Friday, September 29, 2023

Arabic Numerals & Arabic Words

I had so much fun looking up Quechua (Inca) and Nahuatl (Aztecan) words that are still used in the English language today, and I thought it would be interesting to do the same for Arabic words, given that I'm currently researching medieval Islam and its contributions to... oh... everything.


Arabic numerals, by the way, turn out to actually be from India and are now more correctly referred to as Hindu-Arabic numerals! According to www.brittanica.com, "They originated in India in the 6th or 7th century and were introduced to Europe through the writings of Middle Eastern mathematicians, especially al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi, about the 12th century."

And zero, of course, has its own incredibly interesting history.

In the BBC article below, Hannah Fry quotes math writer Alex Bellos as saying, “The Renaissance was really sparked by the arrival of the Arabic number system, containing zero. And when that happened, the black and white world of arithmetic suddenly became glorious and technicolour.”

We couldn’t live without ‘zero’ – but we once had to
BBC.com - December 6, 2016


(Next month, by the way, the younger children in our homeschool co-op will do the classic Waldorf Quality of Numbers block where they learn the Hindu-Arabic and Roman numerals for quantities 1 to 12. The older students will have their own Math topic -- learning the history of how calendars and clocks came to be -- and we will do some really fun hands-on projects!)

The enormity of the influence of a civilization on us can partly be measured by how many words from that language have been incorporated into English. Let's see what etymonline has to say about English words that come from Arabic roots (often passing through intermediary languages in the process).

506 entries!!!

Naturally zero is one of them. Here are some more of my favorites:


I think all of these entries are very interesting reading -- I learned a lot of new words -- but I was particularly surprised by all the connections between Arabic and Hebrew. They are both Semitic languages! I never knew that!


If you're interested in more about the Quality of Numbers block, here are my notes from 2016, 2019, and 2021. I've also written an online course. Enjoy!


This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

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