A to T: Arabic Words in English Speech

The Global Influence of the Arabic Language

Arabic is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, with at least 400 million speakers. This includes 200 million native speakers and an additional 200 to 250 million non-native speakers. The language holds significant cultural and historical importance, especially through its use as Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which serves as the formal language for government, legal matters, and education. It is also used extensively in international and religious contexts.

Across the Middle East and North Africa, more than 25 dialects of Arabic are spoken, each with its own unique characteristics and regional influences. On December 18 every year, the United Nations commemorates World Arabic Language Day, celebrating the language as “the pillar of the cultural diversity of humanity.” This date was chosen to mark the day in 1973 when the UN General Assembly adopted Arabic as one of its six official languages.

How Arabic Words Entered Other Languages

As the most spoken of the Semitic languages, Arabic has had a profound influence on societies and other languages for centuries. Linguists believe that the presence of Arabic words in other languages reflects long histories of contact through trade, scholarship, and cultural exchange. English, Spanish, French, Turkish, and many other languages have borrowed hundreds to thousands of words from Arabic, often integrating them into everyday language.

Muntasir Al Hamad, a linguist and professor of Arabic at Qatar University, describes this type of borrowing as a “natural phenomenon” that has occurred for centuries. He explains that Arabic’s influence can be seen in vocabulary, science, technology, and civilization. “Arabic is no different in that sense,” he says. “This is reflected in vocabulary, science, technology and civilisation.”

An Alphabet with Many Forms

The Arabic alphabet consists of 28 letters and is written from right to left. The script is cursive, and its letters change shape depending on their position in a word. Short vowels are typically omitted in everyday writing, which can make the language seem complex to non-native speakers.

However, Al Hamad argues that this perception is far from accurate. “One of the biggest misconceptions about Arabic is that it is among the most difficult languages in the world,” he said. “In reality, it is simply a language with systems that differ from English or from many European languages.”

He adds that while the Arabic script may appear unfamiliar to some learners, it is “quite familiar” to speakers of other languages, such as Urdu and Farsi. Speakers of those languages, Al Hamad says, often find Arabic easier to read while Turkish speakers may find its vocabulary easier to memorise due to the thousands of Arabic words Turkish has absorbed.

From Algebra to Tariffs: Arabic Contributions to Science and Everyday Language

One of the most significant contributions of the Arabic language to the world is in the fields of mathematics and science. Over time, some of these words entered other languages in shortened or adapted forms, becoming so familiar that their origins are often forgotten.

For example, the term “algebra” comes from the Arabic word al-jabr, meaning “restoration” or “reunion.” It originally appeared in the title of a ninth-century work on solving equations by the Baghdad-based Persian scholar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, after whom the word “algorithm” is derived.

Other Arabic words underwent more dramatic transformations. The unit used to measure the weight of gemstones, “carat,” traces its roots to the Arabic word qirat. According to Al Hamad, these changes reveal how English and other languages adapt unfamiliar sounds. “Because English has relatively few words beginning with Q,” he explains, “Arabic words such as qirat were reshaped using more familiar sounds like C, G or K, producing forms such as carat.”

The same process can be seen in everyday vocabulary beyond science and mathematics. The word “giraffe,” for instance, comes from the Arabic zarafa, and went through a similar transformation as English and other European languages reshaped the original sounds to fit their own phonetic patterns, much as they did with words beginning with the Arabic letter Q.

On the other hand, words such as “tariff,” which is derived from the Arabic word ta’rif, meaning “to notify” or “to announce,” entered English through contact with other languages involved in trade. Al Hamad says these words “most likely entered the English language via Romance languages” although not necessarily in the forms we recognize today. He adds that they also passed through Turkish, which “borrowed heavily from Arabic” and influenced the medieval world through trade and warfare. Later, during the British colonial era, English both borrowed from and contributed words directly to Arabic.