Spanish and Arabic Article Roots

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you doing?

Super duper, who’s this?

This is Mohamed.

Hi Mohamed, where are you calling from?

From Dallas, Texas.

Welcome to the program, what can we do for you?

Well, I was curious about the origin of the word el in Spanish, and I wondered if it came from the Arabic word al, a-el.

Aha, and what got you to wondering about that?

Well, because I noticed on, for example, the name of the city, El Paso, and we also have Alcatraz, so I was curious if it translates to the word though.

You’re absolutely right that Arabic had a huge influence on Spanish because the Moors were there in control from 711 to 1492.

Very easy to remember numbers, 711 and 1492.

So Arabic is the second largest influence on Spanish besides Latin.

And so you’re wondering if the EL in the article, like El Paso, is related to that AL.

And although there are a lot of Spanish words that are influenced by Arabic, this is not one of them.

The EL in Spanish goes all the way back to Latin, the word Ille, I-L-L-E, which means that.

It’s a pronoun.

And that’s because the Romans were there several hundred years before the Moors were there.

But there are huge numbers of words in Spanish that have Arabic footprints all over them.

Alcoba, which means bedroom.

We get the word alcove from that, a little room in a house.

Almoerso, lunch, is a combination of the Arabic and then a Latin word.

Do you speak any of those languages, Muhammad?

I should have asked.

No, I don’t speak Arabic or Hebrew.

I speak other languages like Urdu and Hindi from Southeast Asia, from South Asia.

Very interesting.

All right, great.

Thanks for taking my call.

All right, thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Oh, the list just goes on and on.

Magazine goes all the way back to Arabic.

Isn’t that cool?

Yeah, yeah.

It goes back to an Arabic word that I think is something like machazan, which means a warehouse or a storehouse.

And ultimately, a magazine came to be a place where a whole bunch of things are stored.

And you see that in Spanish, too.

It gives us the word almacen, which is a kind of store.

So anyway, this stuff gets me all hot and bothered, as you know, Grant.

Give that woman a pill.

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