The Middle East in Spanish

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After the Iraqi invasion in 2003, some Iraqis protested the presence of American troops, perhaps afraid that they would just supplant one autocracy for another. As we were watching the images of the protests, someone said, “They look like us.”

“Us” meant Latinos.

Unlike most people, particularly in the United States, when I say “Latino” I usually like to include those who ignored from this definition: they are Spaniards, French, Italians, Portuguese and Rumanians. The stereotype of the word “Latino” usually excludes all non-Spanish speaking Latin Americans and completely forgets about Southern Europe which is, ironically, where the concept originated. In fact, Latino and Hispanic are often perceived as one and the same; to clarify Latinos are those whose heritage comes from a country where the native language is one of the Romance languages, which originate from Latin, and Hispanics are Spanish-speakers – it’s that simple.

But the subject of this blog post is located in two specific regions: Ibero-America and the Middle East. Ibero-America meaning Spain, Portugal and their former colonies in Latin America. 

Indeed, Latinos and people from the Middle East have a lot in common, beyond mere physical appearance. Middle Eastern influence specifically over today’s Ibero-America is rooted in a long history that began with the Arab invasion of southern Spain and North Africa, better known as al-Andalus, and the invasion of southeast Europe by the Ottoman Empire. Consequently, Middle Eastern heritage settled in Spain and was quietly carried to Latin America during the Spanish Conquista. In 1492, al-Andalus gave up its control over the Emirate of Granada to Queen Isabel of Castilla; after bumping into such important piece of information I can’t stop thinking what we, Latin-Americans, would be like if Christopher Columbus’s voyage had been financed with money from al-Andalus instead of Queen Isabel.

http://www.cuandoerachamo.com/algebra-de-baldor-el-libro-del-algebra-de-baldor

This is why one might see similarities between the two cultures. For instance, the use of lime, olive oil and garlic are common in both regions. Latin American music is obviously influenced by Middle Eastern culture – in addition to European, African and native Indian musical styles. All we have to do is look at string instruments such as the Cuban tres, or the more obvious influences such as the Spanish guitar, the wardrobe of flamenco dancers, and even the singing style in flamenco resembles that of Islamic and Jewish chants.

But perhaps the greatest Middle Eastern influence in Ibero-America is through the Spanish language. The three main Middle Eastern languages – Arab, Hebrew and Persian – can be found mixed with Latin and Greek in today’s modern Spanish.

According to various sources, the Spanish language contains approximately 4,000 words rooted in Arabic. These are some examples:

Almohada, almacén, albañil, alcaldía, aceite, oliva, baño, barrio, bata, café, carcajada, chisme, dado, embarazar, fetua, fideo, fulano, harén, hasta, ¡hola!, jabalí, jaqueca, jinete, Guadalajara, lima, limón, macabro, marfil, máscara, naranja, ¡olé!, paraíso, real, redoma, rehén, rincón.

To my surprise, we continue repeating an expression we have assumed to be 100% Spanish – it is really Arabic:

¡Ojalá! – Inshallah (وشاء الل). It means, “God willing.”

I bet you hadn’t noticed!

There is something even more obvious than that. Latino names such as Juan, Pedro, Mateo, José, etc., even my own name, are Jewish. The struggles of various empires to control the Middle East, particularly today’s Israel and its surroundings, resulted in Christians adopting the name of their Jewish ancestors and arrived in Ibero-America known as “Christian names” or typically Latino names.

http://www.travelnotes.org/MiddleEast/index.htm

Persian has had less influence in the Spanish language, but rather it is found in other cultural aspects of Ibero-America and beyond. And yet, we can find Persian words in Spanish such as bazar, which means a popular or public market.

Rather than language, Persian culture’s most significant contribution seems to be in mathematics, science and technology. Those who studied algebra in high school with Aurelio Baldor’s book – a famous Cuban math teacher – would remember that the book cover was the drawing of a mysterious man wearing a turban (looking a lot like Osama Bin Laden). That man was Al-Khwarizmi, a Persian scientist who specialized in mathematics, astronomy and geography and lived between 780 and 850. Persian culture contributed enormously to almost all modern civilizations, not exclusively to Ibero-America or North Africa.

It is always interesting to study languages, cultures, origins because through them we find evidence of unconscious connections among remote and isolated societies. And yet, sometimes these findings are used not to united but to divide, to justify war and conflict. As a global community, we often fail to recognize that there is no such a thing as a pure and unique culture, they’re all overlapped by one another.

The world now has shrunk thanks to telecommunications, so human interaction occurs more often and faster than ever before. We, humans, unconsciously and collectively adopt and discard elements of other cultures and our own, we adapt to other cultures and others adapt to ours, and we communicate is such way across cultures and generations. If you think about it, this is just one more prove that culturally and physically we are hybrids, there's no such a thing - there has never been - as a pure human race or culture.

In that sense, Spanish speakers have unconsciously preserved words of Arabic, Hebrew and Persian origin because back then it was practical matter to communicate in such way and it also represents the time that once our ancestors lived in. Likewise, today we have adopted many words in English because of technology. Most devices and software are created in the United States and English is today's lingua franca. Hence, it is natural that non-English speakers use words in English instead of translating them into their native tongues. Often times, when you cannot translate a way of thinking you are obligated to use the original term. Translation and interpretation is not about literally finding the correct words or phrases in another language, it is about communicating thoughts and ideas from one world to another. There are simply certain things that can’t be translated; that’s why our ancestors instead of translating words from Arabic to Spanish, they adopted them and eventually became part of Spanish. This is, of course, an intuitive process, it can’t be invented in a laboratory the way Esperanto was created.

Today we are going through exactly the same process thanks to technology, which also shows how language has been and will always be the element of society that reflects its own psyche.