Event | Islam’s Contribution to European Languages
“Arabic gave Europe cotton to wear, candy to eat, coffee to drink, chess to play, magazine to read, sofa to recline on, mattress to sleep on, cipher to calculate with, cable to communicate with, racket to play tennis with, sugar to sweeten with, cheque to draw money with, and a host of other words”
V. Abdur Rahim, 2008, Europe speaks Arabic
Word Cloud 1: Borrowed Arabic Words (by European Languages)
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See further word clouds under Gallery
Islam Edinburgh Festival
Title: You Already Speak Arabic! A Visual Gallery/Presentation of Islam’s Contribution to European Languages
Date/Time: Saturday, 29th August, 3.30 – 5.00 pm
Location: Edinburgh Central Mosque
Speaker: Mourad Diouri
Presentation: The highly interactive, inspiring, and eye-opening talk aims to provide an informative cultural, historical and linguistic insight and understanding of a collection of commonly-used English words of Arabic origins. The Arabic language has had a great and long-lasting impact on many European languages, namely Spanish and English. This presentation aims to act as a reminder to us all of one of the many incredible contributions of Islam to the West. The speaker will be using a selection of high-quality inspiring visuals to illustrate that we all already speak some Arabic!
The talk will also challenge the audience (especially English speakers) that we all have a common language and we all speak Arabic to some extent.
- CASAW, Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World | مركز الدراسات المتقدمة للعالم العربي | Universities of Edinburgh, Durham & Manchester
- Edinburgh Islam Festival
- Edinburgh Festival (The Fringe)
The slideshow of the presentation will be available online shortly
Word Cloud 1: Borrowed Arabic Words (by European Languages)
Click to enlarge/close
Word Cloud 2: Most-Commonly Used English Words of Arabic Origin
Click to enlarge/close
Word Cloud 3: Muslim Contributions to Modern World Civilization: Scientific Disciplines & Fields of Knowledge
Word Cloud 4: Muslim Contributions to Modern World Civilization: Scientific Disciplines & Fields of Knowledge
Word Cloud 5: Star Names in Arabic
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(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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A wonderful and most interesting presentation. BTW, another language greatly influenced by Arabic is Portuguese.
It’s fun reading words in the “clouds”, but I can’t find any resemblance between ORANGE and برتقال. Am I missing something?
As always, thank you Mourad for providing us with excellent resources. This site is priceless.
@Ceifa: The pleasure is all mine Ceifa.
The origin of the word Orange is (Naranj) transmitted to Europe through the Arabs. However, the Arabs borrowed the word themselves from Persian.
More resources to come soon.
I did not know that, it is really interesting this word.
In Spanish we say Naranja for orange, (or Taranja in Valencian)
I had never imagined it came from Persian!!
Please Dr. Mourad, make the slides available ASAP, we cant wait.
Thank you.
Hi again,
I am really amazed of the of the amount of Arabic influence in my mother language: Spanish, I guess Portuguesse is also highly influenced due to the similarities of these two languages. I guess 800 years of mutual influence (and by the way, most of the time in pacific relationship and mutual acceptance among Spanish-Arabs-Jews) created this cultural relation.
Is there a web resource that you are aware of where we can find the arab ethimology of spanish (or portuguese, french, italian…) words?
I found some posts here and there.
I still have another question, I read in the cloud of words that the word
“paella (popular Spanish dish)” has also and Arabic origin, can you please provide details?
Thanks.
The word-cloud is very creative and the idea is innovative. The facts presented are astonishing and very much an “eye-opener”. I especially like knowing the fact that the various languages share the following common phrase in their languages and cultures:
إن شاء اللهُ