Hispanism in the City of Oran

Abstract

The speech spoken in Oran shows a remarkable number of Spanish borrowings due to its strong contact with Spanish population along the centuries. This research work is a sociolinguistic study about linguistic interferences which are likely to emerge as a consequence of contact between Arabic and Spanish languages. It takes the speech community of Oran as a case study. This extended essay seeks to find the main factors and reasons that lead the citizens of Oran to use some Spanish words as well as their mother tongue. A questionnairewhich encompasses seven questions was addressed to a sample from the population of Oran in order to investigate their uses and attitudes towards Spanish language. The primary historical data reveal that the use of Spanish words by the residents of Oran is a result of consecutive confrontations with the Spanish in the Algerian lands when the first Andalusians reached the Oran coast. After that, this Algerian city received in 1492 the Hispano- Muslim refugees and Sephardic Jews who were exiled from Al-Andalus, and a second expulsions wave in 1609. But, maybe, the Spanish occupation between 1509 and 1791 along with the development of a lingua franca used by sailors in the Mediterranean basin between XV-XVIII centuries were the most influential events on the Oran vernacular language. The contact remained with the new refugees and exiles arrival due to Spanish Civil war (1936-1939). And to geographical reasons since Spain is very close to the Algerian western coast