Somaya AbuNima
somaya.eita@gmail.com
Abstract
Throughout history, the Arabic language interacted with other languages, affected them, was influenced by them due to religious, political, scientific, cultural, geographic, and economic circumstances. Therefore, this natural interaction caused several inter-linguistics phenomena. The "loan words" was one of them. This study investigates various factors that affected the loan words phenomenon in the Arabic language through history. The descriptive and analytical approaches were applied.
The study considers that the "loan words" in the Arabic language continued to be influenced by several factors before and after Islam. The expansion of the Islamic country expanded the phenomenon due to the interaction with other civilizations. Arabs lend vocabularies for new things and concepts they recognized out of the Bedouin environment through non-Arab traders, prisoners, slaves, and new Muslims. On the other hand, Non-Arabs borrowed Arabic religious and scientific vocabularies from Arabic because of the religious holiness and political influence of the Arabic language. In balance, loaning words could weaken the target language if it used with no rules or conditions. However, it also strengthens the language and incapable it to struggle existence along with the history by helping in prosperity and development.
Keywords: Arabic language, loan words, linguistic development, linguistic interaction, and Arabicization.