9 Comments
2245
Yes. In foreign names, we sometimes pronounce ج as G in "Great" so it sounds closer to the original name.
- 2245
From French “Angleterre”, yes :-)
France has a long history in the Middle-East and its influence shows in modern words.
respectful correction: France has a long history in parts of the Middle East - less than 50% Its influence thus shows strongly in Levantine Arabic dialect, spoken by about 10% of Arabs. But the generalization cannot be made as such for 'Arabic' (MSA). This answer has regional bias.
Egyptian Arabic for instance (twice as many speakers than Levantine) say the same word for England in their dialect derived from Italian not French. And Arabians in the Gulf (about 20% more speakers than Levantine) say the same word in their dialect derived in turn from Egyptian Arabic.
I thought in Arabic, England was just "Engalind" or "Engalund" or something like that. "Angiltiraa" sounds like a super traditional inversion of non-Arabic place names, kinda like calling Alexandria "Al-Iskandria."
