Arabic in Spanish: a massive contribution

You may (but probably not) have been wondering what had happened to any new posts over the last few months. Well… to cut the long story short, we moved to Spain. For a bit of clarity, this was not for professional reasons, more for health and wellbeing. And despite the carpet of administrative obligations and the Kafkaesque nature of the procedures that the Spanish have decided would be a fitting gesture to welcome any new arrivals with, it has been the right decision.

What is also a feature of the Spanish linguistic setup is just how many words aren’t from Latin at all. You think you know Spanish just because you speak French or Italian, then Arabic comes to give your culo a good palmadito.

You can recognise these because the particle al- or ar- or simply a- is featured often at the beginning and then the root word. And often there’s a consonant or vowel position that’s been changed. Whether that’s due to mishearing the word or by wilful confusion for the sake of it is up for debate.

Most of the Arabic words in Spanish are either edible or to do with people and places, and we can take a look at just some of these charming features that make Spanish that little bit different to the rest.

Vegetables and herbs

Just when you want to get some basil (Italian = basilico, French = basilique), you need to look out for some albahaca. After the prefix, habaca in Arabic is a word used to describe any aromatic plant or herb used in cooking or for medicinal purposes. The word basil comes the Greek βασιλικόν φυτόν, vasilikon phuton, meaning royal plant.

Looking for carrots (Italian = carota, French = carotte)? Forget something similar-looking. They’re called zanahoria. This came to Spanish through the Arabic safunarya, and this in turn from the Greek σταφυλίνη ἀγρία, staphylini agria, which basically means wild carrot. Yes, I’m thinking the same as you…

Now… what’s the one thing that comes to mind when you think of Spanish cooking? Olive oil, right? Nope (Italian = olio d’oliva, French = huile d’olive). You should be looking for aceite, which comes from aceituna, the Spanish word for olive. Through this word, we can be reminded just how old the art of olive growing and production is. The Arabic word zaytun is a direct descendent of the Aramaic word zaytuna, making this one of the oldest living words, and a pleasure to know and respect.

You want to get some cotton? You should look for some algodón. If you squint hard enough, it looks familiar, right? The Arabic word is al qutn, and the material came directly into Europe just as soon as trade became a thing about 7000 years ago.

I feel like a juicy slice of watermelon. Surely the “melon” part would be included? No? Oh… If you want some too, look for Sandía. In Arabic, it’s sandiyya, and in classical Arabic, sindiyya, most likely named after the Sindh region of modern southern Pakistan. The very first evidence of watermelons is from around the Dead Sea in the Early Bronze Age, and later on in the 6th century BCE in North Africa.

They reached the Indian subcontinent by the seventh century CE, and Spain via the Moors in the tenth century CE, which makes us wonder how the Sindh region picked up the accolade for the name. These days, China produces more watermelons than the rest of the world put together, but for taste and quality, this is naturally a matter of discretion.

 

People and places

When you want a place to keep things until you need them, you naturally look for a storage facility (Italian = magazzino, French = magasin), which funnily enough come from the Arabic makhazin or makhzan. The Spanish also took from this word but made it their own. Almacén attaches that al- prefix they love so much, and then they miss out the guttural bit in the middle. This particular Arabic word has made it into lots of other languages, such as Danish, Polish and Dutch.

Interesting side-factoid: American English often gets criticised for its tone-deaf meddling in perfectly good words. One of the sharpest criticisms is the use of “store” instead of “shop”. The French word for both a storage place and a shop is magasin. The reason why the Americans use “store” is because in the early days of the 13 colonies, much of the imports had to be stored before being sold. Makes more sense now, although don’t think I’ve become an advocate of US English!

When you arrive in another country not in your economic bloc, you have to pass through customs. This word is pretty universal in the Latin Empire (Italian = dogana, French = douane). In Spanish it’s aduana. And here again is that a- prefix. There are several probable sources of the word, but the most likely is from the Arabic al diwan, which came from the Persian dewan, and was a place that the authorities sat to distribute justice. The divan comes from this – those Middle Eastern bosses liked to be comfortable when dispensing orders…

Would you like to get comfortable? Let me get you a cushion (Italian = cuscino, French = coussin). If you’re in Spain though, you’ll need an almohada. This comes from the Arabic al mkhad. In Arabic, khad is the side of your face, or your cheek, which helps us now to grasp its sense.

Every city has a mayor (Italian = borgomastro/sindaco, French = maire), but in Spain, you go to the alcalde. This is from the Arabic al qadi, someone who can make a judgement. Arabic has a lot of names for people of wisdom, many of which are directly transcribed into European languages, such as Sheik, Vizier, Faqir, Emir, and the one I like the most, Waqf, which as a daily Scrabble player, is one I always remember if I have that letter combination in my rack.

There are plenty of place names in the Iberian peninsula that are derived directly from Arabic, such as Albacete, Gibraltar, Almería, Guadalajara, Trafalgar, Benidorm, Córdoba, and plenty of others.

All-in-all, Arabic is quite prevalent in Spanish still, and when we come across words like albóndigas, azafrán, alfombra, aceña, joroba, and many others, we can put money on our hunches concerning their provenance. Many Arabic words have made it into English too, such as arsenal, assassin, alcohol, which are embedded in English, but also words borrowed, such as nadir, tajine, halal, hijab, and suq.

We dismiss the origins of our words at our peril – learning where words are from can help us learn a whole new vocabulary from other languages, and can also help us remember them better. Arabic has had a massive impact on European language, culture, history and society, and deserves our recognition for the contribution it has made. 

Why can “fast” also mean immobile?

 

Milda fast asleep: she can perform this trick absolutely anywhere

Fast asleep? Fasting period? Fasten your seatbelt? How come we have so many expressions that use “fast”, but actually mean the opposite? Better ask the Scandinavians, Dutch and Germans…

English has a seemingly bizarre vocabulary that only makes sense if you know where words come from. We get away with all kinds of expressions that make absolutely no sense at all until you get an explanation from an etymologist (or someone who just googled it, because as everyone knows, they know everything).

FAST ASLEEP

So why? The only times you should be fast asleep are either in a bunk on a night train or when you take a nap in a car (make sure you’re not the one driving before you execute this action).

It comes from the Germanic root meaning “fixed”, which in fact is most likely an offshoot of the same origin, albeit through Latin. In Old Norse, fast originally meant the same: “quickly” or “swiftly”, and also “close to” or “almost”, but after some time, the meaning expanded to include “firmly” or “vigorously”. This is because when you go fast in a race, you are keeping up with the leaders, and therefore sticking to them.

But remember, they didn’t have a concept of speed like we do – speed was enabled either by horses, or by falling in a straight line from a cliff or tower. If you consider the idea of going quickly meant you were probably hunting or being hunted, the analogy starts to make sense.

The most probable origin is that of a hunter or horse rider keeping up with his/her target or competitor. Both travelling fast and “sticking” to the other. So the idea of being “fast asleep” is that you are figuratively glued to slumber and cannot be woken up.

Coupled with this, the word fast in German means “nearly”, again giving the impression that something is close to the end or even imminent.

This double-idea of “fast” is manifested in the expression “fast approaching”. The word fast in this sense can be interpreted as either time passing quickly or something that will inevitably and remorselessly reach its climax or conclusion, therefore fixed.

 

FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS

So when the pilot on an aircraft says “please fasten your seatbelts”, they are saying “affix yourself firmly to the seat”. And here we get the whole picture: at some point the ideas of “firmly” and “vigorously” got blended with “quickly”, probably through things like the Old Norse expression “drekka fast”, meaning “drink hard”, in other words knock back some ale as quickly as you can as if it was an obligation. You can find an explanation of the -en suffix further down this article.

 

GERMANIC EXPRESSIONS

Some expressions from other languages can corroborate this:

German:

Festmachen (fast + make) = to secure / to attach / to tighten / to fasten

Befestigen = to couple / to install / to attach / to moor

Eine Freundschaft festigen = to cement a friendship

Wasserfest = water-tight / water-resistant

Festlegen = to determine something / to define something / to establish (e.g. a fact)

Dutch:

Vast = firm, tight

Vastzitten (fast + sit) = to be stuck

Vasthouden (fast + hold) = hold on tight to something

Alvast = in advance / already (therefore inevitable)

 

Danish:

Fastsætte = to fix / set a value to something

Fastansat = permanently employed

 

FASTING PERIOD

When we forgo food and drink, it is known as fasting (verb: fast). But why? Well, this is also linked to the above: in the deep, dark days of the Germanic languages, fast had the concept of holding firmly to something, or faithfully observing a particular ritual. So then this also has some logic to it When we fast, we have firm control of ourselves, and we are holding on to our beliefs through the observance of this ritual.

Fasting therefore has the same concept as being fast asleep: both are “sticking” to their meanings.

BREAKFAST

This brings us nicely on to the word breakfast. This of course signifies exactly breaking your fast, so eating after your night’s sleep. But it wasn’t always that way – up until quite late, in fact, it was called morgenmete, or “morning meat” (in Danish it is still morgenmad). This is because a morning (pre-noon) meal was a rarity in some parts of Europe, so a morning meal was consumed as an exception, possibly to give strength before a journey or a battle.

Take, for example, the French “déjeuner” (dé = to go the other way from + jeuner = to fast) is actually lunch. This stems from the Latin verb disjejunare (jejunus = barren, dry, meagre), in other words to end the dry period. In France they ate for the first time around noon (of course, nothing to do with the French stereotype work ethic, I am sure…) but once the idea of eating earlier took hold, it was called “petit-déjeuner”, therefore “little breakfast”. If you have seen what the French eat in the morning (I use the word “eat” loosely), you can see where the “petit” fits in.

Although the Spanish desayuno has the same root, almuerzo is generally accepted to mean “lunch”, but this is not universal in the Spanish-speaking world. Almuerzo has the Arabic prefix al- that is very common to Spanish, plus morzar, from mordere, meaning “to bite”. And the German Frühstück, which means “early bit”, gets an honourable mention here. But then we see the Dutch ontbijt (ont- = prefix same as un- + bijt = bite), it maybe has the concept of unclenching one’s mouth, or again, breaking a fast. With Spanish and Dutch having similar meanings, I wonder if there is a connection through the former's colonisation of the Low Lands.

OTHER VARIANTS:

Handfasting

In the distant past, it was common for two people to promise each other in marriage through an official ceremony known as handfasting. This came from the Nordic idea of shaking hands to seal a deal, but was adapted in English society for a betrothal to your promised one. It lives on in modern-day Pagan circles to signify a coming-together of two loved ones through the ancient tradition of wrapping and tying a cloth around the couple’s conjoined hands and declaring their intentions.

Steadfast

The word stead, which lives on in words like instead, means “place”, is often found in word compounds and collocations, one of them being steadfast, which does exactly what it says: fixed in position. It means someone who is resolute and consistent in his/her beliefs or is unshakable in matters of principle.

 

-EN SUFFIX

Fasten is one of many verbs that contain the -en ending. This is probably the most Germanic thing English does: amongst other things, the -en ending in Dutch and German can signify verb infinitives, and any lingering verbs in English generally signify that someone has done something to another person or an object, e.g. darken, weaken, lengthen, cheapen, straighten, enlighten, hearten, tighten, frighten, sharpen, sweeten, etc.

 

ROUND-UP

So this is why “fast” means two opposing things, known as a contranym. Lots of words do this in English – other languages too, but not as much. This is because over the years English has homed in on some single acceptable spellings and pronunciations. It has broken down the much larger number of variants of similar words and arranged them into these blocks of words with the same spelling or pronunciation but different meanings, which can only be identified by the rest of the sentence or the overall context of the text or dialogue. This started at the arrival of the printing press back in Tudor times and quickly transformed the way we speak and write the language. Despite only a little over a century and a half between them, the English of Shakespeare (b. 1564) is closer to our English today than it is to Chaucer’s (d. 1400). But that’s for another time.

Raymond Goslitski

How English Words Don't Always Have An Opposite

English is a language of opposites - we have so many words that mean the opposite to what people think they do, such as conversely, oversight or inflammable, and lots of words that have no opposite, although we may use them in their negative form but not in their positive or neutral form, for example dishevelled, overwhelmed/underwhelmed, reckless, ruthless, or innocent. We call them unpaired words. Why do we not use opposites for them, and where do these words come from?

In order to give us an idea of why these words exist in one form but not another, we should start with finding their origins, because therein (or herein, but never hereout or thereout!) lies the answer. Way back when English was still being standardised and formed, lots of variations could be found throughout the country in all types of words, and sometimes the original meaning didn't really require there to be an opposite. It will all become clearer when I explain...

Dishevelled:

This word has one of the most underrated journeys of all - it has worked so hard to keep itself relevant in the 21st century, and its meaning becomes clear once we note that its root part - shevel - comes directly from the French for hair, namely cheveux (singular: cheveu). In French, the verb décheveler means to ruffle someone's hair, or render it untidy. So in English, by using the dis- prefix, it has kept its origins intact from the original French descheveler. The opposite in French would be coiffer, or in English the very elegant get your hair done.

The fact that we might say someone has a dishevelled appearance, but we would never say "wow, you look very shevelled today" is obvious when we are presented with the original meaning. 

Overwhelm/Underwhelm:

The origins of these two words are in fact about 600 years apart. Overwhelm started life back in the 14th century from its root whelm, meaning to cover over, or to blanket something. If a traveller was overwhelmed, it meant he or she was knocked over and smothered by something much larger and stronger, like a cow or a band of thieves, rendering the person incapable of moving, and thus we get the figurative meaning we have today of being swamped and unable to cope with something. 

On the other hand, underwhelm, especially the adjective underwhelmed, sprang up in the mid-1950s as a sarcastic way to describe something that did not really amaze you at all. In the less facetious sense, the opposite would be unimpressed.

But the root word whelm never really stuck around. However, helm or helmet, a type of heavy-duty protective hat worn in the army or whilst motorcycling, most probably came from the same root, in that it is there to cover your head.

Reckless:

Anyone who speaks English to a good standard will know this word, but why can we say someone was charged with reckless driving, but not praised for his reckful driving?

Well, bear with me here...

The German root word for "behind" or "back" is -rück. Rücksicht is the German word both for self-regard or consideration for others, so when someone doesn't have any consideration for someone or take heed of a dangerous situation, he/she is rücksichtslos. 

We also need to consider the Dutch roekeloos, meaning the same, and here is where we have another insight into this word: to reckon, as in to consider, is also connected, in that if you do something without reckoning on the consequences, it can be seen as reckless, thus bringing us full circle.

Finally, there is the German word ruchlos, meaning nefarious or wicked, which is related to our word in question, but most likely at a much further distance.

Ruthless: 

We say someone is ruthless in business, but we can't say someone was ruthful or acted with a degree of ruth. We could, but we can't any more.

Again, this requires a little roundabout thinking, but it makes sense in the end: 

The noun of the adjective true is truth, and the noun of the verb rue was ruth, before it died away. So if you rue something, you regret it, right? So ruth died away, but neither rue nor regret did. However, the reason why the verb to rue still exists, is because it means something slightly different to regret.

If you regret something, you feel sorrowful or remorseful for a past action or situation with an undesirable outcome, which you played a part in causing, but not exclusively. If you rue something, you feel sorry for a situation or event that you wish had not happened.

So ruthless behaviour is acting without regret or remorse, and has these days more of an element of cruelty or mercilessness about it, but can also mean clinical performance in sport, showing that you don't get nervous in critical points of a match.

In the German word bereuen, meaning the same, the -reu- part has the same root, as does the Dutch rouwen, also meaning to regret or to rue.

Of course, the word rueful exists to this day, whereas trueful does not and never has, but ruth and truth share the same pattern.

Innocent: 

Again, another word without an opposite. One is not nocent of a crime, one is guilty. But why does it have such a strong connection with purity and absence of immorality, and not so much with ignorance or unawareness? 

Because it actually comes from the Latinate/Greek root for death.

The root -nek- in Greek gives us words like necropolis, and this in turn went in to Latin to give words like nocere, meaning to harm. So noxious gases kill us, obnoxious people have a harmful personality, and even nectar - with its original meaning of a substance overcoming death - was drunk by the gods to give them immortality.

And this is why innocent has no opposite as such, because in its original setting, it means not having committed any harmful act. Take the biblical Holy Innocents, the children killed by Herod after Jesus's birth - these are children who were too young to have sinned or committed any crimes.

So now you know:

In any language, never presume the opposite exists just with a prefix removed; always seek to understand where words come from before complaining of their illogical nature, and when translating, always find a way to accommodate variations in the target language - what may be considered negative in English may be positive in another language!

Be nice to the apostrophe - it may just save your reputation

Too many people in the English speaking world seem to put speed before punctuation. Good punctuation has often been a clue for prospective employers as to their candidates' appropriateness for employment. Not so much any more, although it is still a helpful decider when it gets to the final shortlist. Several friends of mine got interviews simply on their ability to punctuate correctly. These days, of course, it's way further down the list, but it is once again recouping its status as an integral part of the basic package of education. Not before time.

The apostrophe is a simple yet highly efficient symbol and helps the reader follow what you have written, because in text form there is no voice or face to hear your voice or see your face. Punctuation acts as a signpost to language and helps what I call "the voice in your head" know how to intonate written text. And emoticons are yet to make it into professional correspondence, it is only right that people use punctuation until a better system can be found. But I doubt there is one.

So let us begin by looking at the apostrophe's uses:

1. As a possessive (Saxon genitive):

We write "Phil's book" and "Jana's phone" because it helps us know it's a possession.

We write "My sister's houses" and "my sisters' houses" to show how many sisters. The apostrophe before the "s", only one sister; the apostrophe after, more than one.

In spoken English you would have to say it differently to make sure the listener was aware how many you were talking about, so you might actually say "my three sisters' houses", "both my sisters' houses", or the like.

2. As a shortening of certain verbal forms

a. "he/she/it is":
"It's a beautiful day."
"He's a handsome fellow."
"She's painting a wall."

b. "(s)he has":
"She's got a new car."
"He's been to the shop."

c. "they are":
"They're lovely apples."

d. "we have":
"We've waited for so long."

e. "I would"
"I'd like a kilo of tomatoes, please."

Et cetera...

And now where it is misused or ignored:

1. In possessive pronouns like "its":

As we have seen, "it's" means "it is", because we are removing part of the word.

"Its" is used as a possessive like "his" and "her". We wouldn't say "hi's legs", so why would we say "it's legs"? The apostrophe is to show there is something missing, and here it is clearly not being used because it follows the same pattern as "his" and "her" (see the etymology section at the end of the article).

2. In misspellings, like "they're", "there" and "their":
They are = "they're"
There = not here (just add a "t" to the beginning)
Their = belonging to them

Etymology:
English is a Germanic language, despite being over 50% populated with French and Latin words. This is because our oldest words are all Germanic. These are the words which have been in our language since before the Norman conquest in one form or another, and are usually the most important words, like prepositions (of, from, by, etc.), numbers, conjunctions (and, because, etc.), irregular verbs (sing/sang/sung, be/was/were/been, etc.) and names of basic things (seat, house, hat).

Therefore our personal pronouns are most probably going to be from Germanic too.

Let us take "his", "its" and "her" as a basis.

In all Germanic languages at one time or another there were cases (Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, etc.) and some still have them, like German. The "-s" in "his" and "its" is from the Germanic preference for that particular letter at the end of masculine and neuter words to signify there is a possessive involved.
The same applies to the "-er" in feminine possession. There is no mystery to it; no confusion needed - it is just due to the past and the English language's ties to other Germanic constructions!