Following on from the Arabic to English language part one, I’m going to add five more English words that came from Arabic Language. Once again this demonstrates the early influence of the once great Islamic empire.
Borrowing words from another language indicates an empire’s strength and advancement in the World, now the western World is dominating with its technoligical and Ideological advancements and it is very clear in many Muslim lands the influence it has. You’ll find street names in English and French etc, many items are not natively named but have English names.
Similarly when the Islamic empire was at the ‘Golden Age’ Europe was in the dark ages, Islam was spreading all around the World with its advancements in Science, Philosophy etc. so it is no wonder it has left an ever lasting influence over many nations around the World.
Words from Arabic to English
If you didn’t already know about these, here are 5 more words that came from the Arabic to English language.
We certainly eat a load of those 🙂
From Arabic قندي (qandi, “candied”)
A fundamental part of life.
From Arabic (Egypt) قطن (qúţun), (Hispano-Arab) quṭūn, variants of Arabic قُطْن (quṭn), from root *qţn, possibly originally from Ancient Egyptian.
Are you surprised?
Derived from Arabic صفة (súffa, “sofa, long seat made of stone or brick”)
From Arabic نارنج (nāranj)
From Arabic suwwad (saltwort)
Are you surprised to see so many of these words that have been borrowed from Arabic to English? Do you know of some more perhaps you can take a look at the other post for some more.
I heard one time that one Indian professor calculated that 20% of English is sourced from Arabic. Also came across this very interesting site:
http://archive.org/stream/TheMatterOfArabInChaucerArabicLoanWordsInChaucersComlpeteWorks/MatterOfArabInChaucerTheArabicLoanWordsInChaucersComlpeteWorks#page/n0/mode/2up
Thanks for the comment and link.