Ottoman-Turkish loanwords in Egyptian and Syro-Lebanese-Palestinian Arabic – Part 1

Abstract

Although the earliest Turkisms that entered Arabic go back to the 9th century – when the Arabs began establishing regular contact with speakers of Turkic languages – a significant number of Turkish loans in both written and spoken Arabic only date from the time of the Ottoman Empire, which in the course of its expansion conquered and for centuries ruled a large part of the Arab world. This paper aims to examine the words of Turkish origin found in the dialects spoken in Egypt and parts of the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine), i.e. the Arabophone regions that have been most exposed to Turkish influence for historical and cultural reasons. It has also been endeavoured to provide information about the etymology of the Ottoman-Turkish words (interestingly, as some of these come from Arabic, the Egyptian, Syrian, etc. words borrowed actually prove to be backborrowings).