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>The lexical contribution of Latin to Albanian is simply vast; one previous estimate for the total today is around 600 words, another around 800 (Gramelová 2013
by _dain_ 3y ago
>The lexical contribution of Latin to Albanian is simply vast; one previous estimate for the total today is around 600 words, another around 800 (Gramelová 2013: 101).
That doesn't seem "vast" to me?
- unhammer 3y agoNumbers like that don't even make sense. With lots of morphology, one "word" has lots of forms and derivations. With high frequency, one "word" takes up a huge chunk of any given text. Maybe it would give a better idea if they counted the frequency of Latin-contributed (vs other) tokens in a corpus.
- urubu 3y agoFor comparison: Spanish has around 4000 words of Arabic origin. I don't think anyone ever called Spanish almost Semitic.
- as_bntd 3y agoIt is true that no one would call it almost Semitic, but some very common words are of arabic origin. Taza, guitarra, almohada, albañil, algebra, elíxir, tamarindo, fulano, alfombra, acimut, cenit, café, azúcar, naranja, azar, ajedrez, arsenal, aceite, alcohol, arroba, azulejo, alberca, cero, etc. And also several toponyms, the most famous probably being Andalucía.
- drycobbler 3y agoAndalucía to name the geography is Arabic-speakers’ legacy, but as a term for a people, it can be traced further back to a Germanic root.
- jefftk 3y agoSeveral of the words you list are also English words: guitar, algebra, elixir, tamarind, cafe, orange, arsenal, alcohol. When talking about English origins do we count those for Spanish or Arabic? ;)
- imagainstit 3y agoOnly guitar in that list comes to English from a Spanish etymology, the others come from Arabic via medieval Latin, French and Italian, not Spanish.
- mike_hock 3y agoazimuth, zenith