Spain Banned Arabic. So Why Is Spanish Still Full of It?

Spain banned Arabic twice, then expelled around 275,000 Moriscos. But ask for sugar in Spain today, and the word is still azúcar. The usual answer is that centuries of Muslim rule left the words behind. That's only part of it. In this follow-up to the Moors and Spain video, I trace how these words got in, which ones lasted, and why so many are hiding in plain sight. We look at what the laws of 1526 and 1567 actually targeted, and why most of this vocabulary was already old Spanish by then. We also cover the Arabic "the" welded to words like algodón and almohada, where the words cluster, and how some changed meaning. Then come the rivals, like aceituna and oliva, the journey to the Canary Islands and the Americas, how little the grammar moved, and how words like adobe and alfalfa travelled on into English. Some questions here have no settled answer, including exactly how many words there are, why al- stuck, and why individual words won or lost. Where the sources disagree or run out, I say so.