90 post-1949 Arabic loans in written English

Abstract

This is the third in a series of articles on post-1949 loans in English that are recorded in standard English dictionaries, with the Japanese and Spanish articles already published (Cannon 1994b and 1996a), and the German one completed. The first known appearance of the 90 Arabic loans is in the period 1950–93, with fairly even distribution in the four completed decades, and baba ghanoush the newest. The leading semantic fields represented are, in order, politics, military, food, Islam, money, and clothing. The scale of naturalization used in the Japanese and Spanish articles is expanded here to include a top layer within degree [4] to accommodate household words (such as art and the old Arabic loanword sultan). Fifteen of the 90 Arabic loans (listed and briefly glossed in Appendix 1) have inspired 15 English neologisms like pop rai, with another 26 items based on pre-1949 Arabic loans, as listed in Appendix 2. There are 9 reborrowings, as well as some Swahili transfers that transmit the Arabic form almost intact. Arabic now seems to be in eighth place among major modern word-suppliers to written English, with French still first, and Japanese drawing closer, in second place.