Vocabulary
Somali's main lexical borrowings come from Arabic, another Afro-Asiatic language. They stem from the Somali people's extensive social, cultural, commercial and religious links and contacts with nearby populations in the Arabian peninsula. Soravia (1994) noted a total of 1,436 Arabic loanwords in Agostini a.o. 1985, a prominent Somali dictionary. Most of the terms consisted of commonly-used nouns. These lexical borrowings may have been more extensive in the past since a few words that Zaborski (1967:122) observed in the older literature were absent in Agostini's later work.
The Somali language also contains a few Italian and English loanwords retained from the colonial period. A large number of neologisms were created following independence, when Somali became the official language, to express new concepts used in government and education.
Read more about this topic: Somali Language
Famous quotes containing the word vocabulary:
“[T]here is no breaking out of the intentional vocabulary by explaining its members in other terms.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“My vocabulary dwells deep in my mind and needs paper to wriggle out into the physical zone. Spontaneous eloquence seems to me a miracle. I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)