Acceso usuarios
Abdullah Hassan Al-Saqqaf
The aim of this paper is to explore loanwords in Hadrami Arabic (Yemen). Most of these words, which are now diminishing due to the social and economical development in the region, reflect some stage of bilingualism when the Hadram's (natives of Hadramawt, Yemen) migrated to different parts of the world. The donor languages range from the tongues of the Indian subcontinent to the languages of the Malay archipelago, to Swahili and English. These loans are confined, as one would expect, to certain registers such as food or modern technology. The language contact resulted in different morphological and phonological processes and examples are given on how such loanwords became integrated in the dialect to the extent that some eminent folk-poets did not hesitate in using them in their poetry. In the appendix, a list of loanwords is given with their meanings and origins.
