I Study Arabic

A Vocabulary Lesson

originally published July 26, 2006

I think of Arabic words in English in three groups: those that entered so long ago that their Arab-ness has disappeared, the ones that we can still identify as Arabic or at least of foreign origin, and then the ones that are just now becoming familiar to us through the news, words that may still be written in italics or pronounced awkwardly (think President Bush and “Abu Ghraib,” for instance.)

Ancient

Of the first group, see if you know which of these is not of Arabic origin: coffee, mattress, shawl, tabby, tariff.

Coffee is from Arabic “qahwa,” probably from Kaffa, the name of the region of Ethiopia where coffee was first grown.

Mattress is from Arabic “matrah,” or place where something is thrown down. My dictionary gives “taraha,” from the same root, as the Arabic word for mattress.

Shawl comes from Farsi “shal,” a scarf worn in Asia, probably from the Indian city Shaliat, where they were manufactured.

Tabby (a striped cat) is from Arabic “'attabiya,” a striped silk cloth, originally manufactured in the ‘Attayib neighborhood of Baghdad.

Tariff comes from Arabic “ta’arif,” of the same meaning, from the root ‘arafa, to make known. (A variant of this root is ‘arifa, to know. The sentence “La a’arif” or “I don’t know” is one I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of.)

Every now and then I run across a familiar word in Arabic, like some version of “guitar,” or “lemon” or “magazine” and I think I’ve found a loan word from English or maybe French. With every case except “Internet” and “laptop,” I’ve been wrong. There is a surprising number of very common English words of Arabic origin. For an extensive list of them, go to http://83.223.102.16/words.

To learn their stories, look them up in The Online Etymology Dictionary at www.etymonline.com.

More Recent

Of the second group, the recognizably once-foreign words, the first example that comes to mind is the word mecca. This is a great example of a word that just takes on a whole new life in another language. I’m sure everyone is familiar with such usages as (via Google) “the town of Athens is a mecca for entertainment, artists and the best of college life,” or, more interestingly, “South Georgia is a mecca for penguin watchers.” Of course, the word comes from the Saudi city of Mecca, the birthplace of the prophet Mohammed, and it is the direction to which all Muslims pray their daily prayers. It has a fascinating history - long before Islam, it was a site of pilgrimage for people of many different religions whose gods were housed in the ka’aba, the black square structure believed to have been built by Abraham. Interestingly, in the first couple years of Islam, Muslims were told to pray towards Jerusalem, perhaps as a gesture of unity with Jews. That relationship, however, didn’t work out, and newer verses in the Koran stipulated that Mecca, and the ka’aba, be the direction of prayer and also the destination of the pilgrimage that every Muslim should make at least once during his or her lifetime, during the month of the Hajj (pilgrimage.)

The second holiest city in Islam is Medina, also in Saudi Arabia. The word medina (or madinah) simply means “city,” and for some reason, the word became very popular as a name - a common Spanish last name, and also the name of quite a few cities and counties throughout the United States. Originally known as Yathrib, the Saudi city is the site of the prophet Mohammed’s first mosque, and his second home after he left Mecca. Yathrib became known as al-madinah al-munawwarah, or “the illuminated city.” In the word “munawwarah” we can see the root of “manara” (lamp) which came into English as “minaret.” We can see the same root in Hebrew, another Semitic language, in the word “menorah.”

That leads to another very Arabic English word, “mosque,” the Muslim place of worship. The Arabic word for mosque is “masjid,” and the dissimilarity in the sounds confused me at first, until I remembered that the Egyptian pronunciation of “j” is “g.” It was the pronunciation “masgid” that entered Spanish as “mesquita” and migrated through Italian and French before entering English as “mosque.” The word “masjid” is a noun form of the verb “sajada” which means “bow down to worship.” The first syllable “ma” you can see in many, many Arabic words, and it often, as in this case, denotes place.

Another word that still has an exotic ring to it is “harem.” In fact, when I hear the word, I think of an episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies" that involved Jethro, a Sheik and some dancing girls with veils, back in the pre-politically correct days of television. But the word “harem” has a much more solemn connotation than the male sex fantasy that Hollywood imported. The root “haram” is one of many words in Arabic that seem to embrace opposites. It means both “forbidden” (alcohol and extra-marital sex, for instance, are “haram”) and “sacred.” My dictionary identifies the Holy Mosque in Mecca as “Al-Masjid Al-Haraam.” But these two meanings come together logically in the idea that something sacred must be protected. That's how the word is associated with women - in Muslim culture, the women of a family - mother, wife, daughters, sisters - must be protected from any outside threat, so their quarters are "hareem" - inviolate. Sacred to a man's honor, forbidden to outsiders. Akin to this root is the word “mahram:” a person of the opposite sex that you're forbidden to marry. In a sex-segregated culture, these are also the only members of the opposite sex that you're permitted to associate with freely.

The opposite of “haram” is “halal.” You may have seen the word advertising a Middle Eastern restaurant or grocery store. In that context, “halal” is similar to, though not identical to “kosher.” However, “halal” is not limited to dietary laws, but encompasses all that is expressly permitted in Islam.

I was surprised to find that the first citation of “jihad” in English was in 1869. I’d guessed it to be newer than that, only because it has increased in frequency so much in recent years. Most people are familiar with jihad as the word for an Islamic holy war. We’ve added an English suffix to make “jihadist” - a person involved in jihad. This coexists with the similar term in Arabic “mujahid” (plural “mujahideen”), or warrior. Holy war, however, is only one of several meanings of the word, whose root, “jahada” denotes primarily hard work, effort and struggle. A diligent student is “mujtahid.” Someone who is “mujhad” is exhausted. The word “jihad” itself refers to non-violent struggle as well, in the effort to make one’s heart and mind more pleasing to Allah.

New

Of the third group of words, many are names of people, places or organizations. I mentioned the Iraqi prison Abu Ghraib in the first paragraph because the President stumbled over it in a speech. At the linguistics blog The Language Log, there was some discussion about the meaning and correct pronunciation of the name. There was much debate about the meaning of Ghraib - maybe a diminutive form of “west” or “stranger.” But the first word, Abu, means “father,” and gives the name the structure of a “kunya” - that is, a name for someone as the mother or father of a child. For example, Mariam’s father is called “Abu Mariam,” and Ali’s mom is known as “Um (mother of) Ali.” You may see different transliterations of these words. One of the most famous Arabic language singers is “Oum Kolthoum” - that’s how it’s spelled on my CD case. My teacher commented that this form of address is so common that people tend to get a kunya even if they don’t have children. He recalled a daughterless “Abu Leila” - “there was no Leila” - and he didn’t know why the man went by that particular name.

There are many interesting things to know about Arabic names, and I’ll take a brief detour to mention another one. The naming system in Arabic is quite different from ours. A child is given a personal name, like Ahmed or Leila, and after that, the first name of their father, and then grandfather. Some people go back two or three generations and some many more. For instance, Leila Hassan Ahmed is Leila daughter of Hassan son of Ahmed. It’s also very common to see the inserted word “bin” or “bint” between names. “Bin” is a form of “ibn,” which means “son (of)” and “bint” means “daughter (of).” Thus, Osama bin Laden is literally “Osama son of Laden.” We can see remnants of this naming system in the “son” of “Johnson” or the “mac” of “MacMillan.” Often, in Arabic, there is a final name that represents the child’s tribe or place of origin. The royal family of Saudi Arabia, for example, use the family name Al-Saud. Saddam Hussein’s family appended Al-Tikriti, meaning from the town of Tikrit.

Al-Qaeda is another name that has become only too familiar to American ears. The name of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization is usually translated as “The Base,” as in a military base. Other translations of the word include “foundation,” “support,” “rule” and “principle.” The phrase “qa’eda al-lughat” means “the principles of language,” in other words, grammar.

A final entry in this vocabulary lesson is the word “shahid,” the Arabic word for martyr. It turns up occasionally, italicized, in quotes in newspaper stories, but doesn’t seem to be in common usage in English, which prefers the term “suicide bomber.” It’s an interesting word because it shares the etymology of “martyr,” a word of Greek origin that originally meant “witness.” “Shahid” also means witness. The proclamation of faith in Islam is known as the “shahada,” just as the word “witness” is often used among evangelical Christians to refer to a statement of faith. The root “sh-h-d” also shows up in “shahaada,” the verb for watching TV.

Words are like people you meet - they are who they are at any given moment, but they also have their stories, their hidden histories, often unimaginable at first glance.

Nancy Heiges

Nancy Heiges