Re: [tied] Arabic borrowing in Spanish and Portuguese

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 5096
Date: 2000-12-16

Recent English loans in Polish, especially slangy ones, often end up as double plurals, e.g. newsy [n'usI] 'news (+ pl. -y)', girlsy 'showgirls', czipsy 'chips, crisps'.
 
Piotr
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: petegray
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Friday, December 15, 2000 9:40 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Arabic borrowing in Spanish and Portuguese

>why so many Arabic words, which were adopted by
> Spanish and Potuguese, ..retain
> the Arabic definite article 'al'.

This article also occurs in Arabic words in English (usually through Spanish
or whatever), for example, algebra, alcohol, apricot (Arabic al- on a Roman
calque of a Greek word!), artichoke, assegai, elixir, and even in lute.

Peter