L is for Latifa...and...Language...and.. Loanwords

is for

Latifa, a Tunisian artiste, with her number Bel Arabi (In Arabic) 

Language

The history of spoken language, or when Man first developed the ability to organise sounds into words, will always remain obscure.  Historians guess that humans used spoken language a million years ago, albeit with a slower delivery, smaller vocabulary, and probably their grammar wasn't quite as dishy. 

In contrast, individual languages, which have descended from a common ‘ancestor’ language can be traced and their origins pinpointed with slightly greater precision. There are some 5000 languages spoken in the world today, linguists group them into roughly 20 families. 

The Semitic family of languages is a serious biggie in west Asia, waaay back then and now. It’s descended from the language of nomadic tribal groups of one place, yup, you guessed it, from Arabia. 

By about 3000 BCE these Semitic group of languages are spoken all through the desert tracts of Southern Arabia and in the Northern Levant. One of them – Aramaic becomes the lingua franca of the Middle East. And then Arabic develops, from Aramaic into Nabatean, and from Old Arabic, culminating finally into its present form in the 7^th century.

Ancient spoken versions of Old Arabic can be traced back to at least the first millennium BCE, but probably were in use for centuries before then also. Old South Arabic has been traced to the 10^th century BCE, while Old North Arabic can be dated at least as far back as 6^th century BCE. 

As with the spoken language, the exact dates when the script developed are also blurry. Some scholars think the origins can be dated back to around 2500 BCE, others date it to 1800-1600 BCE.   What is clear though, is that this here lingo is seriously ancient. Arabic has some deep roots.

Loanwords

Now the Arabs clocked up some impressive mileages from antiquity due to trade.  And by the middle of the 8^th century, within a century of the founding of Islam, the new faith had spread by conquest to include much of North Africa to the west, and right upto the borders of China towards the east.  Later, the empire went onto Spain and Sicily and brought them into its remit.

From Zarafa in Arabic to Giraffe in English. 

This took Arabic far from the lands where it originated, and it left its mark on those cultures. A whole bunch of loanwords got incorporated into all manner of languages – European (English, Spanish) African (Kiswahili, Hausa), Asian (Turkish, Persian, Indonesian) and South Asian (Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali).


And because there were some incorrigibly nerdish types in those initial centuries of the Empire, researching, ferreting out stuff and expanding human knowledge in astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, botany, medicine, architecture…and by then Arabic was the language of scholarship, the nerds used it extensively, therefore, Arabic influenced scientific nomenclature in major ways. Many plant names, material names, mathematical and architectural terms have been adopted from Arabic into English via medieval Latin.

From Qat in Arabic to Cat in English.

Some examples of everyday words that have Arabic roots –

Alcove (al-Qobba) Aubergine (al-Badinjan) Cipher (Sifr) Gazelle (Ghazal) Albatross (al-Ghattas) Sugar (Sukkar) Cotton (Qutn) Syrup (Sharab)  Azure (al Lazaward) Caravan (Qairawan) … there are hundreds more.



Did you know that Spanish has Legions of Arabic loanwords, more than any other European language, because of the Long Muslim rule in Spain?  

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2017