Tracing the Arabic roots of trending words 'tariffs' and 'ghibli'

Their use in English is a result of linguistic transfer, experts explain

Tariffs and ghibli are words rooted in the Arabic language. Photo: AP and Sam Altman / OpenAI

Two seemingly unrelated words are making headlines this week: tariffs and ghibli.

The first follows sweeping trade legislation announced by US President Donald Trump, while the second is the name of the Japanese studio whose animation style is regaining popularity thanks to a new ChatGPT feature that allows users to transform their photos into Ghibli-style art.

Despite their differences in meaning and context, both words share a common thread – their roots in the Arabic language.

Let us begin with tariff, a tax governments impose on goods crossing borders. According to Khaled Dalky, head of Arabic language education at the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre, it’s a word imported into western languages, including English and Spanish, from the Arab world. Spelt phonetically as tarifa, referring to the setting of prices, the word tariff derives from three root letters in Arabic: ayn, ra and fa.

“Arabic is a derivational language, meaning all words go back to root forms,” Dalky tells The National. “The root letters for tarifa, for example, give rise to a number of interesting words such as ʿarafa (he knew), yaʿrifu (he knows), maʿrifah (knowledge), and ʿirfan (gnosis), among many others.”

Another derivative, taʿrif, meaning definition, is responsible for carrying tarifa into the financial and bureaucratic sphere. “The word’s function is to provide clarity and specification,” Dalky explains. “It’s widely used in the Arab world with that purpose, as in taʿrifat al-muwasalat, which means transportation fares.”

A woman looks at a Facebook user profile displaying an image generated by Ai in the style of Studio Ghibli animation. AFP

While Dalky isn’t certain exactly how the word made its way into western languages – where tarifa in Spanish and tariffa in Italian both mean “rate” or “fee” – he’s confident that historical trade and cultural exchange with the Arab world played a key role in carrying the word abroad.

“Languages evolve, and so do the meanings of words. Tarifa began as a form of explanation – like a brief summary of a book – but now it’s almost exclusively used to refer to a price list. Perhaps that shift in usage made it universal enough to cross into other languages,” he says.

“This kind of transfer happens often. The Arabic language itself has borrowed some words from Turkish – so this kind of exchange is completely normal and quite frequent.”

An example of this linguistic transfer is Studio Ghibli, which co-founder Hayao Miyazaki – a devoted aviation enthusiast – named after the 20th-century Italian aircraft Caproni Ca.309 Ghibli. Pronounced “gee-blee,” the Italian word refers to a hot desert wind from the Sahara, but it originally derives from the Arabic word ghibleh, commonly used in Libya to mean “southerly wind”.

Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of Studio Ghibli, named his animation company after an Italian aircraft whose name is derived from Arabic. AP

By extension, the word ghibleh, as used in Arabic across North Africa, can refer not only to the wind coming from the south, but also to people from the south.

Muhammad Safi Al-Mutghani, secretary-general of the Arabic Language Academy in Sharjah, says the word evokes the characteristics of nomadic communities, such as the Tuareg of North Africa. “It is very widely used in Algeria, especially in the Sahara, and refers to nomadic people who do not settle in one place but move through the desert and countryside, following the rainfall,” he says. “These people are known by the word ghibli, which is still commonly used in the region.”

With the Arabic Language Academy completing the publication of the 127-volume Corpus of the Arabic Language last year, Al-Mutghani says he is not surprised by the unexpected ways Arabic has left its mark over the centuries. “The meanings are rich and elastic in use – that’s why the language continues to make its mark in new and interesting ways,” he says.

Dalky sums it up best: “Our teachers used to say the Arabic language is like a string of prayer beads. The beads are the derived words, and the one thread holding them all together is their shared root meaning.”