Germanic elements in Italian and French, arabic in Spanish
The vocabularies of Spanish and Portuguese have borrowed extensively from Arabic, those of French and Italian from Germanic.
(Marion Pei, The World's Chief Languages, Colombia University, 1949)
does anyone has an actually percent of how much this languages were influenced by germanic respective arabic in their vocabulary?
Well... French and Italian (and I think Spanish and Portuguese as well) use Germanic terms for directions (North South East and West)
Portuguese has borrowed extensively from Arabic???
That's news to me...
Norte sur este y oeste no son palabras germánicas, sino que provienen del latín vulgar. El español está prácticamente libre de influencias germánicas, y las árabes se limitan a vocabulario que en cualquier momento puede cambiar y desaparecer. Por ejemplo hace un siglo a las panaderías se las decía "tahonas", que es una palabra árabe,mientras que ahora sólo dicen tahona las viejas de los pueblos.
Mario not Marion ...sorry
If you can't spell his name properly I must deduce that you just invented that quote.
<<Norte sur este y oeste no son palabras germánicas, sino que provienen del latín vulgar. >>
FALSE.
Besides, V. Latin is RIFE with germanic elements.
Romance languages borrowed the compass terms directly from ENGLISH sailors (cf. Fr. "ouest", not west[pro. "vest"]/guest/or guête and Sp. "norte" for Eng. "north", not "norde")
<<El español está prácticamente libre de influencias germánicas>>
Better check again...
Also, elements include more than just words, they include other features of language like pronunciation/accent, verbal constructions, idioms, semantics, usage...a whole host of other things
For Guest
The book it's called THE WORLD'S CHIEF LANGUAGES, first published in Great Britain 1949
Mario Pei was Associate Professor of Romance Languages at Columbia University.
And I have the pdf of the book and this is quote from the book :
"The vocabularies of Spanish and Portuguese have borrowed extensively from Arabic, those of French and Italian from Germanic"
<<El español está prácticamente libre de influencias germánicas>>
rico
blanco
ropa
guía
guerra
gris
grupo
bandera
brisa
jardin
lista
taco
alojar
ganar
banca
salón
...
I know that book and I don't remember to have read that.
Which paragraph?
I don't see it.