Spot the arabic
- Thread starter DALMAR0_0
- Start date
qiimaha sarrifka
dahkli
faa'ido
raasamaal
sicir is arabic but barar is somali
budget deficit and surplus both contain the word miisaan
musalafid
deyn
gunno is not allowance it is like a bonus
TheLand
VIP
Tashiil,
canshuur, siyaasad
Xaraash (حراج)
Qiima is an old loan word in Arabic itself from through Persian. Somali has absorbed a few loan words in Persian from Arabic: Damac, Diyaar etc.
- Revenue,
- Profit,
- Capital,
- Inflation (Sicir),
- investment (Maal),
- Budget,
- Debt,
- Fiscal policy,
- echange rate,
- Bankruptcy.
Caanshur is Somali. Arabic is ضرائب
TheLand
VIP
Nah it’s Arabic sxb. ‘Cushur’ is how it’s pronounced in Arabic. It was an Islamic tax of 10% on land or something. Either way Somalis are mispronouncing it and it is Arabic in nature. You can basically assume any word referring to tax, politics, economics, etc is based on some Arabic word because geljires generally wouldn’t have a concept of it due to historic lifestyle. Not hating, it’s just a fact unfortunately.
TheLand
VIP
Somali includes many loan words from Arabic that most Somalis aren’t even aware of because of slight mispronunciation. It may be up to 50%…
You mean the same lifestyle that is the base of Arab culture? The Badu is the quintessential Arab. And a lot of these concepts in our culture would have probably predated contact with Arabic speakers and probably date back to when we were in contact with Old South Arabians approximately 2,000 years ago given the loans we have from them and archaeological and as well written account (i.e. the Periplus) evidence of coastal towns and trade along the Somali coast back then:
2013 Strata in Semitic loanwords in Northern Somali
2013 Strata in Semitic loanwords in Northern Somali
www.academia.edu
To be honest, Somalis generally borrowed from Arabic en-masse even in ways that make little sense like borrowing coordinating conjunctions such as "laakiin". The Arabic words are just everywhere, even when there are frequently Somali alternatives such as in the case of "albab" where you have "irid". think it just speaks to how integrated into the wider Islamic world and civilization we historically and how deeply Muslim we also were. Ironically, we even borrowed the term for "rural people" in the form of "Reer Baadiyo" but kept our own native term for "city people" in the form of "Reer Magaal" instead of calling our townsfolk "Reer Hadhaar" or something like that if we were borrowing from Arabs.
But sure, you're not wrong in the sense that, overall, "civilization" seems to have come to the Horn from Arabia. Arabia, particularly Yemen, very much is our region's "Greece" in that sense. Though there are some arguments I'm willing to entertain that some elements came from Sudan/Nubia.
The word ḥaraaj (حراج) is not an Arabic word .
كِتَابٌ أُنزِلَ إِلَيْكَ فَلَا يَكُن فِي صَدْرِكَ حَرَجٌ مِّنْهُ لِتُنذِرَ بِهِ وَذِكْرَىٰ لِلْمُؤْمِنِينَ
٢ الأعراف
˹This is˺ a Book sent down to you ˹O Prophet˺—do not let anxiety ( uneasiness ) into your heart regarding it—so with it you may warn ˹the disbelievers˺, and as a reminder to the believers.
Of Egyptian origin. Probably borrowed from Coptic [Term?], itself a compound of ϩⲁ- (ha-, “for (a price)”), related to ἐπί (epí), with a suffix of unknown origin. Unrelated to Arabic ح ر ج (ḥ-r-j) (“narrow, constricted, difficult”). (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)
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TheLand
VIP
But it sounds like it entered Somali through Arabic, even though it might not actually be Arabic, which is basically the same?
