Arabic Loanwords into Spanish
The Arabs ('Moors') ruled parts or all of Spain for 700 years.  As a result, Spanish contains around 5000 loanwords from Arabic.  These come especially from the semantic areas of mathematics, architecture, place names, and agriculture, although by no means are they limited to these areas.  One rule of thumb is that if the Spanish word begins with 'al' it is probably an Arabic loanword, e.g., 'algodón,' 'cotton.'  However, not all such words borrowed from Arabic have this characteristic.

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I would like to thank all of the linguists who have volunteered their time to answer queries posted to the Linguist List. These pages represent a compilation of frequently asked questions about the Arabic language. The HTML of these pages was created by Carmen Cross, a Ph.D. student in Arabic linguistics at Georgetown University.  Please e-mail Carmen or the panel of linguists if you have any further questions about linguistics in general or Arabic in particular.