Mozarabic language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Mozarabic مٷظاراب muzarab | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Iberia | |
| Language extinction: | by the Late Middle Ages | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Italic Romance Italo-Western Pyrenean-Mozarabic Mozarabic | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | roa | |
| ISO 639-3: | mxi | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Mozarabic was a continuum of closely related Romance dialects spoken in Muslim dominated areas of the Iberian Peninsula during the early stages of the Romance languages' development in Iberia. This set of dialects came to be known as the Mozarabic language, though there was never a common standard. Unlike most Romance languages, Mozarabic was written in the Arabic alphabet rather than the Latin alphabet. (Mozarab comes from the arabic word مستعرب, i.e. "arabized").
This variety of Romance is the first documented in writing in the Peninsula as choruses (kharjas) (9th century) in Arabic lyrics called muwashshahs. As they were written in Arabic alphabet, the vowels had to be reconstructed. In some aspects, it is more archaic than the other Romance languages.
This Romance variety had a significant impact in the formation of Portuguese, Spanish and especially Andalusian Spanish, which explains why these languages have so many words of Andalusi Arabic origin (Mozarabic was, understandably, quite influenced by Arabic and vice versa). In Portugal, the local Mozarabic dialects are known today as Lusitanian-Mozarabic (Lusitano-moçárabe).
It was spoken by Mozarabs (Christians living as dhimmis), Muladis (the native Hispanic population converted to Islam) and some layers of the ruling Arabs and Berbers. The cultural language of Mozarabs continued to be Latin, but as time passed, young Mozarabs studied and even excelled at Arabic. Due to the Northwards migration of Mozarabs, we can find Arabic placenames in areas where Islamic rule did not last long. With the deepening of Islamization and the advance of the Reconquista, Mozarabic was substituted by either Northern Romances or Arabic depending on the area and century.
[edit] Sample text (11th century)
| Mozarabic: | Spanish: | Valencian: | Portuguese: | Latin: | English: |
|
Mio sîdî ïbrâhîm |
Mi señor Ibrahim, |
El meu senyor Ibrahim, |
Meu senhor Ibrahim, |
O domine mi Ibrahim, |
My lord Ibrahim, |
[edit] See also
- Aljamiado, the practice of writing a Romance language with the Arabic or Hebrew scripts.
- Mozarab, the Christian population under Islamic rule.
- Mozarabic art
- Mozarabic Rite, the Christian liturgy preserved by the Mozarabs.
- Muwashshah, an Arabic poetic form.
- Kharja, a part of the the muwashshah.
- Ladino language, the Spanish language spoken by Sephardic Jews.
[edit] External links
id:Bahasa Muzarab ca:Mossàrab de:Mozarabische Sprache es:Mozárabe fr:Mozarabe hu:Mozarabok it:lingua mozarabica ko:모자라브어 nl:Mozarabisch no:Mozarabisk pt:Moçárabe ru:Мосарабский язык sv:Mozarabiska tr:Mozarapça
