The Arabic Language

hadam
, which must have come directly from 
Arabic 
haḍm
, and 
hajam
, which must have been taken from the Persian form of 
the word, 
hazm
. Just like in Persian, many Arabic feminine words were taken over 
with the ending 
-at
, for instance, 
nasihat
(< Arabic 
naṣīḥa
‘advice’, Persian 
nasihat
).
The Indonesian words going back to Arabic range from complete expressions 
(e.g., 
silaturahmi
‘friendship’) to borrowed suffixes (e.g., the suffix 
-i
/
-iah
, which 
occurs in words of Arabic origin such as 
abadi
‘eternal’, 
alami
‘natural’, 
ilmiah
‘scientific’, but also in neologisms such as 
gerejawi
‘church-’ from Portuguese 
gereja
‘church’). Some of the complete expressions that were borrowed may have 
belonged to a written tradition, since they retain the article in its unassimilated 
form, as in writing, for example, 
ahlulnujum
‘astrologers’ (< Arabic 
ʾahl an-nujūm
) 
or 
aldubul akbar
‘Great Bear’ (< Arabic 
ad-Dubb al-ʾAkbar
). Those expressions in 
which the article is assimilated probably belong to the spoken language, for 
example, 
ahlussunnah
‘people of the Sunna’.
Phonetically, the following developments may be noted. Arabic /ʿ/ and /ʾ/ 
have merged in Indonesian borrowings, as in Persian, through which most of the 
Arabic words reached Indonesian. Both phonemes are pronounced with a glottal 
stop, represented in modern orthography by either 
ʾ
, or at the end of the syllable 
by 
k
(pronounced 
ʾ
), as in 
maklum
(< Arabic 
maʿlūm
‘known’), 
iklan
(< Arabic 
ʾiʿlān
‘announcement’). Arabic /f/ is usually represented by 
p
, for example, 
palak
‘celes
-
tial sphere’ (< Arabic 
falak
); for such words, there is usually a learned variant 
with the ‘correct’ 
f
. In a number of loans, Arabic /ḍ/ is represented by 
l
or 
dl
. 
Thus, for instance, the Arabic word 
ʿaraḍ
‘obstacle’ has become 
aral
in Indonesian, 
ḥāḍir
‘present’ is 
hadlir
, and 
qāḍī
‘judge’ is variably spelled as 
kadi
or 
kadli
. It is 
not certain whether this spelling renders an originally lateral pronunciation of 
the 
ḍād
. A similar pronunciation occurs in Acehnese. This lateral realisation has 
sometimes been explained by the early contacts with Ḥaḍramawtī traders, but an 
alternative explanation connects it with Tamil, where a similar correspondence 
exists (see above, p. 328). This might also account for the vowel ending
 
found in 
some nouns of Arabic origin in Indonesian, for example, 
waktu 
‘time’ (< Arabic 
waqt
), 
abdu ~ abdi 
‘slave’ (< Arabic 
ʿabd
), and
 salju
~ 
salji 
‘snow’ (Arabic 
ṯalj
). It is 
unlikely that these vowels have anything to do with Arabic case endings. 
Most of the loanwords are nouns, but just like Swahili the Indonesian language 
exhibits a remarkable ability to assimilate Arabic loanwords morphologically 
with the help of its many prefixes and suffixes. Thus, we have from Arabic 
ʾinkār
‘denial’ the noun 
ingkar
, but also the verb 
mengingkari
‘to deny the truth’, and 
from Arabic 
ḥukm
‘judgement’ the noun 
hukum
, but also the verb 
menghukumkan
‘to pronounce judgement’. Nominal compounds are also used, as for instance, 
from 
perlu
‘necessary’ (< Arabic 
farḍ 
‘duty’) 
keperluan
‘need’. Abstract nouns are 

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Arabic as a World Language 
331
formed with the prefix 
tata-
, for example, 
tata-hukum
‘legal order’, 
tata-kalimat
‘syntax’ (< Arabic 
kalima
‘word’). A few Arabic words may be regarded as roots 
themselves, for instance, 
fikir
/
pikir
‘to think’. 
An interesting phenomenon in modern Indonesian is the coexistence of two 
variants of the same original, for example, 
fikir
/
pikir
, both derived from Arabic 
fikra
‘opinion, thought’, or 
kadi
/
kadli
, both from Arabic 
qāḍī
‘judge’. In the case 
of the Arabic word 
farḍ
there are two common derivates, 
perlu
meaning ‘neces
-
sary’, and the more official word 
fard
‘obligatory [often in a religious sense]’. The 
semantic development of Arabic loans in Indonesian often shows the prestige 
of Western (especially Dutch) terms: compare, for instance, 
tabib
(< Arabic 
ṭabīb
‘physician’), which has become the current term for a traditional healer, against 
the modern 
dokter
, derived from Dutch. In other cases, just as in Swahili (cf. above, 
p. 320), an Arabic equivalent is preferred over the Western word that is associated 
with the colonial period.