Joan Catalina waited an hour in line for an artist to write her name in Arabic. We are in the pavilion that Sharjah built at the Guadalajara International Book Fair and dozens of people have queued with the patience of desert Bedouins to take away the special memory. When it is her turn, Joan Catalina uses her cell phone to record the artist’s intricate process of dipping his brushes into small jars of green, red and black paint and sculpting the beautiful symbols of Arabic calligraphy onto cardboard. When she’s done, Joan Catalina excitedly accepts her gift and reads it aloud: “Look,” she says, “Joan Catalina says here. “No,” corrects her Paola Trinidad, who already bears her name in Arabic. “You read it wrong,” he warns. “Remember that Arabic is read backwards.” The two women laugh, and their laughter is an example of the cultural exchange that takes place at the fair between Arabs and Mexicans, an exchange that both languages have had for centuries and that has enriched Spanish.
“Arabic is the language that has contributed the most lexicon to Spanish,” points out linguist Concepción Company Company, who attended the FIL in a presentation on this influence. “There may not be a situation similar to Arabic with the Spanish language in the more than 6,000 registered languages,” he adds. The relationship was so deep, he explains, that over the centuries those of us who speak the language of Cervantes have replaced Latin words — the native language of Spanish — with Arabic terms like “aceituna” instead of “olive.” There are more than 4,000 words contributed from Arabic to Spanish, in a linguistic mix that includes such delicacies as “orange”, “tobacco” (from tubaq, “medicinal herb that numbs”), “watermelon”, “lemon” , ” “artichoke”, “carrot”… For example, in Mexico, “alberca” is used instead of “pool” or “closet” instead of “closet”. “Arabic has invaded the most intimate world of the Spanish language,” says Company.
An aliphatic expert writes words in Arabic during the FIL in Guadalajara.Roberto Antillón
The union of both languages is so deep that in comparison the Amerindian languages contributed about 500 words, Spanish and English just under 200. We even have Arabic in our surnames, as is the case with the suffix ‘ez’ (Fernández, for example ), which comes from Arabic ‘ibn’, meaning “son of…”. And while we don’t get along now with the artists and writers who populate the Sharjah Pavilion at FIL – the tiny emirate who is the special guest of the fair – it was their ancestors who, when they arrived in the Iberian Peninsula in 711 arrived and inhabited them for 800 centuries, leaving a tremendous impact on art, architecture, science and of course language speaking. We’ve even borrowed expressions from Arabic, like the everyday “hopefully,” or from “Mecca to Mecca,” “God willing,” “zutano,” “mengano”… “It’s an intense contact,” says Company. “It was a relationship of great admiration by Castilians for Arabic, for its refinement.” Sophistication that can be heard in words like “alcázar”, “almudena”, “guadalupe”, “algarabía”, “albaricoque”, “alférez”. Or the same ‘Guadalajara’.
When Joan Catalina leaves the Sharjah Pavilion, which bears her name in Arabic, there is a great uproar in the area: girls are having their hands painted with delicate drawings like fake tattoos, musicians are preparing for a performance or women in their long ones Dresses and headscarves – unlike their peers, they still have to be covered up to the ankles – at the tables in the pavilion, where lively conversations in Arabic and Spanish mix. “We don’t know that we’re speaking with Arabicisms,” says Concepción Company. “It’s a sign that we have Arabic in our veins,” he says.
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