Re: More changes in Montreiano

On Tue, Dec 19, 2000 at 12:30:17AM -0800, Barry Garcia wrote:
> CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU writes:
> >In this particular word the <z> came from "emphatic" s in Arabic
> >(al-kas.r),
> >so was voiceless. Obviously that doesn't affect the Mont. form, but I
> >thought
> >someone would be interested to know :)
>
> So, where did the words in Spanish from Arabic come from? Was it some
> dialect of Moroccan arabic? Would I be able to get away by looking at
> standard Arabic? :). Perhaps I can corrupt the spanish words to fit my
> needs and leave it at that.
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