but not as many as some people claim. and there are more Arabic and Semitic words in general in the Persian language than there are Persian words in Arabic. and in some cases , those Arabic and Semitic words made it to Persia long before the Arabs of The Arabian peninsula invaded Persia in the 7th century that's why some keep thinking they are purely Persian / Farsi words when they are really not.

at a certain time of the history of the middle east there was something called shuaoobi movement 
Arabic:  *الحَرَكَهُ الشُعُوبْيّه*

and those folks who were mostly Persians wrote history books, Arabic grammar  books, philosophy books, religious books. we can only imagine what kind of claims we could find in books written by such guys who belonged to this type of a movement. (some people  actually refer to such books as reliable references and sources !!!) and by the way, this movement started long before it was given a formal name. 

I will get back to this thread and post at least some of the info you have requested whenever i have the time. I want to do it but I have to study, work, and spend time with my family and friends etc etc. I am sure that you understand.


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## rayloom

PVS said:


> and those folks who were mostly Persians wrote history books, Arabic grammar  books, philosophy books, religious books. we can only imagine what kind of claims we could find in books written by such guys who belonged to this type of a movement. (some people  actually refer to such books as reliable references and sources !!!) and by the way, this movement started long before it was given a formal name.



The problem is with people denying that Classical Arabic contains any loan words, which is quite an absurd claim.
Borrowing words from another language doesn't degrade or belittle the borrowing language.
By the way, Persians have done so much for the Arabic language. No hidden agendas!


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## Abu Rashid

rayloom said:
			
		

> The problem is with people denying that Classical Arabic contains any loan words, which is quite an absurd claim.



I very much doubt anyone denies fus7a contains loan words. I agree with PVS, the number of loans is often overstated. Arabic has very few loans compared to most languages.


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## rayloom

I can assure you there are those who do believe that (Some believe so towards Arabic of classical times, and some towards Fus7a in general). I've had an online discussion with a person listing many loan words (into Arabic) and basically saying "look, these are Arabic words used in English" (even though they were clearly not Arabic), and when he was told that it's actually the other way round, he would get so defensive of the Arabic language (is it hard to conceive that other languages would borrow these words from Arabic)!
Unfortunately pseudo-linguistics still thrives.

These are some strange modern day Arabic pseudo-linguistic articles:
بين العربية و الفارسية - مقارنة لغوية  - ديوان العرب
You can see how the author would take any loan word and try to shapeshift it to make it in the end of Arabic origin. Or even to presume that Persian was an offshoot of an old form of Arabic, so any loan word from Persian is Arabic!
Also check this out: جريدة الرياض  | كلمات مُستعارة من العربية

I think it's actually a continuation of the idea that every single word in the Quran is originally Arabic, and saying there are loan words in the Quran degrades the Quran.
Some 3ulama have even said: إنما أنزل القرآن بلسان عربي مبين فمن زعم أن فيه غير العربية فقد أعظم القول also لو كان فيه من غير لغة العرب شيء لتوهم متوهم أن العرب إنما عجزت عن الإتيان بمثله لأنه أتى بلغات لا يعرفونها.

-----------------------------------------

And if we say that the number of loans is "overstated". By who? and by how much?
One of the posts in this thread says there are 3000 Persian words in Arabic. That's 3000 among hundreds of thousands of Arabic words!

Anyways, no shame in borrowing and no shame in those loans being of Persian origin.


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## WadiH

PVS said:


> we are talking about Fusha Arabic not dialects here. if we want to to talk about dialects then there are many Farsi  , kurdish and turkish words specially in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan.



The thread title is "Persian in Arabic," not "Persian in Fusha."



> the words you have listed above might be common words in southern Iraq, Eastern parts of Syria, maybe Kuwait and other small states on the shores of the Arabian gulf. but they are not common in Saudi , Yemen and most of Oman. Maybe some small communities in the last three countries i have listed above use those words you have listed. I am talking about small communities who are connected to southern Iraq (and to Iran) due to religious reasons and may be some other small communities who traded with southern Iraq and Syria.



No, the word خوش is common in eastern Saudi Arabia (except among the bedouins).  The word خاشوقة was perhaps the only word in Saudi Arabia for "spoon" a couple of generations ago, so it was not limited to "small" communities or to Shi'ites as you were implying. Similarly, the word دريشة is still the dominant word for window in Najdi Arabic, though شباك is more common among young people due to contact with the Hejaz and Egypt.  ميوه is extinct now, but a couple of generations ago, it was common.  I've just remembered another Persian word in Arabian Arabic: بخت, meaning good luck.


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## Arbila derikvand

rayloom said:


> And if we say that the number of loans is "overstated". By who? and by how much?
> One of the posts in this thread says there are 3000 Persian words in Arabic. That's 3000 among hundreds of thousands of Arabic words!
> 
> Anyways, no shame in borrowing and no shame in those loans being of Persian origin.


Some Persian word in Quran like:
نورfrom خور in old Persian
ابریقfromآبریز
جناحfrom گناه
And some other word(Between 10 and 100 words in Quran )
As said no shame in borrowing. all language in world have some loanwords. in Persian We have  between 20℅ to 40℅ Arabic loanwords
But some Arabic word in Persian created by ourself and no Existence in Arabic like سوتفاهمthis word is Arabic but created by Persian system.so many Persian word in arabics like:
بخت
استاذ
لاجورد
برنامج
کهربا
Arabic language use along time by persians and promoted by Persian and Arabs Linguist
Like سیبویه.I want to say arabic and Persian language promoted by helping each other like a brother.
My English so bad


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