Nuevos arabismos en el vocabulario del noroeste murciano

Abstract

The sizeable body of Arabic loanwords, which became a halhnark of Hispanic Romance languages and will apparently remain so in spite of its conspicuous decrease mainly in the wake of the Middle Ages, has been repeatedly and quite ably surveyed in modem times. In this author's view there are only two main areas in which a few more items borrowed from Arabic or from Andalusi Romance may have eluded detection until now, namely, some dark passages of insecurely edited Medieval Literature, CastiHan, Gahcian-Portuguese and Catalan, as well as tíie slowly emerging vocabularies of the dialects of the matching languages, particularly the southernmost among them. Keenly aware of the danger of extinction threatening these dialects, or at least the oldest and most peculiar items of their vocabularies, this author has paid especial attention in recent years to Arabic loanwords in them, and does it again for one of those areas, the North Western region of Murcia. More than one hundred such words have called for some comment, and some of them can be considered true little lexical jewels.