Words that are surprisingly from Arabic

What or who was the original algorithm? How did assassins really get their name? And why does English use Arabic numerals? From cotton and candy to sugar and saffron, we'll explore the algebra and alchemy of Arabic words in English in this episode of Words Unraveled. Welcome to another Words Unraveled. I'm Rob Watts from the YouTube channel Robords. And I'm Jess Ferris, author of etmology books, including useless etmology. And today we are here to talk about Arabic words in English with dash of Persian as well. Right. Yeah, absolutely. have to make confession here. This is bit of blind spot for me. Actually, Arabic is huge blind spot for me. I've never studied it. All that I'm going to say here that say with any authority is information that I've found while researching this subject. It's not it's not off the top of my head stuff generally, but Jess, you have studied bit of Arabic, so I'm going to need your help. am by no means an expert either and expect and hope to be corrected good bit here, but did so minored in Arabic language in my undergraduate degree and spent some time in Morocco studying modern standard Arabic. So although can't possibly hold functional conversation beyond saying yes, studied Arabic in Morocco. No, don't understand what you're saying. do know can read the letters on the page and recognize some of them. My understanding that is that Morocco is about the worst place you could learn Arabic, right? Because weirdly Arabic has got dozens and dozens of dialects. They're not all necessarily even mutually intelligible, but Moroccan is reputedly the furthest away from the rest of them. Right. was in an area where they were speaking where your average person spoke that. They also spoke French and they could understand modern standard Arabic. So got around town while learning modern standard Arabic from Jordanian teachers, Jordanian and Syrian teachers. got around by speaking as many Arabic words as could in moder modern standard Arabic and filling in the gaps with French, which knew just little bit more of. And everyone found that hilarious. But they did understand what was saying. didn't understand what they were saying. That's wonderful. We should explain. modern standard Arabic is it's sort of an invented version of Arabic that draws upon aspects of all of them, right? That meaning that it can be understood wherever you are in the Arab speaking world, right? But no person has it as their native language really, do they? You can find much of Islam communicated in modern standard Arabic. It's sort of the the most classical similar to classical. It's similar to classical. Yes. Arabic, right? Which is it is modern adaptation of classical Arabic. Sorry. Gotcha. We should mention that there's something interesting or at least to us going on with consonants and vowels in written Arabic in so far as you do not write the vowels in written Arabic in most cases. In most cases. Okay, caveat right there. The at the front of the definite article is it's it's vowel and then there's this other yet there. Yes, in most cases. Let's do what we do best though. Let's let's talk ethmology. Get into some words that are in English that come from Arabic. You talked about the vowel sound at the start of the definite article that that al sound as it tends to come out as the definite article. We have lot of words that still have that Arabic definite article sitting at the at the top like alcove, algorithm, algebra, almanac, albakor, alalfa, al cove. Well, don't just list them all, Jess. Tell us about them. Yeah, know we're getting them. lot of those are to do with chemistry. lot of the words that we get in English from Arabic are through sciences, especially math and chemistry. In fact, the word chemistry is probably from Greek name for Egypt because of Alexandrian chemistry which was going on there. Ultimately, it's like it'd be it started as the discipline of alchemy which sounds more mystical now but wasn't as mystical initially and eventually that word became chemistry. But the Greek word here probably means it's alchemia. Probably means something like it's an Arabic adaptation of Greek word meaning land of black earth or something which meant Egypt. That word comes to mean science of trying to turn base metals into gold, doesn't it? Which is when we talk about alchemy. does mean that in English for while as well, although it has it does have this sort of broader chemistry meaning, but there are also related words to alchemy that also have this definite article in them. I'm thinking of elixia because part of alchemy is also finding the elixia that enables this transmutation of base metals into gold and that again is alixia which is probably actually it's the definite article and then the ixia bit is perhaps from Greek Greek word meaning desiccative powder for wounds that's how the OE has described it so yeah but sort of healing powder our notion of alcohol is also powder essentially. So it's from Alul literally the the coal which is fine metallic powder that was originally used to darken the eyelids. We still call coal that stuff that you can use as eyeliner. coal rather than even though they're both dark powders. The substance was originally powdered antimony, which is also word that's most likely from Arabic, but was mangled totally beyond recognition in Greek and Latin. Like it doesn't contain any word element that looks like anti or mooney in Latin or Greek or modern English, but was gradually mangling of word like almud or something like that. Alcohol originally referred to distilled substances like antimony that were used in cosmetics but then evolved to describe any distilled substance and then was narrowed down into distilled strong liquors and then any alcoholic substance. And then another chemical one is alkali as well which is little bit more obvious. don't know to me that just seems like it could have come from Arabic and it does. is from Alcali or mean how do you pronounce the is it's it's sound that's bit unlike throw it farther in the back and it is closer to our sound like the deepest you can make that okay in your back your throat al kali kali kali I'm working on it I'm working on it anyway it meant the soda or the ash and originally an alkali was salty substance but now it is it's base that can be dissolved in water. That is also ultimately why we use the symbol for potassium because the it comes from the Latin calium meaning pot ash from the Arabic alkali meaning the ashes or the burnt ashes. That's beautiful one, Jess. Love that. We also get words like borax ultimately from Arabic, which that was surprise to me. this is probably very ignorant of me but kind of assumed borax sounded brand namey but that word what what is it it it sounds like Pokemon to me. So the word is first shows up in the 14th century as name for useful minerals specifically salt formed from the union of borassic acid and soda. think borax is something like that now. it is it is cleaning thing. think you use it in laundry and things like the multi-purpose cleaner and it can be an odor controller. I'm well outside of my area of expertise here. So, don't know the differences between all the different sodas. don't know my baking soda from my bicarbonate of soda from mean, honestly, don't ever don't ever eat cake that I've made for goodness sake. So, we're going to start separating them out into borax as well. Uh-huh. But the this word is originally from the Arabic burak. Well, actually, it's probably ultimately Persian. And this might be good time to point out that we are seeing good bit of Persian in here. And although they share the same script and good chunk of vocabulary, Persian and Arabic are from different language families, which is interesting, right? and and lot of Persian words ended up in English because Persian became prestige language in areas where Arabic was originally spoken and the predominant language. This whole episode has been lot of fun to plan for while I've been watching Spanish language animated adaptation of Treasure Island from Lingo Pie, the sponsor of today's video. Yeah, Lingopi is streaming platform that's built specifically for language learners, and it's got over 3,000 TV shows and movies you can watch in 14 languages, including French, Spanish, German, and even Korean. I'm really enjoying this show. It's one of Lingo Pi's shows that helps you learn Spanish. And while learning Spanish, it's been fun to try to spot Arabic derived Spanish words of which there are many like aseti meaning oil from Arabic aet and azukur meaning sugar from Arabic augur which is also the source of the English word sugar. Yeah, most people who love languages still end up hitting wall where they're studying stops feeling like progress. And what really like about Lingo Pie is that it helps you learn the way that people actually do in real life by watching, listening, and slowly picking things up in context rather than, you know, staring at textbook and trying to remember rules. While you're watching, you get dual subtitles, so you can see both the original language and English at the same time. And at any time, you can click on any word to see what it means, hear it pronounced, and save it to review later. And if it seems going just bit too fast for you, you can slow the video down or you can loop tricky lines. And there's also this say it feature that lets you practice your pronunciation and it will compare it with that of the original actor. If you'd like to try it out, Lingo Pie is offering Words Unraveled viewers free 7-day trial plus discount on the annual plan. If you decide to keep going, you can use this QR code or find the link in the description below. Geography is everything when it comes to these languages and the fact that they they sit at key position between the east and the west would be very reductive way to put it but between Asia and Europe in particular. So lot of trade goes via Persia which means we get lot of terms associated with trade via there. lot of products end up with Persian or Arabic names. In fact, let's talk about some of those because they're really big ones when it comes to to borrowings from Arabic. mean, cotton, for example, word from Arabic, which you look at it and just actually would never have guessed that it was an Arabic word because don't associate it with necessarily with Arabia, even though that is where it is being produced when it first comes into Europe. And that is precisely why we get that word. But it's from the Arabic. You got to do that thing. But that cotton enters English in middle English. So it enters it in like the 12th century. So the crusades, you know, are still cracking off. There's lot of Europeans heading down to to Arabia and and to the to the Middle East for the purposes of fighting for Christianity. But in Middle English, it is cartoon. And what it originally means is not the the fabric itself in English, but it it means padding made from it that you put underneath your suit of armor, which is really cool. Isn't that what we call Isn't that similar to bombast in English? There is another name for it actually in English and it's act. Actton is actually from exactly the same source as cotton, but the at the start is from the Arabic definite article. So it's cotton is from cotton. Sorry, pronunciation wrong. Actton is from alcoton. Another interesting one here is ultimately the we call tabby cats. You have tabby cat, right? do. Cat with his on the balcony. Yes, she is called Tabby. Her pattern, her coat pattern is called tabby ultimately due to an Arabic word. There was striped silk teta also called tabby which came via French from the name of Baghdad neighborhood called Atabi where rich silks were made. And tfetta is also Persian word for silk or linen cloth. It literally means like spun or woven woven. Until the 1770s, it was really uncommon to hear the English word tabby used on its own to refer to feline. Most people were still using the full phrase tabbycat. And evidently the word tabby was also used to refer to female cats in particular, similar like tabby and Tom in association with the woman's name Tabitha, which helped popularize it as word for cat stuff. sure. So you got Tom and Tabitha. That's So Tabby comes from Sorry, Atabi. Did you say this? It comes from place neighborhood where rich silks were made. particularly this stripey pattern. We're talking about commodities brought via Arabia through trade. Spices are good one. Saffron for example, which is it's mostly used as dye nowadays, but that's again from Arabic zaffan which is mean is what it is. It's crushed stigmas of flower that give this orangey red color. In fact, before we had the word or Yes, crocus. Exactly. Yeah, it is. Before we have oranges, and therefore we use that the word for that fruit as our color, one of the words we're using for that hue is saffron because we're comparing it with something else we know that is sort of that color. Yes. And I'm glad you mentioned orange because that also is it's originally from Sanskrit and then traveled through Persian, Arabic, Italian, and medieval Latin and then French. And it's often said that we've talked about this before. It's often said that an orange was originally an orange, but it wasn't ever that in English. It was naranha. And in other languages, it was naran in Arabic. It was narang in Persian, but the was dropped before it even came close to hitting English. Yeah. think one of the likely suspects is Italian unaransia. Naransia became Yeah, exactly. Which makes more sense. mean, it could have happened in English, but it it didn't. It happened somewhere else. Even in medieval Latin, it was pom de orange, which is apple of orange. Well, that this is funny thing though because there is place in France called Orange and people have heard of William of Orange, but actually the the names are not related, but their spellings are influenced by one another. Presumably, there is sort of folk ethmology idea going around that these apples come from this part of France, which is why they're sometimes being called apple of orange, but actually orange is only called that. Well, anyway, you got my point. There's funny journey that apricots went on. It's very much Latin word, but it traveled through Arabic and then turned into apricot. So they are apricots are literally precooked. Their name is ultimately from the Latin pre cockum, meaning early ripening fruit. So it's related to the word precocious. Children who are precocious are precooked. yeah, you taught me that. love that one. But the Latin word traveled through Arabic, Alberuk as word for plum and then Catalan before it made its way into English as abri and then became in fact in Midsummer Night's Dream there's the line feed him with apricots and dewberries and and so it's it's precocious fruit. Plums and apricots are precocious fruits because they have habit of growing early when frost is still risk. So here's an interesting thing. Oberine means the apricot. Yes. Did you know this? So, we've got vegetable named after fruit. Sugars and candies all come from Arabic. Sugar and candy might have reached English via Arabic. Sukur and Kandi but the their sweetness ultimately is rooted in in Sanskrit. Candi traveled to Persian as Kand which is word for cane sugar and then Arabic candi which became part of the old French phrase sucraandi sugar candy before it entering English in the 13th century. And it was big deal when it was introduced in Britain from the Middle East by returnees from the crusades couple centuries earlier. because English had an enormous sweet tooth as it turned out and by the 1700s between that period and 1700s the construction of domestic sugar refineries made English one of the largest industrial producers of sugary goods in the entire world. and it was always sugar candy as sort of compound to start with and then eventually we dropped the the sugar. And in America you had particular enthusiasm for that word but we over here in Britain we stuck with sweets which was an even older word for for sweet things. The English sugar was Portuguese imported trile and then brown sugar and then later refined white sugar depending on the price point with like the age of colonization and whatnot. The sound in English sugar is an anomaly. No one knows why we've got sound. All the other words for sugar, it's sound in the middle there. But for some reason it became from the French word that before had was so was was we know French for sugar is suk right it's sound but it got softened to but there is precedent for it because the French flacon became flaggen in English so there's something for some reason we get bit lazy sometimes with sound and we sort of soften it to to sound. You mentioned that the Spanish for sugar is adukar azukar. don't know how you say it in the Americas, but it's adukar in you're probably more right than me. Spanish. So, so the the start of there once again we've got the definite article from Arabic rearing its beautiful head. You mentioned that the like sounds. It is also common for that C- sound to be rendered in English when you're trying to transliterate Arabic as it can be it can be There's also there's sound that's more like the French sound that can sometimes be rendered as sound as well in English. But even the word Quran is sometimes transliterated into English with or there's no consistency on that. We've mentioned that Arabic and Persian are from different language families, right? Persian is in the same is is an Indo-European language like English. Arabic is is an Indo-Iranian language, an anti-Semitic language. Isn't that confusing that Persian is not an Indo-Iranian language given that Persia and Iran that there are few different like some of the distinctions invol involve core grammatical structure and origin that it that are distinct from Indo-European in Persian and thanks to there's lot of intermingling because of the the vocabulary because of the alphabet and couple other things but there are few additional letters in the Persian alphabet that are not present in Arabic. And something interesting happens here because there's no sound in Arabic, but there is in Persian. sounds in Arabic are often replaced with or sounds, which is also cool because that happens from Indo-Uropean roots into into Indo-Uropean modern words as well. But the biggest and coolest example of that think is that the word farce is originally the Arabic name for pars the name of the region in Iran where modern Persian evolved which is also called purses in Greek. So Farsy and Persian which are the same language are also kind of the same word. Yeah, that's wonderful. really like that. Another one that's become quite pertinent recently is the fact that Palestine is not spelled with sound. It doesn't have sound in Arabic. It has sound in Arabic, which would connect it to the word Philistine. Right. Philistine. Would you actually pronounce it philistine, not philistine? That's what they said when was when was in church as kid. Really? genuinely never never heard another human say it like that. That's you just you've just opened up world to me. I've been philistine when it comes to the pronunciation of Philistine. Let's get back to some of the word origins. we haven't talked about coffee yet. The Europeans more or less will take it from Turkish. Cafe, but it's probably enters Turkish from Arabic. Pronounced kafa, something like that with that sound at the start with the sound at the start in Arabic. Kahwa. All right. Okay. So, the is pronounced like Okay. Sorry. It's an oo sound that sometimes does wa kahwa. Okay, so that's quite quite quite far off, isn't it? were thought to have originally meant wine and then when wine became well, alcohol became no longer acceptable because of religious tenant. Then the next stimulant which was this drink made from beans of plant that was not called the coffee plant. It had completely different name but starts being called by the name that previously wine was being called by. And then the Turks go absolutely crazy for coffee. And their word is as close to cafe as you need it to be really because that's why the word coffee in many many European languages does sound lot like cafe. It probably goes to Italy first and then gets everywhere else and then France spreads it lot. But the weird thing that's going on with English is that we've got that sound or sound if you're speaking general American. coffee coffee which is weird and you know not easily explained. thought that maybe the Brits picked up the word coffee from specific dialect of Ottoman Turk where that sound was there but it didn't get it from the place that everyone else got the word coffee that's for sure and so the for example the Dutch word for coffee is basically coffee but it's thought that they must have got that from the English how how caffeinating we should mention another theory that does do the rounds and that seems very plausible which is that coffee gets its name from place in Ethiopia called Kafa where coffee has been grown for an awful long time. But that idea is completely divorced from and not really compatible with the Arabic ethmology and the idea that it comes from this word meaning wine. So, it seems like the people who know what they're talking about favor the Arabic idea over the Ethiopian mountain region idea, but they're both worth mention. Yeah, absolutely. And and you could see how either could be plausible and it just traveled through one way or another. It's like although chai and tea have variations in almost every other language, it it's debated where exactly English borrowed the word chai from. and one idea is from Arabic and one idea is from Russian and there bunch of others but like it's the same word in in most languages. Do we briefly mentioned the whole tea chai thing and the fact that you know countries that got it via the trade routes over the sea tend to call it tea or something similar and those that got it via the silk road so over land which would be via Persia tend to call it something like chai. It's kind of neologism, but wander wart is what they call it. It's like wandering word because it it has variations all over the world. Vandervort. All the best linguistic terms are German. Vand. Another one is is rose actually, which is probably from an Iranian root, but we got it from Greek ultimately via Latin, via Norman, via Middle English. It's the Greek rodon is probably from an Iranian root. do worry that if we'd called it by any other name, it wouldn't smell as sweet though. Beautiful clunk. Ethmologically, coffee, tea, these are really big hitters. People like to tell these stories. enjoy telling these stories. Another one that people like to tell the story of is assassin. We should go into this is good one. The word literally means hashish user sort of. So this is the part that people get hung up on because there is big sort of there. So hashishin the order of assassins and assassins alone are western European names for the Nazari is smiley state the which is sect of Shia Muslims who lived in network of mountain strongholds across Persia and Syria from the 11th to the 13th centuries. Because they were surrounded by enemies, they established reputation for employing tactics like psychological warfare and covert murders or assassinations of rival leaders. The founder of the sect reportedly called his followers assassiun meaning the principled people or the people who are faithful to the foundation of the faith. In the 12th century, the Fatimid Khalif Fatimid Khiff derogatorily referred to them as Hashishi, meaning hashishers. He was later assassinated by Nazari agents, some of the people he was sort of mocking. Crusaders and other Is that pun? Yeah, kind of. Kind of. It's sort of like an appropriated insult in some some ways. But crusaders and other Western Europeans blended this information into claim that the Nazari were called Hashisheen because they carried out assassinations after smoking or consuming hashish. And Marco Polo notably journaled about that process in the 13th century and he described young man who was put into trance by potion made from hashish and sent to assassinate target. Beyond these stories, there's no really historical evidence that they used hashish at all. And especially not that they were involved in any ritual assassinations, but nonetheless, the word traveled to Europe through these stories. So, it does kind of mean that, but also super doesn't. And you can link those words assassin and hashish. You just you just you just can because the form that it takes in English, assassin, is informed by the word hashish. It's not from that word, but it is definitely involved. Exactly. So, it's okay because you know, there's sort of revisionist thing going on with with assassin, the ethmology of that in our small little circles where it's no longer fashionable to say it's linked to hashish, but it is is definitely part of the story that made the word what it is today. Precisely. One that you wouldn't expect which also involves little bit of like folk etmology shenaniganing is the word fanfare which is from Arabic. No way. This is the best idea we have is that it is from the Arabic farfar meaning farfar meaning chederer and it's like an imitative word and then it entered Italian as fano and Spanish as feron meaning braggard. Originally this was like someone who was boastful and so fanfare of trumpets originally became like loud boastful sound. It was of course conflated with words like ban and fair, right? But but there's also if you think about it, if you break down the word logically, like sure fan makes sense in the context of that word, but there's no reason that fair should mean big loud sound in English unless it's like all the fun of the fair and all of the noise of it. That's why we we think of it as being like loud celebratory sound is it kind of it made sense even though it has nothing to do with fan or fairs. So that's rationalization of word from elsewhere. We go okay well let's just approximate that sound with fan and that sound with fair. Another cool one is amalgam which you wouldn't necessarily expect to be Arabic and had way more specific meaning originally. Even in English in the 1400s, it was blend of mercury with another metal or any soft mass formed by chemical manipulation. And ultimately, it is it is an Arabic word, algam, pus or an unuant for sores that was especially warm. It was it was an alchemist's term. That was word was trying to think of earlier when we were talking about elixia because it sounds like an an elixir was basically pus, sort of powder that you apply to help healing. should say the Arabic word might also have been influenced by Greek word for softening substance. So it might not originally be from Arabic rootwise, but it was introduced to English thanks to Arabic alchemy. Yeah, we shouldn't play down the Greek involvement in this. It's almost sort of love triangle with the Persian and the the Arabic really because they're also being influenced by the Europeans too in that respect. Yeah. mean, think about how knowledge would travel between like Alexandria and Persia and Greece at that time. Yeah. And so, we have to mention the Turks as well. Turkish. Yes. Ottoman Turkish. Here's one that surprised me when found out about it. the word admiral is Yes, know. Isn't that wild? Well, so what found amazing about it is that there are actually lot of different forms that Admiral has taken down the years and they're based upon different understandings of the ethmology of it. So actually would say that our word admiral as we have it now with that in it is influenced most heavily by Latin admirales where from from which we get admire but that word in Latin is probably influenced by the Arabic emir meaning commander and so you also have in English forms that don't have that that we now have in admiral which are rather closer to the Amir idea of admiral and people have suggested that the al at the end of admiral is the definite article from Arabic so it is that's been like so the amir is is commander and then the al says commander of what the something commander the something and it was interesting to read what the OED said about that it said it's not borne out by the textual evidence in either ther Arabic or western languages. So basically there's not record of the term being shortened to amir al without whatever comes after it. But having said that there were titles like there was air alumin which meant commander of the faithful which was title that was assumed by califf Omar but but the point is you can see that you do you can have that al after the amir. Yeah, it's unusual. You it would sooner be like bin or something like that. Yeah, I'm not sure about the grammatical implications of it. You mentioned that the is is Latin influence, right? And the the assumption there is that it's related to like admirable. There were lot of words in English that were ultimately from Latin words beginning with ad but didn't have the because it was dropped in old French like adventure was adventur and then so so you know said there said there are lot of different versions of admiral in English well another one is French word amiro the reason there's no in that version of it that does end up in English as amrod is just that the French dropped the dh on exactly what you're talking about there. So you can see actually if you look down to just you know the corpus of of the English language since middle English when words are coming in from from French you can see so many different spellings of this word but it's not as arbitrary as varied spellings normally are. The different spellings are influenced by understandings of where that word might have come from. Did you know that there it's possible that mafia has good chunk of Arabic influence and it might be from an Arabic word? So obviously it is an Italian word. It is it was 1875 word for Sicilian secret society of criminals. Is it Italian or is it Sicilian or or what? Cuz the languages aren't all the same, you know, in these places. So, Arabic is often considered the ultimate source since the Arabs ruled Sicily for bunch of couple centuries in the Middle Ages, but the actual Arabic word that it would come from is like no one has found really good contender. So, Sicilian is really what we're looking at, but possibly an Arabic Sicilian word. Those islands are all kind of interesting, aren't they? Because Malta is like that. Malta speaks English and its own language which is curious mix of Arabic and Italian as well. The source of like mafioso could be the Sicilian mafiu and then that could possibly have something to do with the Arabic word marud. Marfud meaning rejected or like outside of society or something along those lines. But the OED is not like yes that you know. Okay. Can we go from mafioso to mattress, which is word from Arabic? Matra. Matra. can't do the pronunciation. I'm really embarrassing myself with these. But it means place where something is thrown. So something is something's thrown down being the implication like carpet or something. so mattress comes from that. It's like It's thing that you would lay on the floor to get more comfortable, which is very similar to what sofa originally meant, which is again from Arabic, shua, although we get it, think, from well, not directly from Turkish. We probably get it from French, I'd have thought. What like about sofa while we're on it is it's really good example of Spanish word that ends with an but is masculine. that means hold on this can't be native Spanish word. No it's not. It's not. It comes from the east. De van believe is also ultimately Persian and Arabic. The the original sense is almost nothing like you would like sofa. It it was something like bundle of sheets or collection of poems. And then the sense changed in Arabic through like book of accounts to customhouse to council chamber and then to seat that you would put on them like like saying like the chair of council or something. It's almost the same logic. To be fair, if you were living in the Ottoman Empire and someone offered you sofa, you you must make sure you don't get your hopes up because where they're likely to show you is the floor basically because the sofa is just more comfortable bit of the floor to sit on than other bits of the floor. We have mentioned math and science or math terms before, but think we should briefly touch on them. it's one of the most important things, isn't it? Is the mathematical influence on English. Not least because our numbers are often referred to as Arabic numerals, although Hindu Arabic numerals or or Indian Arabic numerals is little bit more representative of their origins. But those little digits, the the the symbols that we use to represent our numbers, they do come from Arabic. They're not the same as the ones used in Arabic. Western Arabic is is the way that it tends to be referred to, but which would be the sort of Arabic that might have found its way to Spain, for example. But yeah, our numerals are from Arabic. Why are our numerals from Arabic? Do tell. Well, mean, because you know that the gave us math is this. Yeah, exactly. It's the center of the mathematical world. And prior to using Arabic numerals, we're using Roman numerals, which are awful. Just awful. For example, you can't add things together very easily with Roman numerals. You certainly can't multiply things very easily with Roman numerals. You can't put them in little tables in the neat way that you can with Arabic. And that's because Arabic mathematical system is all about the order in which the numbers are placed. Right? So if you've got if you want to represent 1,322, you have one in the thousand column, three in the 100 column, two in the 10 column, and two in the unit column. And that actually is very good framework around which to do mathematical sums, which is great. But none of that works if you are like the Romans and you do not have certain number which is zero because you need placeholder to put in when there isn't anything in the hundreds column or in the 10's column. And that's why we get zero because we borrow the concept from Arabic mathematicians. But where do we get the word from? We get it from seafur. Right. We do cipher. Arabic seifur. Yeah, which means empty. It basically means empty, void. The Indian mathematicians are just using dot and then that dot turns into little circle and that little circle turns into the the zero that we know and love. And if you take that shifer and you pass it through various European languages working your way up north until eventually get to English, you get zero. but if you take it little more directly, you get the English word cipher. We should mention who's largely responsible for us getting zero. certain mathematician whose works are resurrected during the Renaissance or even earlier than the Renaissance really during the medieval period, the sort of late medieval period in Europe. His works written in the 9th and 10th centuries think suddenly get reread and everyone in Europe goes, my gosh, this is this is very good way of doing numbers. Who's that man?" That's alismi, the source of the word algorithm. Yeah, algorithm is from Latin rendering of his name. His name being the person from what's the name of the place that he's from, but it's something like that. It's like Da Vinci. Yeah, exactly. Same concept. love the name of his book. We've mentioned it before on this podcast, but I'm going to say it again because it's fun. It's called which means in English the compendious book on calculation by completion and balancing wait we need to use the word compendious more in English literally means hanging together this is this is compendious friendship penduluming together if you're getting deja vu yeah we did discuss this before when we discussed numbers but it is it is worth going you can't talk about Arabic influence on English without going into this stuff again. And you also can't talk about alkarismi without talking about one other mathematical word that he did give us. Algebra. Algebra. What does it literally mean? reunion of broken parts to the extent that it was also word for the process of setting broken bones. Even in English, algebra, it's means of solving quadratic equations. think to start with, you remember quadratic equations from school, but but now we talk about algebra. We talk about letters replacing numbers and and stuff like that. But yeah, it's all from Alarismi. don't know how common it is now, but apparently Italian, Portuguese, and Catalan have or have had medical term, algebraista, which would be like algebraist in English. That still means like bone setter or someone who re repositions dislocated bones. But that one man responsible for well definitely responsible for two words, although one of them he wouldn't have known about. and maybe gets the most credit of any individual for the word zero. Another mathematical term that don't know if we discussed in our math related episode was sign the in trinkidometry. It's kind of it's wrong. The Latin word was in Gerardo of Cremona's medieval Latin translation of Arabic geometry publications that took the Arabic jea meaning the cord of an arc or the curve of of strung bow and arrow which he confused with jaib meaning bundle or bosom or fold in garment which is also what our word sinus means. It's comparing like foldy garmenty curvy things to sinus means bosom. Yeah. Also that can see your face bosoms. Hopefully not. You don't have to look way up in there. You're in real joy if someone can see your sinus. Yeah. Right. That point. Sinus is used today today to refer to those passages in our face that plug up every springtime. The meaning of the Latin sinus was much broader. meant any fold or bend or curve including boobs when we talk about sign sign sine wave is related to our sinuses though it is supposed to be related to the curve of bow another interesting word that we've addressed this before and it's mind-blowing every time think is that every sense of the word check comes from the game of chess which is also from Arabic and Persian the phrase is shamat which came into Arabic from Persian with twist In Persian, mat meant to be astonished and mata meant to die. But could also be declined form of mata meaning he died. So in Persian, sha mat meant the king or the sha is astonished or left helpless or stumped. Basically the king literally can't even but when when shamat can't even so that's what happens when you when you win chess right that's checkmate. So when Shamat came into Arabic, it came into English as checkmate. That mat was mistransated so that it could came to mean the king died. Like checkmate, the word check comes from the game of chess which is very ancient. The English name of the game was from the old French esess meaning chessmen. Plural of eschek meaning that the name of the game itself which came by way of Latin from the Persian sha or king. And then the original name of the game in in in Sanskrit was Shatarongo, which referred to the the four subdivisions. It had it had like different armies back then, horses, elephants, chariots, and foot foot soldiers. And shamat was what you said when you won, just like checkmate today. And then the word achie was old French for check in chess, which was adopted into English as ex-checker. Originally word for chess board. ex-checker and the word check or check quue or ck which is the slip of paper you use to move money around evidently came to be associated with finance and government because in Norman England people did their accounting on cloth divided into squares like chessboard. And then other uses of check like ticking something off of list or asking for the check at restaurant also appear to have come from this process because counters were placed in certain squares on the cloth to note that the corresponding items had been counted or verified. It's insane. Yeah. Yeah, think there's also like less literal transference possible between the idea of the checker and the idea of checking, right? As in, you know, calculating something is way of checking it and and therefore if you've checked it, you give it check mark to show that it's been checked. but do prefer the the idea of putting counters on the board. love that one. There is another game that we should mention before we we're done, and that is the game of Hazard. yes. Which is game that don't think anyone plays anymore, but it's game that was being played 800 years ago. and the the name of it came from French, which had the word azar. It's just dice game, right? Like chance based. It's dice game. It's got load of arbitrary rules that make it little sort of, you know, you've got to get this number, but if you get this number and this number, it means this. And you know it's it's sort of complex one where suppose you're you're relying lot on luck which is why the French word for luck is azar which means hazard but the name of the game goes back to al or zak which is Arabic for the dye as in single dice. always struggle with that to remember that one dice is called die. But that's where our so our word hazard it starts with an And think that's sort of overcorrection that's happened either in English or in French because there's no reason there should be an at the start of it. It's, you know, in other languages it's as, you know, languages that get that word direct from Arabic. By the time it gets via French into English, it started with ha that the French are presumably just ignoring anyway. It's there, but they're not pronouncing it. And then it gets into English and we go, but there's an at the start of it, so let's pronounce the So, it becomes hazard. So, we've got this sense of risk coming from the dice game, which is cool. And then that at the end is is by influence of my favorite suffix that ending which is pjorative. And again it'll be potentially an overcorrection an addition in in French even though it's not pronounced. It just felt like it should be there and then it gets pronounced in English. would hazard to guess that we have reached the end of this episode. Jeff. Yes. There there are many more word Arabic words in English but we have no no longer have any time to hazard look at them. So, well, feel like my blind spot is slightly less blind now. So, thank you very much for enlightening me on much of that. If you can give us any more fascinating facts about Arabic, please do include them in the comments. We will gladly receive them. We'll see you next time on Words Unraveled.