Reconquista lasted many centuries, so you can’t fix it at any particular date. It was, however, finished in 1492, as far as I know.
Spanish "el", Arabic "al-"—why both?
- Thread starter Cenzontle
- Start date
Reconquista lasted many centuries, so you can’t fix it at any particular date. It was, however, finished in 1492, as far as I know.
Cenzontle
Senior Member
English, U.S.
Thank you, Quiviscumque, for your reference to the scholarly article by Volker Noll. Now we're getting somewhere!
Noll refers to "the Berber thesis" of Elcock (1960), which I understand as follows.
Many, perhaps most, of the "Moors" in Spain spoke an Arabic that was heavily influenced by a Berber language (either their first language, or that of their immediate forebears).
Berber (says the theory) has no definite article, so these Moors, in speaking Arabic, attached the article to the noun indiscriminately,
regardless of the noun's grammatical status as definite or indefinite.
Accepting the claim that Berber doesn't have articles, I find it much more plausible that the obscuring of the article-function of "al-" was done by Berber-influenced Arabic-speakers, rather than by Mozarabs, who had the article "el" in their Romance speech.
So maybe the Mozarabs didn't have much opportunity to hear the Arabic nouns without the article, and so maybe for them the function of "al-" as an article was muffled.
But Noll points out some problems with the Berber thesis:
less-frequent preservation of "al-" in the Arabisms of Sicily and Valencia, Arabic loans with and without the article in (modern-day?) Berber,
and chronological questions that would take up too much space here (the button says "Post Quick Reply"!).
Noll ends up rejecting the Berber thesis, and seems to prefer instead an explanation based just on the greater frequency of with-article use over without-article use in Arabic generally.
Turning to written language (Arabisms imported through translations), Noll points out the non-separation (not even by a hyphen) of the article from its noun in Arabic script.
(And, getting off the track here, forms like the star-name "Aldebarán"—with the "l" not assimilated to the sun-letter "d"—show that they were borrowed first in writing, not in speech.)
Noll sees some significance to the Andalusian Arabic practice of preserving (rather than eliding, as in Classical Arabic) the vowel [a] of the article.
But I don't see what this contributes to answering the question of why "el al...".
The two articles are similar enough in form that I am more persuaded by those arguments that say
the awareness of article-function for "al-" was lost somewhere along the line of loanword transmission.
I still can't imagine that happening in Mozarabic, so—in spite of Noll's paper—I think I favor the Berber thesis for now.
Noll refers to "the Berber thesis" of Elcock (1960), which I understand as follows.
Many, perhaps most, of the "Moors" in Spain spoke an Arabic that was heavily influenced by a Berber language (either their first language, or that of their immediate forebears).
Berber (says the theory) has no definite article, so these Moors, in speaking Arabic, attached the article to the noun indiscriminately,
regardless of the noun's grammatical status as definite or indefinite.
Accepting the claim that Berber doesn't have articles, I find it much more plausible that the obscuring of the article-function of "al-" was done by Berber-influenced Arabic-speakers, rather than by Mozarabs, who had the article "el" in their Romance speech.
So maybe the Mozarabs didn't have much opportunity to hear the Arabic nouns without the article, and so maybe for them the function of "al-" as an article was muffled.
But Noll points out some problems with the Berber thesis:
less-frequent preservation of "al-" in the Arabisms of Sicily and Valencia, Arabic loans with and without the article in (modern-day?) Berber,
and chronological questions that would take up too much space here (the button says "Post Quick Reply"!).
Noll ends up rejecting the Berber thesis, and seems to prefer instead an explanation based just on the greater frequency of with-article use over without-article use in Arabic generally.
Turning to written language (Arabisms imported through translations), Noll points out the non-separation (not even by a hyphen) of the article from its noun in Arabic script.
(And, getting off the track here, forms like the star-name "Aldebarán"—with the "l" not assimilated to the sun-letter "d"—show that they were borrowed first in writing, not in speech.)
Noll sees some significance to the Andalusian Arabic practice of preserving (rather than eliding, as in Classical Arabic) the vowel [a] of the article.
But I don't see what this contributes to answering the question of why "el al...".
The two articles are similar enough in form that I am more persuaded by those arguments that say
the awareness of article-function for "al-" was lost somewhere along the line of loanword transmission.
I still can't imagine that happening in Mozarabic, so—in spite of Noll's paper—I think I favor the Berber thesis for now.
And also on the fact that in Andalusian Arabic, unlike other varieties of Arabic, the vowel a in the article al was always fully pronounced, which meant that the article was perceived as proclitic to the following noun, rather than enclitic to the preceding word.
In short he explains the phenomenon from peculiarities of Andalusian Arabic itself, rather than as a mistranslation into Romance languages.
WadiH
Senior Member
Arabic
How does he know this?
I imagine Andalusian Arabic probably sounded similar to rural/conservative forms of Maltese, and more distantly similar to North African dialects.
On page 40 Noll cites Corriente 1977:85 (I'm unable to copy it). The full reference is listed at the end of the essay.
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Abu Rashid
Senior Member
Australian English
The article is perceived as proclitic to the following noun in ALL varieties of Arabic as far as I'm aware. The only cases I know of where the opposite is true is amongst non-native users of Arabic names in the sub-continent where you'll find names like "Shahidul", as the first component of a compound name which is actually Shahid ul-Haqq.
What you (and perhaps your source) seem to be confusing with here is the fact the alif in the article is assimilated to the final vowel of the previous word. This does not mean it is perceived to be enclitic to the preceding word. This also occurs in many other cases, not just the article, e.g imperative verbs, the words ism, ibn and some other cases.
Abu Rashid
Senior Member
Australian English
Why closer to Maltese than north African dialects? I would've thought closer to north African dialects, given it would've derived directly from them in parallel to Siculo-Arabic (later Maltese).
If you look at the classifications given here it seems to be the case.
Assimilating with the final vowel (or consonant) of the previous word is the very definition of enclisis.
WadiH
Senior Member
Arabic
As you said, Siculo-Arabic and Maltese both branched off from early North African Arabic along with Andalusian, so I would expect the three to be similar. North African Arabic later acquired an additional layer from Arabia with the Hilalian migrations, which did not reach Andalusia, Sicily or Malta. In other words, early Maltese was like North African sans the Hilalian layer. My guess is that Andalusian Arabic was similar to that.
The Wiki page does not say anything on the matter one way or another.
Abu Rashid
Senior Member
Australian English
But the assimilation occurs between words without the article also. It is more related to hamzat ul-wasl than it is to the article. I don't think a speaker of any Arabic dialect would perceive the article as belonging to the word before the noun. The assimilation is merely a means of making the words flow together more smoothly. A fixed vowel would sound awkward.
Quiviscumque
Senior Member
Spanish-Spain
With all the due respect for your guess, and from my absolute ignorance of Arabic, I think that Professor Corriente's opinion is also worth of consideration:
http://books.google.es/books?id=N_hAzIqriakC
germanbz
Senior Member
Spanish-Spain/Catalan (Val)
I'm a bit confused about the point that are being discussing here. As a sumarize. Are you meaning or hypothesizing that Spanish articles "el" and "la" are completely related to "al" Arabic but not with "le"/"la" from French "lo"/"la" from Occitan-Catalan or "il"/"la" from Italian? And latin "ille"/"illa" never evoluted to definite article in old Spanish?
Abu Rashid
Senior Member
Australian English
This thread has nothing to do with whether the articles are related, it is purely about doubling up of the articles in borrowed words.
TAMAIDE
New Member
Spanish
The castilians attached the article to the noun as they had not the arabic sound of an open "E" which to the Castilians still today sounds as "A" . Concerning the arabic sound shin, the Castilians had it not and still today have not said sound, so they converted it into an X, the Castilians had not the sound J, so they converted it into an X, so you may say today "proximo": the nearest to you, and "projimo" which also means the nearest to yo but with some pious distant kindred. For instance you have the toponym "Guadalajara" Guad=River, Jara= Arabic A kind of grass as well as excrement, originally this topoonym was spelled "Guadalaxara" Gaud-el- jara, or Guad-el-sharab from xara you may think of xarab so some people mistake it for liquid in Arabic, when the X was coverted into J, like Mexico and Mejico, there was not any distintion form the original J and shin sounds. Still today we have the Andalucian "Ch" that comes from the Arabic shin but that is Spanish, not Castilian. In Argentina they have today a "CH" sound derived from the Andalucian "CH"
Cenzontle
Senior Member
English, U.S.
Here is how the Berber hypothesis is put in Andrew Dalby's Dictionary of Languages: The Definitive Reference to More than 400 Languages (London : Bloomsbury, 2006):
It is curious that these Arabic words are nearly always borrowed complete with the definite article, al-. Surely, at any period, Spanish speakers could have identified and separated off the Arabic definite article, which is so similar to the Spanish el? A possible explanation is that the words were first learnt, in the early days of Islamic rule in Spain, from what was probably a majority of BERBER troops in the Islamic armies. Berber itself has no similar definite article (its nearest approach is the feminine suffix -t), so these north African speakers of army Arabic would have learnt the words, complete with article, as if they were indivisible. In this form they will have become part of MOZARABIC, eventually to reach Spanish in the course of the Reconquest.
It is curious that these Arabic words are nearly always borrowed complete with the definite article, al-. Surely, at any period, Spanish speakers could have identified and separated off the Arabic definite article, which is so similar to the Spanish el? A possible explanation is that the words were first learnt, in the early days of Islamic rule in Spain, from what was probably a majority of BERBER troops in the Islamic armies. Berber itself has no similar definite article (its nearest approach is the feminine suffix -t), so these north African speakers of army Arabic would have learnt the words, complete with article, as if they were indivisible. In this form they will have become part of MOZARABIC, eventually to reach Spanish in the course of the Reconquest.
Penyafort
Senior Member
Catalan (Catalonia), Spanish (Spain)
In the east of the Peninsula, though, not only words from Arabic are fewer, but also many of those with the lexicalized article in West Iberia didn't retain it in Catalan. Perhaps we should think about different spoken varieties of Andalusi Arabic having to do with it. Compare:
SPANISH | PORTUGUESE | CATALAN
water mill/wheel: aceña | azenha | sínia
irrigation ditch: acequia | acéquia | séquia
customs office: aduana | aduana | duana
burnoose / bathrobe: albornoz | albornoz | barnús
artichoke: alcachofa | alcachofra | carxofa
camphor: alcanfor | cânfora | càmfora <-- Here Portuguese and Catalan agree.
carpet: alcatifa | alcatifa | catifa <-- In Spanish, it's a dated word.
carob: algarroba | alfarroba | garrofa
cotton: algodón | algodão | cotó
warehouse, store: almacén | armazém | magatzem
matress: almadraque | almadraque | matalàs <-- In Spanish and Portuguese, it's a dated word, and also meant 'cushion'.
starch: almidón | amido | midó
tar: alquitrán | alcatrão | quitrà
suburb: arrabal | arrabalde | raval
watchtower: atalaya | atalaia | talaia
shipyard: atarazana | ? | drassana
coffin: ataúd | ataúde | taüt
tray: azafata | açafata | safata <-- In Catalan, it still means 'tray'. In Spanish and Portuguese, it's an old term for a queen's boudoir maid. In modern European Spanish it's used for 'hostess, stewardess'.
saffron: azafrán | açafrão | safrà
sugar: azúcar | açúcar | sucre
SPANISH | PORTUGUESE | CATALAN
water mill/wheel: aceña | azenha | sínia
irrigation ditch: acequia | acéquia | séquia
customs office: aduana | aduana | duana
burnoose / bathrobe: albornoz | albornoz | barnús
artichoke: alcachofa | alcachofra | carxofa
camphor: alcanfor | cânfora | càmfora <-- Here Portuguese and Catalan agree.
carpet: alcatifa | alcatifa | catifa <-- In Spanish, it's a dated word.
carob: algarroba | alfarroba | garrofa
cotton: algodón | algodão | cotó
warehouse, store: almacén | armazém | magatzem
matress: almadraque | almadraque | matalàs <-- In Spanish and Portuguese, it's a dated word, and also meant 'cushion'.
starch: almidón | amido | midó
tar: alquitrán | alcatrão | quitrà
suburb: arrabal | arrabalde | raval
watchtower: atalaya | atalaia | talaia
shipyard: atarazana | ? | drassana
coffin: ataúd | ataúde | taüt
tray: azafata | açafata | safata <-- In Catalan, it still means 'tray'. In Spanish and Portuguese, it's an old term for a queen's boudoir maid. In modern European Spanish it's used for 'hostess, stewardess'.
saffron: azafrán | açafrão | safrà
sugar: azúcar | açúcar | sucre
merquiades
Senior Member
English (USA Northeast)
carpet: alcatifa | alcatifa | catifa <-- In Spanish, it's a dated word.
Even "alfombra" is an arab word.
shipyard: atarazana | ? | drassana
In this place the ships are just docked not built, right?
It's really interesting that the Catalan words don't have the article, as if when they were adopted the people were bilingual at least, and they knew it made sense to remove the articles. But with "el azúcar, el alquitrán" etc. they literally mean "the the sugar, the the tar", so people seem to have had no idea what was an article or not when they started using them. However, even when Latin words were adopted in Spain, they sometimes didn't know the meaning; like "mecum" adopted as "conmigo", literally "with with me" as opposed to "amb mí".
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S.V.
Senior Member
Español, México
Add. From that small list with a- (Valencian algeps, ataüt in old texts) & the map, it seems Valencian was the one that 'naturally' assimilated. Cf. "Valencia... one third of its pre-expulsion population" (p. 2), almost four centuries after the conquest.
The bulk of the Reconquista is complete after the 1212 Crusade, and they are the 'successful' Crusader Kingdoms.
(Undevicesimus)
(al*, 1090-1100) mandato de alcaldes; Dono vobis illam almuniam; illa algazira; meo alferiz; illam alfondegam; et alcalte Blasco; similiter mitat alcaldes; alcantarella; suas alhoces; cum alhocibus que ffuerant. I find the 'árabe latinado' endearing (alfoz, almunia).
You rather talk of a real descendant of mecum (e vos ficaredes migo; OSard. iurarun mecu111), reinforced once -go stops being recognized. The Oc line went with ab instead, like Fr. avec. It likely is similar with that al-, and it represents an inherited pattern born from contact, in which al- is not recognized by the core that assimilates (at an oral level, like Fdb said in #13).
The bulk of the Reconquista is complete after the 1212 Crusade, and they are the 'successful' Crusader Kingdoms.
(al*, 1090-1100) mandato de alcaldes; Dono vobis illam almuniam; illa algazira; meo alferiz; illam alfondegam; et alcalte Blasco; similiter mitat alcaldes; alcantarella; suas alhoces; cum alhocibus que ffuerant. I find the 'árabe latinado' endearing (alfoz, almunia).
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Awwal12
Senior Member
Russian
But you don't normally loan nouns with the articles attached to them in the first place.
A lot of languages, both with and without their own articles, loaned words from Arabic; however, it seems only the languages of South-Western Iberia loaned them with the articles fused into them for some reason. Maybe Berber languages are somehow invloved?..
bearded
Senior Member
Standard Italian
In Italian there are many such words:
arsenale (arsenal) from al-sanaa -the (ship/weapon) factory
ammiraglio (admiral) from al-amir -the prince
alloro from al+Lat. laurus -laurel oak
...
...
Awwal12
Senior Member
Russian
Ammiraglio is a direct counterpart to English "admiral" and must have appeared according the same pattern (i.e. as a contamination with admire/ammirare). There is the article here all right, but it's stuck to the END of the word (because it's the truncated idafah construction ʔamīr al-baḥr "commander of the sea").
I'm afraid I cannot even deduce what form "sanaa" should represent here.
Arsenal comes from "dār aṣ-ṣināʕa" (the house of production), with "d-" unsurprisingly truncated in Italian, having been incorrectly interpreted as a genitive marker. So, again, there is the article here all right, but this time it's hidden in the middle of the word and, again, is a part of the idafah turning into a phraseme.
Its doublet in Italian is darsena "dock" (this time through Ligurian).
Alloro is an entirely Italian formation from illa(m) laurum; I wonder how specifically you would derive it from Arabic.
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fdb
Senior Member
French (France)
This is an often repeated error. There is no such phrase in Classical Arabic. ʔamīr was borrowed into Greek as amiras ("Muslim prince"), then reanalysed by contamination with admirare.
bearded
Senior Member
Standard Italian
@ Awwal12
You are right concerning alloro and arsenale. My bad.
You are right concerning alloro and arsenale. My bad.
Awwal12
Senior Member
Russian
Except "ʔamīr" per se bears no connection to the sea, and -al would remain rather poorly explained.
And while I'm obviously no Arabic philologist, Baranov's Arabic-Russian dictionary specifically notes أَمِير اَلْبَحْر in the meaning "admiral" (p. 44). How can we be sure it's a later development which didn't exist by the time when amiral/amirail/admiral/ammiraglio started to appear in written sources?
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fdb
Senior Member
French (France)
It is modern, probably borrowed from French. If it were old it would be somewhere in the classical authors.
Awwal12
Senior Member
Russian
Well, either way, any second component of the idafah might have been implied here, as long as it started from a moon consonant (or would otherwise result in -al in Romance languages). It seems quite a lot of options have been proposed.
And what's relevant for our discussion is that 'admiral', whatever its precise etymology may be, does not seem to contain a word-initial article.
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We can imagine that in the middle ages, in the regions of the Iberian Peninsula dominated by Arabs, the level of bilingalism was pretty low, and the level of litteracy too. So most people probably did not realized that the al of alcachofa was an article in arabic and that the logical thing to do was to say la cachofa. You borrow what you hear and you adapt it to your language.
The same thing happens with the Portugese city of Porto, called Oporto in Spanish and English : In Portugese, it is used with the article o: O Porto é a cidade onde nasci (Oporto is the city where I was born, litterally : The Port is the city...)
Another example : the sport called la crosse in French is called lacrosse in English.
The same thing happens with the Portugese city of Porto, called Oporto in Spanish and English : In Portugese, it is used with the article o: O Porto é a cidade onde nasci (Oporto is the city where I was born, litterally : The Port is the city...)
Another example : the sport called la crosse in French is called lacrosse in English.
S.V.
Senior Member
Español, México
After Corriente, you also find "*/l-/ forms being unmarked" in Turner 2013, p. 61. For that last change,
the wiki on that E-V257/L19 seems to agree with other papers, "a genetic bridge between southern European and northern African Y chromosomes" (Trombetta et al.); cf. "E1b-M78 seems to have originated in north-eastern Africa... directly from Africa to Europe."65 So confirmation for Collins (104), 'the Muslims who invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711 were mainly Berbers.'
Then the first part related to similar changes in creoles, and the second part to a 'geometrical' expansion of empires, i.e. you conquer A & B, then you have more troops. Until B revolts, "to the advantage of the Christian remnant kingdom of Asturias."1 Tanmirt, gracias.
Quiviscumque
Senior Member
Spanish-Spain
Interesting. However, if we check the cnrtl site, we find that:
-these French words are loans from Italian or Iberian dialects, not direct loans from Arabic dialects (some exceptions: burnous)
-for many of them there are occurrences with and without attached al-
Going back to the main question, I think it will never been fully answered. Just to add a little more noise
, Corriente lately wrote:Hay un posible y poderoso ingrediente, hasta ahora no tenido en cuenta [...] los yemeníes, responsables, según venimos propugnando de bastantes rasgos del andalusí [...] muchos de ellos eran aún hablantes bilingües de dialectos sudarábigos [...] se comprende bien que hicieran un uso ultracorrecto y abusivo del artículo [...] (Romania Arabica)
I don't know anything about Arabic, neither Classic nor Andalusi; but Corriente did.
Overcorrection is probably the key point. The "Arabs" that conquered Spain were in all likelihood a motley crew of soldiers whose first language was Berber, southern Arabian varieties (as Corriente says), perhaps Aramaic, Old Coptic, ... many of them would speak Arabic poorly, and that is the language from which the local "Mozarabs" took their loans, which in turn made their way to modern Spanish. For other European languages, the Arabic loanwords would have taken a more "learned" path.
S.V.
Senior Member
Español, México
And on p. 88, "Once conceptual equivalency had been established between the Arabic definite form containing */l-/ and the unmarked Berber noun, which has nearly full range of all possible givenness statuses, the stage was set for rapid extension of */l-/ into the semantic range of the ‘congruent’ Berber form, including the indefinite statuses [...] all but the earliest Arabic loans into Berber tend to display */l-/ (Kossmann, 2012; Marouane, 2009)."
francisgranada
Senior Member
Hungarian
In my opinion the phenomenon itself is perfectly understandable. Shortly: when a noun (or adjective) appears frequently (or almost always) preceded by the article and practically pronounced as one word, then a foreigner will spontaneously tend to perceive such construction as one word.
An example for illustration (not typical, rather a rarity): "El Dorado" in figurative sense ("a golden, rich, happy, etc... country/place") in Hungarian is spelt "eldorádó" and pronounced ['eldora:do:] with the stress on "el". If it were perceived as two separate words, the Hungarian pronunciation would be [el'dora:do:].
********************
I have two questions:
1. The words of Arabic origin like alchemy, algebra, algorithm, alcohol, etc.... existing (probably) in all the European languages, are in these languages finally loanwords from medieval Spanish or they might be borrowed independently from Arabic?
2. The Catalan words without the article "al", are direct loanwords from Arabic or they might be borrowed later from (Andalusian) Spanish?
(My idea is that - in theory - such words could be later "re-analysed" o "re-corrected", both spontaneously or consciously because of the similarity of the articles "el" and "al" .... )
An example for illustration (not typical, rather a rarity): "El Dorado" in figurative sense ("a golden, rich, happy, etc... country/place") in Hungarian is spelt "eldorádó" and pronounced ['eldora:do:] with the stress on "el". If it were perceived as two separate words, the Hungarian pronunciation would be [el'dora:do:].
********************
I have two questions:
1. The words of Arabic origin like alchemy, algebra, algorithm, alcohol, etc.... existing (probably) in all the European languages, are in these languages finally loanwords from medieval Spanish or they might be borrowed independently from Arabic?
2. The Catalan words without the article "al", are direct loanwords from Arabic or they might be borrowed later from (Andalusian) Spanish?
(My idea is that - in theory - such words could be later "re-analysed" o "re-corrected", both spontaneously or consciously because of the similarity of the articles "el" and "al" .... )
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fdb
Senior Member
French (France)
These are technical/scientific words, the end product of the process of translation of technical terms from Greek > Syriac > Arabic > Hebrew > Latin > European vernaculars.
rehanelbengali
Member
Bengali
For alchemy, you might want to note that during the 16th and 17th century, both the forms alchymia with al- and chymia, without al- were synonymous and interchangeable. A difference in the meaning of the two only appeared in the 18th century.
When translating Arabic works to Latin, one thing I noticed is that most of the time, when the word appears with الـ in the original Arabic word, the al- is kept in the Latin translation, probably because literary Latin lacked an article and didn’t have an accurate way of translating it, and added to that was the fact that الـ in Arabic was always written as a part of the word and can never appear independently. This is also true for speech, where الـ is never uttered as a separate unit, like the definite articles in European languages, but rather, it is always treated as something attached to the word. This explains why al- decided to be kept in Latin translations of Arabic works and also explains the technical words that entered European languages with al-.
It is still a mystery why Catalan would have borrowed them without the article while languages in the southwest of Iberia would seem to not be able to separate the article from the word. If anything, it would have been more logical for the opposite to happen, because people in the south were in contact with Arabs for longer, so it would have been more logical for them to be the ones who are able to separate the article better, since they are the ones who are supposed to be more educated in the Arabic language and the Catalans to have been the ones worse at it.
fdb
Senior Member
French (France)
This is just slightly more complicated. The Arabic kīmīyāˀ is a borrowing of Greek χυμεία. This means that Latin form without the Arabic article could well be a borrowing directly from Greek, or at least influenced by it.
rehanelbengali
Member
Bengali
Red Arrow
Senior Member
Nederlands (België)
Dutch also has nonkel from French oncle. I am not sure whether the n comes from French (un, mon, ton, son) or from Dutch (een, nen, mijn, mijnen, uwen, zijn, zijnen, haren, onzen, ullen).
The explanation that makes the most sense to me is the following: at first, the knowledge of Arabic was low amongst the common people. Many words were borrowed then with al-. By the time Arabic became more widespread, it was already a habit to keep al- in Spanish, so they kept doing that and even added new borrowings with al-.
The fact that Catalan and French lack al/a/au in many of these words is very strange.
The explanation that makes the most sense to me is the following: at first, the knowledge of Arabic was low amongst the common people. Many words were borrowed then with al-. By the time Arabic became more widespread, it was already a habit to keep al- in Spanish, so they kept doing that and even added new borrowings with al-.
The fact that Catalan and French lack al/a/au in many of these words is very strange.
merquiades
Senior Member
English (USA Northeast)
One more for the article/ no article list
Alcaparras / Capres
Alcaparras / Capres
Penyafort
Senior Member
Catalan (Catalonia), Spanish (Spain)
Valencian is logically the Catalan variety where more Arabisms are to be found. We can even find geosynonyms such as:Add. From that small list with a- (Valencian algeps, ataüt in old texts) & the map, it seems Valencian was the one that 'naturally' assimilated. Cf. "Valencia... one third of its pre-expulsion population" (p. 2), almost four centuries after the conquest.
The bulk of the Reconquista is complete after the 1212 Crusade, and they are the 'successful' Crusader Kingdoms.
· acorn = Catalonia: gla (<Latin), Valencia: bellota (<Arabic)
· carrot = Catalonia: pastanaga (<Latin), Valencia: safanòria (<Arabic)
· maize = Catalonia: blat de moro (<Latin), Valencia: dacsa (<Arabic)
The map kind of shows the gradation. Arabs never really settled in the orange area ('Old Catalonia'), or were there for less than a century. In the green area, though, called 'New Catalonia', Arabic speakers did live for four centuries. In Valencia, for five.
Catalan didn't really borrow words from Spanish until well into the 14th century, and more noticeably from the 15th onwards. Most of the Arabic loanwords I mentioned for Catalan were borrowed between the 11th and 14th centuries.
I wouldn't say South-West, but also North-West (the formation area of the Portuguese-Leonese-Spanish cluster). We can see it in such old borrowings like the first two I mentioned, 'waterwheel' and 'irrigation ditch', already attested in the 11th and 12th centuries (Spanish: azenia, 1068; acequia, 1200 | Catalan: sínia, 1054; sèquia, 1094). In between, Aragonese, as usual, tends more towards the Catalan than to the Castilian side, not taking fossilized article either (cenia: 1160; cequia: 1192).
I guess you meant caparres.
Indeed, I didn’t mean to be exhaustive. Some can still be added: musk (Esp. almizcle, Cat. mesc), bucket of waterwheel (Esp. arcaduz, Cat. caduf), early fig (Esp. albacora, Cat. bacora), cheerful racket (Esp. algazara, Cat. gatzara), lupin bean (Esp. altramuz, Cat. tramús), crupper (Esp. ataharre, Cat. tafarra), etc.
merquiades
Senior Member
English (USA Northeast)
"Zanahoria" doesn't have the article.
I guess "naranja" has a double article. N from una, then a ranja.
These words are probably going to die out. They describe rural terms that have no bearing in the modern world.
S.V.
Senior Member
Español, México
Gracias, Penya. I imagine a simple scenario may reflect the two spheres, i.e. you had a 'tradition' for the learned borrowings.
Then, Occitan pastenaga, Catalan pastanaga; Oc. blat, Cat. blat; Oc. òli, Cat. oli 'oil'; Oc. blau, Cat. blau 'blue'; Oc. coissin, Cat. coixí 'pillow', etc. for the common almohada, azul, aceite... Not a- in azul, but you test with 'common' words for different levels of contact. For a merchant's OFr. çucre, Oc. sucre, Cat. sucre, an a- in azúcar protected by 'popular' nouns: la aldea de don Quijote1; in suas aldeas (1076), but Oc. pòble, Cat. poble 'village' keep it at bay. Cat. aldea, alcalde (baile, batlle), etc. being relegated.
Some 'distant' groups seem like fun: Dinka (Sudan): mikadda1, Maltese: mħadda, Spanish: almohada (la almohada de la cama, 'the bed's pillow'). Swahili halzeti, Aramaic zaytā, Spanish aceite (como el aceite sobre el agua, 'like oil over water'). Aramaic ʿaqraḇā, Armenian axrēp, Spanish alacrán. Some were purged, like alfayate with sastre 'tailor' (p. 80). To atone for this, we'll adapt half the words that Arabic shares with Aramaic. To add that they may sound old-timey, but otherwise natural.
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Olaszinhok
Senior Member
Italian
Also in Italian most words from Arabic have no article:
carciofo - alcachofa
capperi - alcaparras
zucchero - azúcar
magazzino - almacén and so on.
câpres should be written like this...
Circunflejo
Senior Member
Castellano de Castilla
Just a note: The usual word nowadays is breva.
Penyafort
Senior Member
Catalan (Catalonia), Spanish (Spain)
It is interesting to see how the word safanòria in Valencia* maintains the original form (safunnariyya in Andalusi Arabic) while there was metathesis in Spanish.
* Not only Valencia, also in parts of Western Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. See this pdf map for distribution, or even more interestingly, this chronological map of the 'fight' between pastanaga and safanòria through time.
The evolution probably was:
( Greek: staphulínē agría )
(Maghrebi) Arabic: 'isfanaariyya'
Andalusi Arabic: *safunnariyya
- (Western) Catalan: *safannauria > safannària/safannòria (still in eastern Majorca) > safanòria (variant safranòria, probably mixed with safrà)
- Spanish: *çafanauria > çahanoria > zanahoria
> Galician/Portuguese: çanoira > cenoira/cenoura
This is a very interesting word and journeyed a lot from Dravidian lands, where it just meant 'fragrant fruit', into Europe. It'd be nice to know where the n got lost, probably in medieval Italy (un'arancia).
In Spanish and Catalan the two origins gave opposite meanings.
Spanish:
naranja 'orange'
toronja 'grapefruit' (and alternates with pomelo)
Catalan:
aranja 'grapefruit'
taronja 'orange'
Obviously. But there are indeed some Arabisms that are still used on a daily basis. Think of tassa (taza, tasse), racó (rincón), xarop (jarabe, sirop, syrup), etc.