Words of Non-Latin Origin
Some authors estimate that seventy-five percent of Spanish words have come from Latin and were in use in Spain before the Common Era. The remaining 25 percent come from other languages. Of these languages (and language families), the four which have contributed the most words are Arabic, Indigenous languages of the Americas, Germanic, and Celtic in roughly that order.
Read more about this topic: Influences On The Spanish Language
Famous quotes containing the words words of, words and/or origin:
“The words of things entangle and confuse.
The plum survives its poems.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Distorting hackneyed words in hackneyed songs
He turns revolt into a style, prolongs
The impulse to a habit of the time.”
—Thom Gunn (b. 1929)
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)