Re: Arabic article (was: Corpses)

Barry Garcia scripsit:

> So, in a sence, yes they do come from Midieval Latin, but that Latin got
> some of them from Spanish, and some from French, according to Merriam
> Webster (i'm more inclined to think they all traveled to Midieval Latin
> via Spanish, since that was the area of Muslim learning in Europe).
Well, "alchemy" clearly has a French form, but that's not to say that
it didn't come into French from Spanish.

Which leads us to the 64-peseta question: why were the Spanish so
utterly unable to recognize the Arabic article as such, despite its
strong semantic and even phonological resemblance to their own article?
The surrounding Romance languages all have clitic articles, and have
contributed a great deal of vocabulary to Spanish, but there has never
been any question of borrowing words from them with the article still
attached.

--
As you read this, I don't want you to feel      John Cowan
sorry for me, because, I believe everyone       jcowan@reutershealth.com
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