There’s a fun quiz on Arabic loan words here and more words can be found here. coffee – possibly from the name Kefa, where the coffee plant originates.algebra – restoration of missing parts, later used in a 9th century mathematical book written by a Persian scientist whose name gave us algorithm.alcohol – the quintessence of earthly substances, originally from alchemy.Here’s a list of some of the common words that the Arabic language has bequeathed to English. Many of the words start with the Arabic definite article ‘al’, which also appears in silent form without the l in words such as admiral. Linguistically speaking, the Arabs borrowed as freely as they lent and their language included words originating from Spanish, Latin, Greek, Persian, Hebrew and many others. ![]() ![]() Not all the words that have entered English via Arabic originate from that language. Of course, language development is not that simple. ![]() In part this was through colonisation, but there were also many great mathematicians, alchemists and astronomers. That’s partly because in what my daughter likes to call the olden days (from around 700AD to the Middle Ages), the Arabic kingdoms had a great influence on Europe and the world. ![]() The Arabic language has contributed hundreds of words to the English language by many different routes.
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