Re: More changes in Montreiano

On Tue, 19 Dec 2000 16:34:08 -0600 Eric Christopherson
<raccoon@...> writes:
> That's a good question, which I have never seen asked or answered. I
> remember that a while ago on the list someone (Steg I think) was
> wondering
> how <ojala'> came from <inshallah>; since then I've wondered if
> maybe the
> *spoken* Arabic phrase in Spain was something like /unSalla/ or
> /uSSalla/,
> whereas /inSallah/ was the Classical Arabic. I know that a
> substitution of
> /u/ for /i/ happens in some other words in spoken (non-Classical)
> forms, so
> that could be the reason for the /o/ in Spanish. But I digress. The
> point
> I'm trying to make is that perhaps the Arabic loanwords in Spanish
> were in
> fact from a spoken and non-Classical variety.
>
> --
> Eric Christopherson / *Aiworegs Ghristobhorosyo
-

I think that probably was me....and i think i may have another piece of
evidence for it being non-Classical.  I once learned a medieval Spaniard
Hebrew poem which had the Arabic introduction _wlh fy albHr ayDa_, which
the book translated into Hebrew as _velu `al odot hayam `od_, which (if i
understand the word _lu_ correctly) means something like "and as if more
about the sea."
Looking in an Arabic dictionary, i found the words _fii_, _(al-)baHr_,
and _ayDan_, which confirmed the translation, but i couldn't find a
meaning of _wlh_ that approached the meaning of _velu_.  I did, however,
find something like _walaw_ that was similar, so i hypothsized that the
_wlh_/_wlw_ difference was due to dialectal differences.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "and for you i will also give... a ferret."