I was listening to some Arabic podcasts ( as I would really like to learn it) and noticed how close it seems to Spanish, for example al/el and murur (approx spelling of Arabic for woman)/mujer. It is also seems a lot easier than what everyone says. Has anyone else found this and if so, is there a historical reason to this resemblance?
I don’t know anything about the history behind the similarity, but I can also back you up on this one. There are some similarities and it isn’t as difficult as everyone makes it out to be. I know this because my Dad now lives in an arabic speaking country, so I know the basics 
Just go to Google or somewhere and read up on Spain’s history. It’s fascinating and will explain a lot.
Just read up on some of the lexical influences. It is actually very interesting. I’ll put the two articles here I was reading.
Arabic influence on the Spanish language:
Lexical influences on the Spanish language:
I’ll read up on Spain’s history later today or even better, see if LingQ has any lessons on it. First though, I have chores 
Thanks for the links!
The typical spanish “flamenco” is also a “rip off” the traditional arabic music (I should add I like the arabic one but not the spanish flamenco xD).
Thanks Berta, Spain has obviously been influenced a lot by Arabic things then.
Much of Spain was ruled by Arabs for over 700 years. There are many Arabic load words in Spanish. I am not aware of any Spanish influence on Arabic. “Mujer” however,referring to your earlier post gizmo, is not of Arabic origin, but of Latin origin.
What interests me is the presence of the “th” sound (in English terms) in Spanish and Galician. This sound occurred in a number of Germanic languages and then disappeared, and in Greek and Arabic. Here is one comment I found on the web.
“Most likely, the th sound in Castilian Spanish already existed in the Vulgar Latin of central Spain even in Roman times as William J. Entwhistle suggests in his book “Entwistle, The Spanish Language, Together with Portuguese, Catalan and Basque” (1962). There was a strong Punic or Carthaginian influence in that region which might have been the source. Punic (also called Phoenecian, was a Semitic language).”
Yes, 800 years of Arabic invasion has left a big imprint in Spain! :)))
@steve: Okay. The podcast I was listening to was in modern arabic so could it be that it was the other way around, with the latin influenced areas of Spain actually influencing the arab speaking parts for some of the words?
gizmo, highly unlikely.
@gizmo
“I was listening to some Arabic podcasts” are there with text?
Please can you put the link here?
regards!
Spanish and Portuguese were very influenced by the Arabic culture and language. Almost all the words which start with “AL” or “AÇ” come from Arabic, for example:
Portuguese: Açafrão
Arabic: Azzafaran* (written in another script, of course. It represents the pronounciation only)
English: Saffron
Portuguese: Açúcar
Arabic: Assukar*
English: Sugar
Portuguese: Alicate
Arabic: Allikkát*
English: Pliers
Portuguese: Armazém
Arabic: al-Makhzan*
English: Warehouse
Portuguese: Arroz
Arabic: Arruzz*
English: Rice
Thank you for the Portuguese connection. Very interesting.