Arabic origins in other languages’ thank words

After a discussion with a friend about the Arabic loanwords in Persian and Turkish thank words, we noticed that the Arabic loanwords are a noticeable phenomenon in thank words of many languages. So, I did a review of thanking words in many Muslim peoples’ languages to see whether the existence of Arabic loanwords in thank words correlates with the religion or with the vicinity to Arabic speaking peoples. I found that the religion hypothesis is more accurate.

Orange: thank word or reply to thank word is an Arabic loanword, Red: both thank word and reply are Arabic loanwords, Blue: None of thanking word or reply to thank word are Arabic.

The map of Arabic thank words is very large, it extends from the Philippines in the far east to Iran in the west and from Tatarstan to the Indian subcontinent. We can see that these thank words could be categorized into the following groups:

• Tashakkur-based words: the thank words that are based on the Arabic source (Masdar) Tashakkur which means thank. These words are common among the Iranian peoples (except Kurds), and the Turkish peoples in the west to Qazvin sea, namely Turks of Anatolia and Azeris. The thank word “Tashakkur mi kunam” (thank you) could be found in Persian varieties such as Dari and Tajik as long as many accents of Persian in Iran. The word “Tashakkur” could be seen also as a thank word in Pashtu. In Turkish and Azeri the word “Tashakkurler” or “Teshekkurler” could be found (it means thanks), and it is a plural of Tashakkur, and “Teshekkur edirim” (thank you) is also very common as a thank word.
  Whether the beginning of the use of “Teshekkur” was Turkish or Persian, but it is worthy to note that it has come from an educated elite that had Arabic as a second language and as a main language of education. The source “Teshekkur” is not common in Arabic, and it requires someone who’s knowledgeable in Arabic to modulate it and use it, unlike other loanwords that happen because of contact, trade relations, or religious teachings, we see that this one was created by an elite. I think that the origin of the word use is coming from Persian, as the Turks who use it are used to have more cultural contact with Persians and Persian was a language of education for them for multiple centuries.
  We can see many similar sources used in the Persian language, the morphemes of “Tafa’’ul” (تفعل) could be more common in Persian because it’s more suitable to be used in verbs and different morphemes in Persian.  The same thing applies to Turkish.
• Minna and Mamnun: The word “Minna” comes in Pashtu, and I don’t know whether it is related to Minna (gratitude) in Arabic or it has an Iranian origin. The word “Mamnun” could be found as a thank word in Faili Kurdish, Lorri and Lari, it could also be found among Soranis and Kurmanjis although it’s not the most common thank word.
• Rahmat or Raxmat: this thank word is common among Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, Uyghurs, Tatars in Tatarstan and Tatars of Crimea, clearly the word is Arabic, but it is a false cognate, as it has a different meaning in Arabic (mercy), and this makes us think that the religious thanking concept has entered to these peoples and the original concept of thank had been overwhelmed by this concept. It is not known if this word has come to north and eastern Turks by Arabs or by Persians. Using the false cognate could be related to the medium that transferred this word, which may not be the Arabs necessarily. It is still interesting how all these peoples on a large geographical area are using the same word, and it makes us wonder did these peoples have the same concept of thanking that we have? If not, this might be the reason why they imported this word and it spread among them in this way.
• Shukrya: In Punjabi we can see two thank words, “Mehrbani” and “Shukrya”, the first is clearly an Iranian word that means “kindness”, while the second one is a non-Arabic morpheme of the Arabic source “Shukr” which means “thank”, the same word is used in Urdu, Kashmiri, and Maldivian language. While we can’t see any Arabic word in Thank phrase or the response of thanking phrase in Bangali nor in Hindi.
• Barakalla: in three languages of Caucasus the word “barakalla” is used as a thank word. These languages are Tabasaran, Chechen, and Kumyk. These peoples have different percentages of Muslim populations among their speakers. In Tabasaran we can see two Arabic words “Axi barakalla itchvus”. The word Barakalla means “God bless..” but it is not a complete phrase, as it should have something to be blessed by God, the word “Axi” in Arabic means  “my brother”, and that may lead us to a hypothesis of having this loanword by some form of shallow contact with Arabs which doesn’t have a full understanding of what each other say. The thank reply in these languages has no Arabic words.
• Salamat: in a strange case, we find the word “Salamat” used in the Philippines as a thank word, the word is a plural of peace and used in Arabic dialects when someone returns safely or when someone is sick. It is used as a thank word in three languages in the Philippines, in Bikol, Aklan, and Hiligaynon. The latter has a Muslim population among its speakers. The vicinity in Indonesia uses the word Salamet (safety in Arabic) in different greeting forms, and this might be the reason why it is used in the Philippines.

Muslim peoples that are not affected by Arabic in their thank words are Balochs, Soranis, Kurmanjis, even though they are either surrounded by Arabs, Turks, or Persians. Muslims in African peoples also do not use any Arabic loans in thank words, the same applies to Tamazight, Bengalis, Bosnians, Albanians, and Laz. 

Non-Muslims non-Arabs that live in Muslim Arab areas also haven’t been affected for their thank words by Arabic loans. Aramaic in its different varieties still uses original words for thank and response to thank, even if their language is close to Arabic. Similarly, with Armenians and Greeks. 

All that I’ve done was a simple review using omniglot , which I already tested its data validity for the languages that I speak. All that’s mentioned in this article is just hypothesizes, but still, many research questions need answers such as:

• Is it possible that some language lacks the thank words and that to be a reason for using loanwords in thanking?
• Is it possible that the thanking of the god is more important than thanking people? That may explain why the loanword is mostly used by Muslims.
•  Could be there some cultural or environmental aspect that makes some people use the loan word and others do not? Something like having an agnostic term for who is to be thanked, or having separated terms for thanking God or thanking people, this already exists in Arabic as thanking god is totally different from thanking people.
• Could it be that the use of Arabic loan words is only subject to the percentage of using Arabic loan words in General? Regardless of any other factors.
• When did these changes happen?
• What was the reason or the group that caused these loanwords to be used?
• It is worthy to include god thanking words in this work, this could make the image clearer about the relationship between god thanking and humans thanking.