(Al Jazeera)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHow Arabic words entered other languages<\/h2>\n As the most spoken of the Semitic languages, a group of languages that originated across Southwest Asia and Africa, Arabic has influenced societies and other languages for centuries.<\/p>\n
Linguists say the presence of Arabic words in other languages reflects long histories of contact through trade, scholarship and cultural exchange.<\/p>\n
English, Spanish, French, Turkish and many other languages across the globe have borrowed hundreds to thousands of words from Arabic that are used in everyday language.<\/p>\n
Muntasir Al Hamad, a linguist and professor of Arabic at Qatar University, says this type of borrowing is a \u201cnatural phenomenon\u201d and languages have borrowed from one another for centuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cArabic is no different in that sense. This is reflected in vocabulary, science, technology and civilisation,\u201d he tells Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
Arabic uses an alphabet 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.<\/p>\n(Al Jazeera)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThese features, together with Arabic\u2019s extensive vocabulary, have contributed to the perception that the language is difficult for non-native speakers to learn.<\/p>\n
However, Al Hamad says this perception is far from accurate for many people.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the biggest misconceptions about Arabic is that it is among the most difficult languages in the world,\u201d he said. \u201cIn reality, it is simply a language with systems that differ from English or from many European languages.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that while the Arabic script may appear unfamiliar to some learners, it is \u201cquite familiar\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
From A for algebra to T for tariffs<\/h2>\n One of the biggest contributions the Arabic language has made to the world is in the fields of mathematics and science.<\/p>\n
Over time, some of these words entered other languages in shortened or adapted forms, becoming so familiar that their origins are often forgotten.<\/p>\n
One example is algebra, a cornerstone of mathematics. The term comes from the Arabic word al-jabr, meaning \u201crestoration\u201d or \u201creunion\u201d. 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 \u201calgorithm\u201d is derived.<\/p>\n
Other Arabic words underwent more dramatic transformations. Carat, the unit used to measure the weight of gemstones, traces its roots to the Arabic word qirat.<\/p>\n(Al Jazeera)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAccording to Al Hamad, these changes reveal how English and other languages adapt unfamiliar sounds. \u201cBecause English has relatively few words beginning with Q,\u201d he explains, \u201cArabic words such as qirat were reshaped using more familiar sounds like C, G or K, producing forms such as carat.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, words such as tariff, which is derived from the Arabic word ta\u2019rif, meaning \u201cto notify\u201d or \u201cto announce\u201d, entered English through contact with other languages involved in trade.<\/p>\n
Al Hamad says these words \u201cmost likely entered the English language via Romance languages\u201d although not necessarily in the forms we recognise today. He adds that they also passed through Turkish, which \u201cborrowed heavily from Arabic\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Arabic is one of the world\u2019s most widely spoken languages with at least 400 million speakers, including 200 million native speakers and 200 million to 250 million non-native speakers. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) serves as the formal language for government, legal matters and education, and it is widely used in international and religious contexts. Additionally, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"INTERACTIVE](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/INTERACTIVE-World-Arabic-Language-Day-map-1765976626.png?quality=80\")
![\"INTERACTIVE](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/INTERACTIVE-The-Arabic-alphabet-Arabic-Language-day-1765976624.png?quality=80\")
![\"INTERACTIVE](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/INTERACTIVE-Common-English-words-with-Arabic-roots-1765989016.png?quality=80\")