Arabic influence on Spanish and Portuguese

[lisarb]

- words pointed somewhere: 4000

- words known or ever heard: 100

- words used: 30

- words used outside the food, agricultural, or ornamental field: 10


end of the thread

"ojala" hahahaha

[Roy]

Interesting.

I don't know why some OWDers hate it anyway. Some features of Spanish/Portuguese architecture carry heavy Arabic influence too.

Yesterday I was walking in a more traditional neighbourhood in the city where I live, where the houses are built in a more Portuguese way, and I saw a lot of very beautiful houses with detailed tiles (''azulejo'', an arabic word itself) and well decorated entrances.

Yeah some Iberian people have an issue when faced with it. Are they ashamed or something? I think it provides their culture with more uniqueness & beauty. And yes there are words both in Portuguese & Spanish that have an arabic provenience that are not used in other Indo-European languages.

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

Yeah some Iberian people have an issue when faced with it. Are they ashamed or something? I think it provides their culture with more uniqueness & beauty. And yes there are words both in Portuguese & Spanish that have an arabic provenience that are not used in other Indo-European languages.

The majority of the Arabic words that we use are also used by other Europeans to be honest, words like "café" (coffee) which derives from the Arabic word "qahwah". In Polish you say "kawa", which resembles even more the original Arabic word than ours does, so it doesn't really mean that much. Other example, the Portuguese word "xarope" (syrup), in Arabic "sharāb" and in Polish "syrop". Álcool (Portuguese), alkohul (Arabic) and alkohole (Polish).

[Damião de Góis]

Yeah some Iberian people have an issue when faced with it. Are they ashamed or something? I think it provides their culture with more uniqueness & beauty. And yes there are words both in Portuguese & Spanish that have an arabic provenience that are not used in other Indo-European languages.

How did Portugal (and Spain) originated?