Ecela Spanish

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You are here: Home / Cultural Tidbit / Cultural Tidbit: Word Origins

Cultural Tidbit: Word Origins

TapirPart of the joy of learning a new language is seeing everything with fresh eyes. In your native tongue, you take words for granted. You probably never think twice about where certain words came from or how they came into popular usage.

It may sound dorky, but word origins are actually pretty fascinating. They can tell you a lot about the history and culture of a given country or region.

All languages use loan words to a certain degree. It is interesting to note that although most Spanish-speaking countries are predominantly Catholic, Spanish contains a whole bunch of words with Arabic roots! Though Spanish knights battled Islamic rulers during the Crusades and fought hard to expel the last Muslim caliphs from southern Spain in the 1400s, they never quite succeeded in cleansing Spanish Christendom of Arabic influences.

Almost every word in Spanish that begins with “al” has an Arabic root. For example: aljedrez, almohada, alcazar. “Al” is the Arabic equivalent of “the” in English or “el” or “la” in Spanish.

Similarly, when Spanish conquistadors came to the new world, they tried to make their Christian culture dominant. Once again, they were not entirely successful. Although colonial society in Peru, Argentina, and Chile marginalized native peoples and discriminated against their languages and cultural practices, at the same time the colonists were actually adopting indigenous words into their own vocabulary.

vicunaThe influences of indigenous languages can be seen in loan words like alpaca, guano, and vicuña, which were taken from the Quechua language spoken in the high Andes. Words relating to the Amazon were taken from the local Guaraní language. To name a few: tapir, ananá, caracú, yacaré, and tapioca.

Languages are always evolving in order to adapt to changes in daily life and in the world. Today, you can chart English’s rise to global prominence by the number of English words that have been absorbed into Spanish. Note that many words having to do with technology, like “email” and “computadora” have an English root.

Among the Spanish-speaking countries, only Spain is attempting to resist the incursion of English words. Spaniards prefer to call email “correo electronico” and computers “ordenadores.”

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