Arabic is without doubt one of the world’s most generally spoken languages with a minimum of 400 million audio system, together with 200 million native audio system and 200 million to 250 million non-native audio system.
Trendy Commonplace Arabic (MSA) serves because the formal language for presidency, authorized issues and schooling, and it’s extensively utilized in worldwide and spiritual contexts. Moreover, greater than 25 dialects are spoken primarily throughout the Center East and North Africa.
Yearly on December 18, the United Nations commemorates World Arabic Language Day, celebrating Arabic as “the pillar of the cultural variety of humanity”. The date was chosen to mark the day in 1973 on which the UN Basic Meeting adopted Arabic as one in all its six official languages.
Within the following visible explainer, Al Jazeera lists a number of the most typical phrases in right now’s English language that originated from Arabic or handed via Arabic earlier than reaching English.
How Arabic phrases entered different languages
As probably the most spoken of the Semitic languages, a gaggle of languages that originated throughout Southwest Asia and Africa, Arabic has influenced societies and different languages for hundreds of years.
Linguists say the presence of Arabic phrases in different languages displays lengthy histories of contact via commerce, scholarship and cultural change.
English, Spanish, French, Turkish and plenty of different languages throughout the globe have borrowed a whole bunch to hundreds of phrases from Arabic which can be utilized in on a regular basis language.
Muntasir Al Hamad, a linguist and professor of Arabic at Qatar College, says the sort of borrowing is a “pure phenomenon” and languages have borrowed from each other for hundreds of years.
“Arabic isn’t any totally different in that sense. That is mirrored in vocabulary, science, know-how and civilisation,” he tells Al Jazeera.
An alphabet with many types
Arabic makes use of an alphabet of 28 letters and is written from proper to left. The script is cursive, and its letters change form relying on their place in a phrase. Brief vowels are sometimes omitted in on a regular basis writing.
These options, along with Arabic’s intensive vocabulary, have contributed to the notion that the language is tough for non-native audio system to study.
Nonetheless, Al Hamad says this notion is much from correct for many individuals.
“One of many greatest misconceptions about Arabic is that it’s among the many most tough languages on this planet,” he stated. “In actuality, it’s merely a language with techniques that differ from English or from many European languages.”
He added that whereas the Arabic script might seem unfamiliar to some learners, it’s “fairly acquainted” to audio system of different languages, equivalent to Urdu and Farsi. Audio system of these languages, Al Hamad says, typically discover Arabic simpler to learn whereas Turkish audio system might discover its vocabulary simpler to memorise as a result of hundreds of Arabic phrases Turkish has absorbed.
From A for algebra to T for tariffs
One of many greatest contributions the Arabic language has made to the world is within the fields of arithmetic and science.
Over time, a few of these phrases entered different languages in shortened or tailored types, changing into so acquainted that their origins are sometimes forgotten.
One instance is algebra, a cornerstone of arithmetic. The time period comes from the Arabic phrase al-jabr, that means “restoration” or “reunion”. It initially appeared within the title of a ninth-century work on fixing equations by the Baghdad-based Persian scholar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, after whom the phrase “algorithm” is derived.
Different Arabic phrases underwent extra dramatic transformations. Carat, the unit used to measure the load of gems, traces its roots to the Arabic phrase qirat.
In response to Al Hamad, these adjustments reveal how English and different languages adapt unfamiliar sounds. “As a result of English has comparatively few phrases starting with Q,” he explains, “Arabic phrases equivalent to qirat have been reshaped utilizing extra acquainted seems like C, G or Okay, producing types equivalent to carat.”
The identical course of will be seen in on a regular basis vocabulary past science and arithmetic. The phrase giraffe, as an illustration, comes from the Arabic zarafa, and went via an analogous transformation as English and different European languages reshaped the unique sounds to suit their very own phonetic patterns, a lot as they did with phrases starting with the Arabic letter Q.
Alternatively, phrases equivalent to tariff, which is derived from the Arabic phrase ta’rif, that means “to inform” or “to announce”, entered English via contact with different languages concerned in commerce.
Al Hamad says these phrases “more than likely entered the English language by way of Romance languages” though not essentially within the types we recognise right now. He provides that in addition they handed via Turkish, which “borrowed closely from Arabic” and influenced the medieval world via commerce and warfare. Later, throughout the British colonial period, English each borrowed from and contributed phrases on to Arabic.
