Arabic Language Influence On The Spanish Language - History

History

The Spanish language, also called Castilian is a Romance language that had gradually evolved from the Roman Vulgar Latin in the isolated northern foothills and upper Ebro valley, near the Basque Country, following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late fifth century. Loan words from Arabic began to filter into Castilian as the number of Arabic speakers in the fertile lower reaches of the Ebro valley gradually increased in the 8th and 9th centuries. This lexical influence reached its greatest level during the Christian Reconquista, when the emerging Kingdom of Castile conquered large territories from Muslim rulers in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. These territories had large numbers of speakers of Arabic and those who spoke local Romance dialects that were heavily influenced by Arabic. Arabic words and their derivatives were also brought into the Castilian by the Mozarabs, arabized Christians that emigrated northwards from Al Andalus in times of sectarian violence, particularly during the times of Almohad and Almoravid rule in the 12th and 13th centuries.

The degree to which the Arabic language percolated through the Iberian Peninsula varied enormously from one area to another and is the subject of academic debate. However, it is generally agreed that Arabic was used among the local elites, Muslim and Christian, and local Arabic-influenced local Romance dialects (Mozarabic) were the prevalent vernacular in many areas. Only the southern Emirate of Granada in the time of the Nasrid dynasty, which had had a large influx of Arabic speakers as the Reconquista advanced, became totally linguistically arabized.

Much of the Arabic influence upon Spanish came indirectly through the various arabized Romance dialects that were spoken in areas under Muslim 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, aceituna and oliva (olive), alacrán and escorpión (scorpion), jaqueca and migraña (migraine), alcancía and hucha (piggy bank).

The influence of the arabized Mozarabic and of Arabic itself is more noticeable in the Spanish dialects from regions with a longer history of Muslim domination than those where it was shorter-lived. Indeed, the dialects of the southern half of the country, known collectively as castellano meridional or Southern Castilian, do seem to collectively show a higher degree of preference for arabisms. Northern Spanish dialects tend to prefer romance synonyms to terms of Arabic origin such as the Arabic almanaque versus the Romance calendario, alcancía and hucha, alhucema and espliego, etc). However, among the southern dialects, Arabic influence does not strictly coincide with the historical retreat of Islamic rule from the peninsula. For example, Murcian Spanish, a dialect of the south-east, has been shown to contain a much larger number of unique arabisms than eastern (or upper) Andalusian, which is the dialect of the region with the longest Islamic history.

A number of words were also borrowed from Moroccan Arabic principally as a result of Spain's protectorate over Spanish Morocco in the 19th and 20th centuries, although these are of minor significance.

The Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands has also picked up a small number of words from Hassaniya 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 the Green March.