Arabic Language Influence On The Spanish Language - Lexical Influence

Lexical Influence

The influence of Arabic on the Spanish language is fundamentally lexical but its other influences are also briefly examined in this article. It is estimated that there are about one thousand Arabic root words, and another three thousand derived forms, for a total of around four thousand words or 8% of the Spanish dictionary - the second largest lexical influence on Spanish after Latin. However, Arabic words comprise only 2% of the 5000 most frequently used Spanish words. 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 vast majority of these words are nouns, with a limited number of verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and a preposition, hasta ("until"). The exact number of words of Arabic origin and their derivatives in Spanish is not known, and many words not included on this list are regionalisms: words which are used in certain parts of Spain and/or Latin America but are generally unknown elsewhere.