Latin American Languages and Societies Commons^™

Spanish In Contact With Arabic, Lotfi Sayahi

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

Spanish and Arabic have been in contact for long periods and in different regions. While this is largely due to the geographical proximity of the Iberian Peninsula to western North Africa, a set of historical, political and social developments helped bring both languages into close contact. Of remarkable significance was the presence of Arabic in Iberia from 711 to 1492 and, at least, for several more decades after the Reconquista was completed. This fact, as is often mentioned, led to heavy lexical borrowing from Arabic into Spanish and other Ibero-Romance languages. Also important was the introduction of Spanish into North …