The Presence of Arabic in the Languages of the World

The Center for Arab Studies of the University of Bucharest organizes the conference “The presence of Arabic in the languages of the world” from 18 to 19 September 2026.

Argument: The Arabic language, as a vector of one of the world’s leading civilizations, has influenced other languages in various aspects (phonetic, morphological, syntactic, and semantic) and to very different degrees. Beginning in the pre-Islamic period at a local level, through coexistence with other populations, and later during the Islamic period, Arabic expanded over vast territories in Asia, Africa, and Europe, occupying a central place in the medieval era. Arabic words carrying notions of spiritual or material culture traveled widely, penetrating almost all the languages of the so-called Old World.

The conference aims to serve as a forum where the importance of these influences and the role they have played in the development of some languages can be presented. We refer not only to the languages of certain Muslim peoples, such as Persian, Turkish, and Urdu, or to European languages in which Arabic influence is evident, such as Spanish and Portuguese, but to languages worldwide. In practice, at present, there are very few languages that do not contain Arabic words.

We invite researchers to present papers, in Arabic, English, and French, related to this theme.

Presentations will be allocated 20 minutes each, plus 10 minutes for discussion. Abstracts, along with the title, and author’s affiliation, should be submitted at csa.unibuc@gmail.com. The abstract should not exceed 200 words, Times New Roman 12, single-spaced.

The papers will be published in the Romano-Arabica Journal, XXVI/2026. For any additional information, please contact dr. Laurența Pîrlog florentina-laurenta.pirlog@drd.unibuc.ro / dr. Bogdan Cojanu at bogdan.cojanu@lls.unibuc.ro.