A fellow blogger colleague recently wrote on uncommon words in English. My post here, on the other hand, is on commonly used English words that originated from Arabic:- Admiral: Amir Al-Bahr
- Alchemy: Al-Kimia
- Alcohol: Al-Kuhul
- Alcove: Al-Qubba
- Algebra: Al-Jabr
- Coffee: Qahwah
- Cotton: Qutn
- Gazelle: Ghazal
- Ghoul: Ghoul
- Giraffe: Zarafa
- Sahara: Sahraa
- Sugar: Sukkar
- Sultana: Sultana
- Syrup: Sharab
- Zero: Sifr
Most of these words reached the English language by indirect integration from other languages, mainly European, such as French, Spanish or Italian, often though not in every case, through Latin. Some words, such as coffee, reached Europe through Ottoman Turkish (kahve in this case). Along the way, as expected, and as in the game Chinese whispers (literally “telephone arabe” in French), the words were distorted or adapted to fit the integrating language, as in admiral (admiralis in Latin).
Beyond words, there are numbers from Arabic. The numeric system using numbers from zero (sifr) to nine originated in the Arab world, replacing the relatively awkward system of Roman numerals that were used before.
Stay tuned for more.
