The Loom Of Language

344 The Loom of Language
large admixture of non-Latin words. Germanic tabes left fewer traces
than in French, and these few connected with war and feudal institu-
tions Many hundreds of Arabic words bear testimony to what Spain
owes to a civilization vastly superior to its Catholic successor. The
sample printed below shows how Arabic infected all levels of the
Spanish vocabulary The ubiquitous al- of algebra is the Arabic article
glued on to its noun
ARABIC SPANISH
poor, paltry misqin mezqumo
water-mill as-samyat acena
mayor al-qadi alcalde
constable al-wazir alguacil
suburb ar-rabad airabal
dram al-ballaeat albanal
cistern al-zubb aljibe
coffin at-tabut ataud
young corn al-qasil alcacel
jessamine yasamin jaznun
alcohol al-quhl alcohol
lute al-'ud laud
None the less, the Spanish vocabulary is essentially a basic stratum
of Vulgar with a superstructure of Classical Latin* The same is true of
Portuguese, which has fewer Basque and more French loan-words.
Otherwise the verbal stock-in-trade of the two Iberian dialects is
similar. Needless to say, a few very common things have different
Spanish and Portuguese, as some common things have different Scots,
American^ and English namesa e g..
SPANISH PORTUGUESE
child mno cnan<?a, memno (a)
dog perro cao
knee rodilla joelho
window ventana janela
street calle rua
hat sombrero chapeu
knife cuchiilo faca
It is not a hard task for anyone who has mastered one of the two
official Iberian languages, and has learned the tricks of identifying
cognate though apparently dissimilar words, to read a newspaper
printed in the other one A similar statement would not hold good for