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INFLUENCES ON THE SPANISH LANGUAGE  Part 2

INFLUENCES FROM NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGES

The last Moorish kingdom fell to Spanish forces in 1492, shortly before the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the Americas.  Spanish settlers then came in contact with a host of native languages.  Most of these were wiped out or severely reduced in number during the conquest but Spanish adopted a number of words from some of them.  The following list is not all of them, but gives a good example range:-

From Nahuatl: tomate, chocolate, cacao, coyote

From Quechua: cancha, alpaca, coca, gaucho

From Guarani: catinga, tapera, jaguar

From Carib: huracán, caimán

From Tupi: canibal, capibara, jacarandá

Che (an addressing term in Rioplatense Spanish).  Origin disputed

These words referring to local features or animals might be limited to regional usage but many others are extended even to other languages (e.g. chocolate).

MODERN BORROWINGS

Spanish borrowed words from other European languages (its close neighbours such as Catalan), other Roman languages like French and Italian and Germanic languages like English.  For example:

Chao, chau “bye” from Italian ciao

Carnet from French

Chofer from French

Elenco from Italian

Sandwich from English

Briquet from French

Capot from French

Fútbol from English

Gendarme from French

RECENT BORROWINGS

In recent times, Spanish has borrowed many words and expressions from English, especially in the fields of computers and the internet.  In many cases, technical expressions which superficially employ common Spanish words are in fact calques (a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal “word for word” translation) from English equivalents.  For example, disco duro is a literal translation of “hard disk”.  Words like blog, chat and weblog are used.

WORDS OF NON-LATIN ORIGIN

Seventy-five per cent of Spanish words have come from Latin and were in use in Spain before the Common Era.  The remaining 25% comes from other languages.  Of all these languages (and language families) the four which have contributed the most words are Arabic, Indigenous languages of the Americas, Germanic and Celtic in roughly that order.

 

INFLUENCES ON THE SPANISH LANGUAGE  Part 1

The Spanish language has a long history of borrowing words, expressions and subtler features of other languages it has come in contact with.  Spanish developed from Vulgar Latin, with influences from Celtiberian, Basque and Arabic, and Visigothic in the north of the Iberian Peninsula.

As Spanish went through its first stages of development in Spain, it received influences from neighbouring related languages and from Basque which is completely unrelated to Spanish in origin.

VISIGOTHIC

Spain was controlled by the Visigoths between the 5th and 8th century but the linguistic influence of the Visigothic language (an east Germanic language) on Spanish was relatively limited because the invaders were already Romanised and also spoke their own dialect of Latin.  Besides a few military words, Spanish borrowed the following from Visigothic:

A new noun declension which was used mostly with proper names.  Declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns and adjectives to indicate such features as number and case.

The adjectivising suffix –engo as in abolengo

The suffixes –iz, -ez, -oz, now found in surnames (Pérez, Torres, Lopez, Ruiz, etc)

ARABIC

Spain was invaded by Islamic forces in 711 CE which brought the Arabic language to the Peninsula.  Over the course of the following centuries, Spain borrowed some words from Arabic:

Common everyday items such as alcoba (alcove), aldea (village), alfombra (carpet), almohada (pillow), guitarra (guitar)

Government and military terms such as alcázar (fortress), alcalde (mayor), barrio (ward, neighbourhood)

Legal terms such as asesino (assassin), rehén (hostage), tarifa (tariff)

Food and beverage names such as aceite (oil), arroz (rice), espinaca (spinach), naranja (orange), café (coffee)

Masonry and craftsmanship terms such as albañil (mason), alfarero (potter), taza (cup), jarra (pitcher, jug).

Chemical substances and materials such as alcohol, laca (lacquer).

Math and astronomical terms such as cero (zero), cifra (digit, figure).

Expressions such as ojalá (may it be that….), albricias (joy!)

Many of these borrowed words and expressions were then passed on to other languages (English got most of them via French).  Most of the Spanish words starting with –al have their origins in Arabic and it is estimated that about 4,000 words in Spanish are of Arabic origin.  Morphological borrowing was scarce.  The suffix -í (deriving from place names, as in iraquí) is an example.