Karla Davisio has been teaching high school English for 5 years, with a Bachelors Degree in English and a Masters Degree in English Education. Now she works in easywaypaper.com and helps student with they homework. In this position, Karla has helped edit and refine numerous students' essays to achieve the goal of creating the most informative, succinct products of Spanish language.

Spanish is a rich, diverse language with fascinating etymology. Because of geography and historical events, Spanish has been influenced by many other tongues over the course of time. Let's take a look at the origins of some common Spanish words.

Ojala
In the eighth century, the Muslim Moors invaded the Iberian Peninsula, known as present-day Spain. It was not until the 15th century, during the reign of Fernando and Isabel, that the Moors were finally ousted. Undoubtedly, the long-term Moorish occupation of the Peninsula had a tremendous impact on the Spanish language.

One example of this is the Spanish word "ojala", which is typically translated as "hopefully." But if we examine this word's etymology, we can see it actually has a religious foundation. Scholars believe "ojala" evolved from the exclamation "Oh Allah," which was likely uttered by the Moors during prayer ("Allah" means "God" in Arabic). "Ojala" later took on a meaning to the effect of "God willing." However, modern Spanish speakers may be unaware of the word's religious source and use it to simply mean "hopefully."

Chicle
The Spanish "chicle" is likely taken from "tzictli" in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. "Tzictli" refers to the rubbery substance that people today manufacture and call "gum." In fact, the Aztecs are often credited with the invention of chewing gum. This word from Nahuatl was probably incorporated into Spanish sometime during the conquest of the New World.

Latin American Spanish contains a copious amount of words borrowed from the indigenous languages of the Americas. Other examples of indigenous loanwords are "cacahuate" (peanut), "jaguar" (jaguar), and "papa" (potato). The spelling of indigenous words is often considerably modified as they are integrated into the Spanish language; this is because of differences in alphabets and phonetic representations.

Sistema
"Sistema" is a Spanish word of Greek origin. A substantial number of the words that end in "-ma" in Spanish come from Greek, such as "problema" (problem) and "drama" (drama). Even though these words end in the letter "a", they have masculine gender and therefore must be accompanied by masculine articles. Words of Greek origin may be some of the oldest words in the Spanish language.

History shapes language in a monumental way. Each word has a unique story to teach us. Look up the origin of your favorite Spanish or English word today; you might be surprised by what you learn!