Spanish Words of Semitic Origin
Questions This Article Answers
What are Semitic languages?
Examples of Semitic languages?
Examples of Spanish words of Semitic origin?
Are there Spanish names that come from Hebrew?
Influence of Semitic Languages on Spanish
Lenguas semíticas(Semitic Languages), or lenguas semitas, is the term used to refer to a family of languages from southwest Asia(Asia) and northeastern África(Africa).
Many Semitic words were introduced into Spanish through other languages, such as griego antiguo(Ancient Greek) or latín(Latin). For example, the word camello(camel) made its way into Spanish through the Latin camēllus, which was taken from the Ancient Greek kámēlos, which in turn was adapted from the Aramaic gamlā.
Some widely-spoken Semitic languages include:
In this article, we concentrate on words from Semitic languages other than Arabic. To learn more about Spanish words of Arabic origin, check out the following article!
Adaptations, Calques, and Loanwords
- A linguistic adaptación(adaptation) is a word or phrase taken from another language but adapted to the target language for phonologic, lexical, or syntactic reasons. For example, breeze is an adaptation of the Spanish word brisa.
Spanish Words of Semitic Origin
The following words are semitismos(words of Semitic origin adapted to Spanish).
| examples |
|---|
Semitic Loanwords in Spanish
The following list shows Semitic préstamos lingüísticos(loanwords) used in Spanish.
| examples |
|---|
Spanish Names of Semitic Origin
Many Spanish names have a Semitic origin. The following list shows Spanish names of Hebrew origin.
Learn more loanwords and regional varieties of Spanish with these articles:
