The Arabs were settled in the peninsula Ibérica for more than seven centuries. They turned – particularly the south of Spain (al-Ándalus was the name given, today Andalucía) – into the most prospering and beautiful Muslim kingdom of its time. The architecture of cities such as Cordóba, Granada, Sevilla or Málaga are good living illustrations of the Moorish influence in Spain, among many other examples of Arab heritage in music, gastronomy or even the physiognomy of their people.
Many battles and political alliances describe this period of history, well known as the Muslim Conquest. However, besides political and economic changes this territory experienced, one of the most notorious aspects of the conquista was the cultural and linguistic impact. After the lexicon of Latin origin, the Arabic lexical component is the largest in the Spanish language with more than 4,000 lexical forms of current usage from Arabic.
The majority of these terms has been subject to an evolution in the Spanish language, which remain surprisingly similar to their original form in Arabic in terms of phonetics. Some examples of these similarities are portrayed in the following video where two girls from their respective countries are astonished by the coincidences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFJYd9OhjI4
Written by Ana Escaso Moreno
Communication Trainee at TermCoord
Journalist & Social Media manager