Arabic language influence on the Spanish language

Arabic influence on the Spanish languageoverwhelmingly dates from theMuslim era of the Iberian Peninsulabetween 711 and 1492. The influence results mainly from the large number ofArabicloanwordsand derivations inSpanish, plus a few other less obvious effects.
TheSpanish language, also calledCastilian, is aRomance languagethat evolved from the dialects of RomanVulgar Latinspoken in the Iberian Peninsula. The first examples of language with some features specific of modern Spanish are ascribed to documents from various monasteries in the area ofBurgosandLa Riojain what is now northern Spain. HoweverToledo, in central Spain, which became the capital of the earlyKingdom of Castileduring its southward expansion, is where Spanish began to appear in a written form recognizable today. The preexistingMozarabic dialectof this region (i.e. the Romance present during Muslim rule) is therefore likely to have also had an influence on modern Spanish.
The lexical influence ofArabicreached its greatest level during the ChristianReconquista, when the emergingKingdom of Castileconquered large territories fromMoorishrulers, particularly in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. These territories, which included the formerTaifa of Toledo, had large numbers of Arabic speakers as well as many who spoke local Romance dialects (Mozarabic) heavily influenced by Arabic, both influencing Castilian. It is possible that Arabic words and their derivatives had also already been brought into Castilian byMozarabChristians who emigrated northwards fromAl Andalusin times ofsectarian violence, particularly during the times ofAlmohadandAlmoravidrule in the 12th and 13th centuries. As such, Arabic can be considered to have had a formative influence on the Spanish language.
The degree to which the Arabic language percolated through theIberian Peninsulavaried enormously from one period and area to another and is the subject of academic debate. However it is generally agreed that in much of the peninsula Arabic was used among the local elites, both Muslims and Christians, and that the prevalent vernacular in many areas was Mozarabic, a continuum of Arabic-influenced local Romance dialects. Only the southern third of the peninsula became totally Arabized as both Mozarabic and Christianity were extinguished following the Almoravid and Almohad periods.
Much of the Arabic influence upon Spanish came through the variousArabizedRomance dialects spoken in areas under Moorish rule, known today by scholars as Mozarabic. This resulted in Spanish often having both Arabic- and Latin-derived words with the same meaning. For example,aceitunaandoliva(olive),alacránandescorpión(scorpion),jaquecaandmigraña(migraine),alcancíaandhucha(piggy bank),ajonjolíandsésamo(sesame) etc.
The influence of the Arabized Mozarabic and of Arabic itself is more noticeable in the Spanish dialects from regions with a longer history of Moorish domination than in those where it was shorter-lived. For this reason the dialects of the southern half of the country, known collectively ascastellano meridionalor Southern Castilian, seem collectively to show a higher degree of preference for Arabisms. Northern Spanish dialects tend to prefer Romance synonyms to terms of Arabic origin, such as the Romancecalendariov. Arabicalmanaque,huchav.alcancía,espliegov.alhucemaetc. Because Canarian and all Hispanic Americandialectsare mainly derived from Southern Castilian, Spanish words of Arabic origin are common in mostvarietiesof Modern Spanish.
A number of words were more recently borrowed fromMoroccan Arabic, principally as a result of Spain's protectorate overSpanish Moroccoin the 19th and 20th centuries, although these are of minor significance.
The Spanish spoken in theCanary Islandshas also adopted a small number of words fromHassaniya Arabic, principally from Canarian sailors who fish in proximity to the Saharan coast as well as by those Canarians who returned from Western Sahara after theGreen Marchof 1975.
The influence ofArabicon the Spanish language is fundamentallylexicalbut its other influences are also briefly examined in this article. It is estimated that there are about one thousand Arabicrootsand approximately three thousandderived words, making a total of around four thousand wordsor 8% of the Spanish dictionary.SeeInfluences on the Spanish languagefor more on how the number of Arabisms in Spanish has been estimated. The exact number of words of Arabic origin and their derivatives in Spanish is not known, and many words not included on this list areregionalisms: words that are used in certain parts of Spain and/or Hispanic America but are generally unknown elsewhere.
The high point of Arabic word use in Spanish was in late medieval times and has declined since then but hundreds are still used in normal conversation. The large majority of these words are nouns, with a number ofverbsandadjectivesderived direct from these nouns, e.g.alquilar(to rent) andalquilado(rented) fromalquiler(rent), most of which are excluded from this list. There is also onepreposition:hasta(until), and oneadverb:he. There has been little influence on the basic grammatical structure of the language.
Many Arabic loanwords in Spanish start witha-oral-, where these sounds come from the Arabicarticleal-(giving justa-when the Arabic word begins with asolar letter). This initiala(l)-is an integral part of the word in Spanish; that is, it is not amorpheme.
This is an open list of Spanish words acquireddirectlyfromClassicalandAndalusi Arabic, listed in alphabetical order. This list includes the Spanish meaning of the word as well as the Arabicetymology. No fixed standard ofArabic transliterationis used.
Rationale for inclusion
Due to the large influence of Arabic on Spanish vocabulary, this list is relatively restrictive:
The etymology and meaning of most of these words can be verified on the site of theReal Academia de la Lengua Española, although a small minority are available only in other sources or past editions of this dictionary.
Many of these words will be unfamiliar to many Spanish speakers because their use is restricted to certain regions of Spain or Spanish-speaking countries or they are no longer in regular use. For example the Arabic-derived word for ‘jewel’,alhaja, is very common in Mexico whereas in Spain it is restricted to rural areas of the southern half of the country, the alternative Spanish termjoyabeing much more common. On the other hand the Arabic derived term for fruit juicezumois the standard term in Spain whereas in Hispanic America the Latin-derivedjugooraguaare generally used. The Arabic termalbercain Spain refers to agricultural water deposits whereas in Mexico it is the common term used for swimming pool as opposed topiscinaelsewhere orpiletain Argentina.
.
As in most Romance languages, word order in Spanish is primarily governed bytopicalizationandfocalization. This means that in practice the mainsyntactic constituentsof a Spanish sentence can be in any order. In addition, certain types of sentence tend to favour specific orders.However, as with all Romance languages, modern Spanish is classified inlinguistic typologyas anSVOlanguage,because this order of constituents is considered the mostunmarkedone.
In 1981, Spanish philologistRafael Lapesahypothesized that VSO sentence orders being more frequent in Spanish and Portuguese than otherRomance languageswas likely due to aSemitic(presumably Arabic) input in the language. Lapesa at the time considered that the topic had not been sufficiently investigated and required a more rigorous comparative study of Spanish with other Romance and Semitic languages.
A 2008 study concludes that, although the earliest documentation written in Spanish (13th century) can be analysed as having aVSOorder, this does not affect documents written after that time.It has also been hypothesized that VSO was still the unmarked order for literary works as late as the 17th century.
A 2012 comparative study of Spanish,ItalianandFrenchshowed French to be the most strictlySubject–verb–object(SVO) language of the three followed by Italian. In terms of constituent order, Spanish is the least restricted among the three languages, French is the most restricted, and Italian is intermediate. In the case of French, this is the result of a historical process, as old French was less restricted in word order. As for the VSO order, it is absent from both French and Italian, but not from Spanish.
Arabic has a very common type of adjective, known as the nisba or relationship adjective, which is formed by adding thesuffix-ī (masc.) or ية -iyya (fem.) to a noun. This has given Spanish the suffix -í (both masc. and fem.), creating adjectives from nouns which indicate relationship or belonging, mostly for items related to medieval history, ordemonymsin Arab.Examples aremarbellí, ceutí, maghrebí, zaragocí, andalusíoralfonsí.
A number of expressions such as "¡Ole!" (sometimes spelled "olé" ), possibly fromwa'llah, orojalá, fromlaw sha'a Allah, have been borrowed directly from Arabic. Furthermore, many expressions in Spanish might have beencalquedfrom their Arabic equivalent. Examples would besi Dios quiere,que Dios guardeorbendito sea Dios.
TheIdafawas a feature of the Mozarabic dialects which had a major formative influence on modern Spanish. Although this morphological structure is no longer in use, it is still widely present in toponyms throughout Spain including names of recent origin such as the suburban colonies of Ciudalcampo and Guadalmar in Madrid and Malaga respectively.
There are thousands of place names derived from Arabic in the Iberian Peninsula including provinces and regions, cities, towns, villages and even neighborhoods and streets. They also include geographical features such as mountains, mountain ranges, valleys and rivers. Toponyms derived from Arabic are common in Spain except for those regions which never came under Muslim rule or where it was particularly short-lived. These regions includeGaliciaand the Northern coast (Asturias,Cantabriaand theBasque country) as well as much ofCatalonia,Navarreand northernAragon. Regions where place names of Arabic origin are particularly common are Balearics, Eastern Coast (ValenciaandMurcia) andAndalusia. 
Those toponyms which maintained their pre-Islamic name during the Muslim period were generally Arabized, and the mark of either the oldArabic pronunciationor the popular pronunciation from which it derived is sometimes noticeable in their modern names: e.g. LatinHispalis= ArabicIshbiliya= modernSevilla.
Almudena(from theVirgin of Almudena, patroness of Madrid, Spain) andFátima(derived fromOur Lady of Fátima) are common Spanish names rooted in the country's Roman Catholic tradition, but share Arabic etymologies originating in place names of religious significance. Guadalupe, a name present throughout the Spanish-speaking world, particularly in Mexico, also shares this feature.
A few given names of Arab origin have become present in the Spanish-speaking world. In Spain, this coincided with a more flexible attitude to non-Catholic names, which were highly discouraged during the first decades of the Francoist dictatorship.Arabic names that have been present in Spain for many decades includeOmarandSoraya. Zaida is also present in Spain, perhaps afterZaida of Seville, the mistress or wife of KingAlfonso VI of Castilein the 11th century. A number of streets throughout Spain bear the name of this Muslim princess. Zahira and Zaira are also popular girls' names of Muslim origin. It is in the SpanishenclavesofCeutaandMelillain the African continent where Arabic given names are common.
Surnames of indirect Arabic origin, such as Medina, Almunia, Guadarrama or Alcaide, are common and often refer to toponyms or professions, but they are not of Arabic origin, properly speaking. Few Arabic surnames explicitly denote Arabic origin since in the 15th and the 16th centuries, religious minorities were required to change their surnames upon baptism to escape persecution. The Muslim minority was specifically compelled to convert and adopt Christian surnames by a series of royal decrees in the 16th century, when Morisco leaderMuhammad Ibn Ummaya, for example, was born to the Christian name Fernando de Córdoba y Valor.
Exceptions to the general rule are rare, but one is the surname "Benjumea" or "Benjumeda", which denotes ancestry from the Ummayad nobility. Currently, fewer than 6,000 Spaniards have this surname. Another, even less common, surname denoting Muslim lineage is "Muley", which is still present in the Spanish Southeast, and was maintained for its noble lineage.
These works have not necessarily been consulted in the preparation of this article.