# Arabic influence on Spanish and Portuguese



## Javier Criguel

I was not sure if this would be the correct forum to ask this question on, but does Arabic have a greater influence on Spanish or Portuguese?


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## Jellby

Probably on Spanish, but I don't have objective data.


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## Magmod

Javier Criguel said:


> I was not sure if this would be the correct forum to ask this question on, but does Arabic have a greater influence on Spanish or Portuguese?


 Try the *Arabic forum* where your question is answered at length.

 In my opinion, *18%* of Spanish has Arabic.
I include names like Toledo, Madrid, Cordoba, *Al*catraz, Zapatero, Baraka, Ismael etc. and very common words like hola, café, naranje, rey, arroz etc 

 Spanish grammar is of Latin origin, but where it differs I reckon is due to Arabic influence, for example the extensive and emphatic use of *No* at the start of sentences. 

 If you believe everything I tell you, then in chess check mate = sheik mat = chief died 
Spanish matar = to die from Arabic, used a lot in the Koran.

For this reason *Shakespeare* must have been a name of Arabic origin, whose ancestors fled Spain after the Arab defeat. Speare = Zbair is a very famous place south of Iraq, Arabic does not have the letter P. Shakespeare ( = the sheik of Zbair) changed the spelling of his name at least 20 times. 
If this story is true then Shakespeare added at least 6000 words to English  


Regards


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## SpiceMan

Magmod said:


> In my opinion, *18%* of Spanish has Arabic.
> I include names like Toledo, Madrid, Cordoba, *Al*catraz, Zapatero, Baraka, Ismael etc. and very common words like hola, café, naranje, rey, arroz etc


Toledo and Madrid had been founded centuries before the moors arrived to the peninsule.
Córdoba was also founded way before as Corduba by Romans as Corduba.
Zapato is a word of Turk influence, not Arabic.
Alcatraz is a bird name of Arabic influence.
Ismael is of Hebrew etymology. 

Hola has no conclusive etymology as far as I know.
Naranja and arroz are Arabic loan words.
Café was borrowed from Italian, which borrowed it from Turk, which borrowed it from Arabic. I wouldn't call that a direct influence.
Rey is from Latin _rex._ (INRI, T-Rex, etc.)



Magmod said:


> Spanish grammar is of Latin origin, but where it differs I reckon is due to Arabic influence, for example the extensive and emphatic use of *No* at the start of sentences.


Or perhaps the "double negative" has its origin in Latin, since Portuguese, French, Catalan, Romanian and Italian -all Romance languages, for short- feature that too.





Magmod said:


> If you believe everything I tell you, then in chess check mate = sheik mat = chief died
> Spanish matar = to die from Arabic, used a lot in the Koran.


Mat does not mean to kill nor die. According to this link, it means that "[the king] doesn't know what to do". The link also explains the latin etymology of _matar_.

Here's a short list of Spanish words of Arabic origin.
And here is one of Portuguese ones.


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## Magmod

> Madrid had been founded centuries before the moors arrived to the peninsule


Even the official Madrid tourist guide admits the city was founded as an observation fortress by the Arabs


> Zapato is a word of Turk influence, not Arabic


 So when did the Turks settle in Spain? When the Syrian Arabs arrived in Spain the Ottoman Turks didn't exist.



> Ismael is of Hebrew etymology.


 Agreed but both Isaac and Ismael are the sons of Abraham. Ismael is the ancester father of the Arabs. 



> Hola has no conclusive etymology as far as I know


Can you not hear allah in hola as one can in *olé *in the bull fights? Surely you are not saying olé is not of Arabic origin.


> Rey is from Latin _rex._


More likely that Rey, reyes and French rois are from Arabic meaning head.


> According to this link, it means that "[the king] doesn't know what to do". The link also explains the latin etymology of _matar_


This link is very confused and confusing. 
From the Oxford dictionary: 
*Chechmate (=Sp. Jaque mate)* is Middle English from Old French *eschec mat* from Persian sah mat king is dead. At other reference: eschec is Arabic Sheik (Sp Jeque)
Saludos


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## kaleidoscope

Magmod said:


> For this reason *Shakespeare* must have been a name of Arabic origin, whose ancestors fled Spain after the Arab defeat. Speare = Zbair is a very famous place south of Iraq, Arabic does not have the letter P. Shakespeare ( = the sheik of Zbair) changed the spelling of his name at least 20 times.
> If this story is true then Shakespeare added at least 6000 words to English


The Online Etymology Dictionary says:

Shakespeare:
surname recorded from 1248, and means "a spearman." This was a common type of Eng. surname, e.g. Shakelance (1275), Shakeshaft (1332). Shake in the sense of "to brandish or flourish (a weapon)" is attested.

"Never a name in English nomenclature so simple or so certain in origin. It is exactly what it looks -- Shakespear." [Bardsley, "Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames," 1901

From the same dictionary:

spear:
Old English spere, from Proto-Germanic,. *speri (cf. Old Norse. spjör, Old Saxon., Old Frisian. sper, Dutch speer, Old High German. sper, German Speer "spear"), from Proto-Indo-European base *sper- "spear, pole" (cf. Old Norse sparri "spar, rafter," and perhaps also Latin sparus "hunting spear"). 

So, absolutely nothing to do with being a name of Arabic origin...


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## Outsider

SpiceMan said:


> Naranja and arroz are Arabic loan words.


_Naranja_ (_laranja_ in Portuguese) is an originally Persian word. I seem to recall that this word was discussed before here in the forum, but I don't remember exactly where.
_Arroz_ reached Spanish (and Portuguese) via Arabic, although Arabic itself got it from Greek.



SpiceMan said:


> Rey is from Latin _rex._ (INRI, T-Rex, etc.)


Absolutely true. You can find cognates in all other Romance languages: French _roi_, Portuguese _rei_, Italian _re_, etc. There are even cognates in the Celtic languages, like Irish _rí_!


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## Outsider

Here's something I've read about the influence of Arabic on the Portuguese lexicon. It used to be quite appreciable; in medieval Portuguese, it has been estimated that up to 25% of the vocabulary had an Arabic origin.
But times change, and 500 years have gone by. With the end of Arabic rule in the Iberian Peninsula, the Arabic language was abandoned, and the Portuguese language (like Spanish, without a doubt) turned its eyes towards Europe. Latin was now the hip language to borrow words from. Then, later, it was French. And today it's English. And of course in the meantime there was also considerable borrowing from languages of Africa, of Asia, and of the Americas. 
So, the Arabic contribution was important in the early period of Spanish and Portuguese, but then it dried out, for historical reasons which are easily understood. Although many Arabic loanwords remain in use in Spanish and Portuguese today, others have become obsolete, either because they referred to concepts or technologies that have become outdated, or simply because they were eventually replaced with more modern equivalents from other sources.


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## marcoszorrilla

Almost all the words beginning by "*al"* are from Arab origin.

Alcaparra, almacén, almiar, Almería.....


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## Outsider

According to this website, linguists estimate that there are approximately 1000 words from Arabic in Portuguese.


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## cherine

Maybe I'm not the right person to speak about this, as I don't know  portuguese, and I'm still learning Spanish. So, I'll just throw in my two cents and go 



			
				Magmod said:
			
		

> Spanish grammar is of Latin origin, but where it differs I reckon is due to Arabic influence, for example the extensive and emphatic use of *No* at the start of sentences.


As an Arabic native who's been studying Spanish for two years now, I can say with confidence that there isn't much to compare between the Arabic and the Spanish grammars. I studied French, and it's French grammar -not Arabic- that's helping me understand the Spanish grammar.


> For this reason *Shakespeare* must have been a name of Arabic origin, whose ancestors fled Spain after the Arab defeat. Speare = Zbair is a very famous place south of Iraq, Arabic does not have the letter P. Shakespeare ( = the sheik of Zbair) changed the spelling of his name at least 20 times.


   This is something I heard some years ago that was said as a _joke_. Only a joke. So, I hope you were not serious 


SpiceMan said:


> Toledo and Madrid had been founded centuries before the moors arrived to the peninsule.
> Córdoba was also founded way before as Corduba by Romans as Corduba.


I agree. Though there seems to be some sources, like Magmod says, that confirm that Madrid is of Arabic origin. But I still am not convinced.


> Zapato is a word of Turk influence, not Arabic.
> Alcatraz is a bird name of Arabic influence.
> Ismael is of Hebrew etymology.


I don't know about alcatraz, doesn't sound very Arabic to me, regardless of the "al"  As for the other words, I agree they're not Arabic.
Yes, Ismael was the "father of the Arabs", as we call him in Arabic, but this doesn't mean his name was necessarily of Arabic origin.


> Hola has no conclusive etymology as far as I know.


Magmod tried to compare hola to olé to Allah ! I can see how the word Allah (God) becomes an interjection (olé), but I can't see how it became a salutation, so again: no, it's not from Arabic.


> Naranja and arroz are Arabic loan words.


Naranja is, to my knowledge, a loan from Persian/Farsi, even if it reached Spain via Arabic.
Not very sure about arroz, though we say the same word in Arabic. I mean it can be an Arabic word, or a borrowed one.


Magmod said:


> So when did the Turks settle in Spain? When the Syrian Arabs arrived in Spain the Ottoman Turks didn't exist.


Turkish language has long existed even before the settlement of the Turkish tribes in Asia Minor. I don't know the dates of when their language mingled with the Arabic one, but it doesn't have to be an early influence. It's there nevertheless


Sorry for a lengthy post


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## Jellby

cherine said:


> Magmod tried to compare hola to olé to Allah ! I can see how the word Allah (God) becomes an interjection (olé), but I can't see how it became a salutation, so again: no, it's not from Arabic.



Well, "adiós" (goodbye) comes from "dios" (god in Spanish), so it could be.

There *are* many words of Arabic origin in Spanish: alcázar, almohada, jarra, ojalá, ajedrez, adalid, tambor (?), taza, carmesí, almacén, azahar... Not to talk about place names in Spain, some of them "exported" to America: Guadalupe, Guadalajara, Albu(r)querque (?)...


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## mhp

Jellby said:


> Well, "adiós" (goodbye) comes from "dios" (god in Spanish), so it could be.


 Do Arabs now or anytime in their history since 700 AD used the word Allah as form of greeting? For example, do they say “Allah, my name is X”? I really don’t know the answer to that but if the answer is negative it hardly makes sense to conclude that HOLA is derived from Allah. DRAE claims that HOLA is derived from the English word Hello. In English Hello comes from Hollo which is an interjection of unknown etymology.

 By the way, Shakespeare uses the Spanish word HOLLA (spelled with two L's) in one of his plays, Love's Labor's Lost written in 1595, uttered by a flamboyant Spaniard. The oldest use of the word HOLA in CORDE (historic database of RAE) is from 1535.


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## Outsider

mhp said:


> I really don’t know the answer to that but if the answer is negative it hardly makes sense to conclude that HOLA is derived from Allah. DRAE claims that HOLA is derived from the English word Hello. In English Hello comes from Hollo which is an interjection of unknown etymology.


In these forums, I once read a different explanation: that _Hola_ (_Olá_ in Portuguese) was simply derived from the adverb _(al)lá_ ("there"). At least in Portuguese, I can easily see _Hou lá_ "Hey there" (?) turning into _Olá_ ("Hello"). (In older Portuguese texts, I've seen this greeting spelled _Houlá_.)

Anyway, here are two genuinely Arabic words that we still use in Portuguese: 

_azeitona_: olive
_azeite_: olive oil


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## Jellby

According to this page: http://ec.europa.eu/translation/bulletins/puntoycoma/36/pyc364.htm
"there are more than 4000 Arabic words in today Spanish and around 1500 place names of Arabic origin."


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## Jellby

In Spanish we have "aceituna" and "aceite" 

We can also use "oliva" for "aceituna", but it sounds affected (except in "aceite de oliva"), and "óleo" for "aceite", but it's not the same


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## Namakemono

Outsider said:


> Absolutely true. You can find cognates in all other Romance languages: French _roi_, Portuguese _rei_, Italian _re_, etc. There are even cognates in the Celtic languages, like Irish _rí_!


 
Obviously rey derives from rex and reina from regina.


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## Jellby

cherine said:


> I don't know about alcatraz, doesn't sound very Arabic to me, regardless of the "al"



The DRAE says:

Maybe from Hispanic Arabic *qaṭrás, "he who walks pretentiously" (?)
(it means "booby", the bird)


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## Carmagnol

Jellby said:


> The DRAE says:
> 
> Maybe from Hispanic Arabic *qaṭrás, "he who walks pretentiously" (?)
> (it means "booby", the bird)


 
Hi Jellby,

Let's also bear in mind that many of the words are of North African origin (Maghrebin) which Arabs from the Middle-East wouldn't know anything about. After all the Berbers (original inhabitants of North Africa) who were converted to Islam by the Arabs do not speak the Arabic spoken in the Middle-East.


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## cherine

I'm so sorry my post gave some of you the impression I was saying "there's no Arabic influence in/on Spanish", because this sure is not what I meant. I was only answering some of points mentioned by other foreros.
Of course there *are* Arabic words in Spanish (I can't speak of Portuguese) and in French, Turkish, Persian.... And there are Turkish, Persian, Greek.... words in Arabic. Didn't all these cultures exchange influence in some of their history ? It's very natural that they borrowed from each other.



Jellby said:


> Well, "adiós" (goodbye) comes from "dios" (god in Spanish), so it could be.





mhp said:


> Do Arabs now or anytime in their history since 700 AD used the word Allah as form of greeting? For example, do they say “Allah, my name is X”? I really don’t know the answer to that but if the answer is negative it hardly makes sense to conclude that HOLA is derived from Allah...


That was my point. We don't use Allah as a form of greeting, at least not independently like this. We say As-salaam alaykum wa raHmat Allah wa Barakatu (not exact pronounciation, but close) which means : Peace on you and Allah's mercy and blessing. But never Allah, how do u do? nor Allah, my name is X....

Yet, if you want to compare hola to an Arabic word, I suggest ahlan, which is widely used as a greeting (like hello, though it's literal meaning is different).



Carmagnol said:


> Next you'll tell us the Moors never conquered Spain and that it is all a figment of our imagination. Why do I get the impression that you are not really a native Arabic speaker and that somehow you have an axe to grind?


I'm sorry you got that impression. As I said, I was only commenting on some points.
Of course the Moors conquered Spain -and Portugal- for several years, and stayd in some parts more than others, and influenced the language and the lifestyle, and were influenced too. (in a certain poetical form of the Arabic litterature, called "muwashshaHaat" موشحات, some Spanish words were used, written in Arabic letters. But that's another topic).
I am a native Arabic speaker, and proud to be. I'm one of those people who are simple fascinated by the mutual linguistic influences between different cultures and languages. This doesn't mean that I can go say that Spanish is 50% Arabic or something (by the way, I don't care much about all those percentage, I prefer words to numbers  ). The words I know they're from Arabic, I say they are. The words I doubt they're from Arabic, I just state my doubts, that's all. 


Jellby said:


> The DRAE says:
> Maybe from Hispanic Arabic *qaṭrás, "he who walks pretentiously" (?)
> (it means "booby", the bird)





Carmagnol said:


> Hi Jellby,
> Let's also bear in mind that many of the words are of North African origin (Maghrebin) which Arabs from the Middle-East wouldn't know anything about. After all the Berbers (original inhabitants of North Africa) who were converted to Islam by the Arabs do not speak the Arabic spoken in the Middle-East.


Thanks Carmagnol, that may be a valid explanation.
Saying that a word "doesn't sound Arabic to me" doesn't mean "this word _is not_ Arabic". There's a slight difference. I'm sorry my English is not permitting me to express myself well.

P.S. For those interested, there's a thread in the Arabic forum discussing the International words of Arabic origin.


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## elpoderoso

Has anybody actually answered,which of the two languages has the largest arabic influence?


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## cherine

Yes, some foreros tried to give answers to the original question which is about (which is more influenced by Arabic: Spanish or Portuguese?).. -yeah, not the exact words but I guess that this is the meaning- although others draged the discussion to _what_ are the Arabic loan words in Spanish and Portuguese.


Jellby said:


> Probably on Spanish, but I don't have objective data.





Outsider said:


> Here's something I've read about the influence of Arabic on the Portuguese lexicon. It used to be quite appreciable; in medieval Portuguese, it has been estimated that up to 25% of the vocabulary had an Arabic origin.
> But times change, and 500 years have gone by. With the end of Arabic rule in the Iberian Peninsula, the Arabic language was abandoned, and the Portuguese language (like Spanish, without a doubt) turned its eyes towards Europe. Latin was now the hip language to borrow words from. Then, later, it was French. And today it's English. And of course in the meantime there was also considerable borrowing from languages of Africa, of Asia, and of the Americas.
> So, the Arabic contribution was important in the early period of Spanish and Portuguese, but then it dried out, for historical reasons which are easily understood. Although many Arabic loanwords remain in use in Spanish and Portuguese today, others have become obsolete, either because they referred to concepts or technologies that have become outdated, or simply because they were eventually replaced with more modern equivalents from other sources.





Outsider said:


> According to this website, linguists estimate that there are approximately 1000 words from Arabic in Portuguese.


And this page too. It's in Portuguese, but I guess the meaning is : there are around 1000 Arabic words in Portuguese and more than that in Spanish.


Jellby said:


> According to this page: http://ec.europa.eu/translation/bulletins/puntoycoma/36/pyc364.htm
> "there are more than 4000 Arabic words in today Spanish and around 1500 place names of Arabic origin."


 
So, to answer the original question of the thread : Spanish was more influenced by Arabic than was Portuguese.


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## elpoderoso

yes isn't that influence in terms of quantity of words not how much they are used in everyday spoken language, do the portuguese use their ''arabic'' words more than the spaniards do?
i think frequency of use is a better indicator of lasting influence than just the mere quantity of actual words surviving in the language.


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## cherine

In this case, only a person who knows Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic very well can answer such a question. I don't know if such a person is a member of the forum 

But if we can make a guess : seing that Spanish has more Arabic words than Portuguese, then even if Portuguese uses the Arabic words frequently, it still won't be using them more -in terms of frequency- than Spanish.

But then again, only a person who's good at both Spanish and Portuguese, and knows which words in these languages are Arabic, and which are used in which language, only such a person can answer your question accurately.


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## Magmod

cherine said:


> Thanks Carmagnol, that may be a valid explanation


  You’re again mixing fact with fiction Cherine.

  It is not a case of maybe. There were separate Arab followed by Moor invasions. 8 centuries is not a joke. When the Arabs finally left, the Spanish Golden Age ended.

  Non-sounding Arabic words like *Guadalquivir* originated by the Moors of North Africa. 

  Why did use Ahlan instead of Hala as a greeting word widely used in the Arabian Peninsula? Hala is nearer to Hola. 

Saludos


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## cherine

Magmod said:


> You’re again mixing fact with fiction Cherine.


!!! I don't see where I did that. Whe someone gives me a plausible explanation, I don't see why I wouldn't accept it.
I did not know that alcatraz was an Arabic word. I accepted Carmagnold explanation as a possible explanation of my ignorance.
What's the fictious part in this ?


> It is not a case of maybe. There were separate Arab followed by Moor invasions. 8 centuries is not a joke. When the Arabs finally left, the Spanish Golden Age ended.


Where did I say anything different ?  


> Non-sounding Arabic words like *Guadalquivir* originated by the Moors of North Africa.


Guadalquivir *sounds* Arabic  alquivir (where v is pronounced b) is an Arabic word that means "big". We only need to know that "guada" is the Spanish form of the Arabic word "wádi".


> Why did use Ahlan instead of Hala as a greeting word widely used in the Arabian Peninsula? Hala is nearer to Hola.


Because Hala is a short form of ahlan, so I preferred using the "original" form not the shortened one. That's why.


> Saludos


To you too.


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## elroy

*Moderator Note:*

This thread has been moved here from the Spanish forum, after a discussion among the moderators of the Arabic, Spanish, and Portuguese forums.

Furthermore, about half of the posts have been deleted as off-topic. I would like to bring your attention to the opening question: 
*



			does Arabic have a greater influence on Spanish or Portuguese?
		
Click to expand...

*This does not include:

-The degree of Arabic influence on Spanish
-The degree of Arabic influence on Portuguese 
-Comparison between the influence of Arabic and that of other languages on Spanish/Portuguese
-Perceptions of Spaniards/foreigners regarding how heavily Arabic influenced Spanish
-Etymology of English
-Which languages have influenced Spanish over the years
-Origin of particular words in languages other than Spanish and Portuguese
-Anything else that does not address the question, "Which language has a greater Arabic influence, Spanish or Portuguese?"

To the extent that an etymological analysis of individual words in Spanish or Portuguese helps elucidate the difference in degree between the Arabic influence on Spanish and on Portuguese, it will be allowed. 

All off-topic posts will be deleted. For new topics, please open a new thread or post in an existing one on the topic as appropriate.

Thank you for your understanding.


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## JRamzpe

Spanish has many more words from Arabic than Portuguese, a lot of city names that have come all the way to the Americas like Guadalajara - (Guad al-jahar = rocky river), Gualdalquivir (Guad al-kivir = Grand River) Albuquerque (Abu l-qurq = oak country) and words like aceite, zapato, aceituna, almohada, etc...


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## mansio

Spanish and Portuguese are nearly the same language, except a strong difference in pronunciation.
I would say that the Arabic influence is (or was) the same on both languages.

As of the word "ole", there is the interjection in Arabic "yallah" that looks similar. I don't know if there is a connection between both.


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## Outsider

A word of advice for the thread starter: take the replies given by people who speak neither Spanish nor Portuguese with a large grain of salt.


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## Thomas F. O'Gara

As somebody with somewhat more than a nodding acquaintance with Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic, I feel pretty certain that the number of Arabic words _in common usage today _is greater in Spanish than in Portuguese.  

It is just my impression, though.


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## Qcumber

Magmod said:


> For this reason *Shakespeare* must have been a name of Arabic origin, whose ancestors fled Spain after the Arab defeat. Speare = Zbair is a very famous place south of Iraq, Arabic does not have the letter P. Shakespeare ( = the sheik of Zbair) changed the spelling of his name at least 20 times.


 
I heard of this charade a few decades ago. Of course, it's a joke. Just like Othman Pasha (Haussmann) who was some minister of Napoleon III and rebuilt Paris. I didn't know some people had taken all this seriously.


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## Qcumber

The large number of Arabic terms borrowed by Portuguese and Spanish is unquestionable.
Now why put ¡ole! among them? Beats me.


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## Qcumber

The_ *Diccionario de la Lengua Española* _by the Real Academia Española gives the etymology of each entry.

I used it several years ago to determine how many Arabic terms had entered Spanish. I just turned the pages and counted how many there were. The sum total was about 1250 terms. If we were to discus all of them, we'd have to open not a new thread, but a new forum, shouldn't we?


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## mansio

After some reflecting, I agree with Thomas OGara that Spanish must have been subjected to more Arabic influence than Portuguese.

The Portuguese language advanced down from the North West corner of the Iberic peninsula which was the least subjected to Arab rule. Besides its frontline was much shorter than the Spanish one during the Reconquista.


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## missnoodle

Spanish has a far larger Arabic influence present in it's lexicon today. Over 4000 words in the Spanish language have Arabic roots (8% of the dictionary) as opposed to over 1000 in Portuguese. Arabic only affects the lexicon of the Romance languages not the structure which is firmly grounded in Latin.


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