Somali Language - Vocabulary

Vocabulary

Somali's main lexical borrowings come from Arabic, another Afro-Asiatic language. They stem from the Somali people's extensive social, cultural, commercial and religious links and contacts with nearby populations in the Arabian peninsula. Soravia (1994) noted a total of 1,436 Arabic loanwords in Agostini a.o. 1985, a prominent Somali dictionary. Most of the terms consisted of commonly-used nouns. These lexical borrowings may have been more extensive in the past since a few words that Zaborski (1967:122) observed in the older literature were absent in Agostini's later work.

The Somali language also contains a few Italian and English loanwords retained from the colonial period. A large number of neologisms were created following independence, when Somali became the official language, to express new concepts used in government and education.

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