Spelling Peculiarities of Portuguese Texts in the Arabic Script of the XVI Century

Abstract

The study aims to develop a method for deciphering and analysing texts written in Aljamiado; to determine the common and distinctive features of the Aljamiado of the Mozarabs, the Moriscos and Portuguese Aljamiado in orthographic, lexical and linguoculturological aspects. The study is novel in that it is the first in the Russian tradition to provide a systematic description of Portuguese Aljamiado spelling. The paper analyses peculiarities in the use of Arabic letters, which are rarely found in Arabic-Portuguese texts. As a result, it has been shown that letters of the Arabic alphabet, which are uncommon, are used predominantly in words borrowed from the Arabic language (mainly in geographical names) in Portuguese Aljamiado. It is the spelling of these words in Arabic that explains the specific use of these letters, i.e. standing for sounds usually represented in Romance words by other Arabic letters.

References

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About this article

Publication history

• Received: November 7, 2021.
• Published: December 28, 2021.

Keywords

• португальское алхамиадо
• алжамиа
• арабографические тексты
• арабо-португальские документы
• Portuguese Aljamiado
• Aljamía
• texts in the Arabic script
• Arabic-Portuguese documents

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© 2021 The Author(s)
© 2021 Gramota Publishing, LLC

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)