Arabic Langauge Influences in Southeast Asia: The Case Study Of The Maranaos In The Philippines

The Maranaos predominantly inhabit Lanao del Sur in Mindanao in the Southern part of the Philippines. It is observed from the related literature that the Maranao language has numerous Arabic words. However, these Arabic words were not identified in the Maranao language, for this reason, this research focuses on identifying the Arabic words that are used by the Maranaos in their communication. The main objective of this study is to investigate the Arabic vocabulary utilized in Maranao language. The methods used in this research is that the native Maranao and native Arab examined the Arabic words in a Maranao dictionary. The findings revealed that there are over 600 Arabic words used by the Maranaos which is explained as a socio-political influence of the coming of Arabs in the Philippines in the 7 century and onward centuries.


INTRODUCTION
The Maranao people is one of the 13 Muslim Filipino ethno-linguistic groups in the Philippines (Gowing, 1979). Previous and current studies revealed that Arab Muslim traders came to different islands in the Philippines in the 7 th century until the 13 th century. The Islamic teachings and the tenets of Islam had shaped the geo-political, and cultural, economic, and social spheres of the Muslims like Muslim Filipinos, the Maranao in the Philippines.
The profound teachings of Islam had redefined and reconfigured the indigenous practices, native culture, and the ancient civilization of the rest of the people of the world. In the Philippines, Islam has played an important role in shaping the civilization of the This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Literature studies show that there is a research gap on the Arabic words that are incorporated to the Maranao language of the Maranao people of Mindanao, Philippines, hence, this study aims to identify the Arabic words borrowed by the Maranaos. This research will focus on the influence of Arabic language of the Muslim Filipinos, which seems to be under-researched. Thus, this study is a novel as it is trying to uncover the gap in the literature of Maranao language. The research method of this study is explained separately after this introduction.
In his research, Hadji Abdul Racman (2021) explored the Brunei-Malay language similarities with Maranao-Filipino language. He found out that Maranao language, and Brunei Malay language have similarities, thus, these languages are variants of Malay language, this proves that the said languages had originated from the Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian language.
The objective is to investigate the Arabic vocabulary utilized in Maranao language. The writers believe that this study is a novel since there is no academic work conducted on any language influence on Maranao, including Arabic. Hence, this study hopes to answer the following questions: what are the Arabic words used in the Maranao language? And how these words are categorised? RESEARCH METHOD To achieve the main purpose of this study, which is, identifying the Arabic words that are used by the Maranaos in their communication, the researchers used a Maranao language dictionary which is a Maranao Dictionary compiled by Howard P. Mckaughan and Batua A. Macaraya. The University of Hawaii Press, in Honolulu, Hawaii, the United States of America published this work which was printed in 1967 in the United States of America with its Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 67-13668. The dictionary itself is a primary source for our data.
The authors explain that the Part I of the dictionary contains 18,000 Maranao entries which were glossed by two to four English words or phrases. These entries are either base words or their derivatives. This dictionary was the first ever comprehensive and most detailed work which banked the Maranao terminologies as important part of the Maranao language.
The examionrs of the dictionary, used in this research, are the two authors of this paper. The first author is a native Maranao. He grew up in Lanao del Sur where the Maranao people live. He has stayed there for over 30 years, and he speaks Maranao language at home and in public places. He is also the founder of a Maranao museum in Mindanao, Philippines. On the other hand, the second author is a native Arab. She lived in Palestine for over 25 years. She is a linguist, and translation Arabic-English is one of her specializations. The authors did their PhD studies in University Brunei Darussalam and they stayed in the same residence, thus allowing them to change knowledge, ideas, etc. The first author explained to the second author the history of the arrival of the Arabs in the Philiphines. Consequently, they developed an idea to identify Arabic words in Maranao language since they believe that new settlers in the past brought with them their cultures, language, rituals, religion and others. Moreover, this work took the authors two years to finish it.
For the procedures, the first author who is a Filipino and a native speaker of Maranao language, was reading loudly through the dictionary, word by word, while the second author who is a native speaker of Arabic language was listening to identify the Arabic words found in this dictionary. The process of identifying the words was not easy as expected. The first author often repeated the same word more than once and the Arabic native researcher was listening carefully to identify the word whether it is Arabic word or not. In some cases, the Arabic native researcher asked the Maranao native speaker to listen to her Arabic pronunciation carefully to identify whether it is similar to the Maranao one. It was clear to the researchers that there are factors that make the process of identification not easy. Among these factors is that Arabic language uses some alphabets which are not found in the Maranao language, and hence the replacement of the Arabic alphabets with another ones made it difficult for the Arabic native researcher. Hence, the repetition of the words was an essential for this analysis. In addition, Arabic language is complicated in a sense that each word has a stem pattern, which is a feature of Arabic morphology; thus, there are many derivations for this stem. That is, in some cases, for example, the researchers found verbs used as nouns. Furthermore, in Arabic language, it is preferred to use the "tanween", single vowel-marks, to clarify the pronunciation. In other words, the same written word can be read in different ways depending on the tanween.
The identified Maranao words which have Arabic origins are tabulated with their English meaning. The Arabic word for each Maranao word is then provided with their transliteration to show the way they are pronounced in Arabic language. Later in another process, the researchers examined word by word, from the table, to achieve the second objective of this research, which is, to find out the categories of these words. In other words, the researchers aim to identify the kind of influence the Arabs brought to the Maranao language in terms of religion, culture, and others. Such categories of classifications were done by both researchers to make the study more reliable.

Arabic Words in Maranao Dictionary
The findings reveal that there are more than 600 Arabic words identified in the Maranao dictionary which the researchers have used for their data. It is important to highlight that this number of words is out of 18,000 entries of the dictionary in part I. This means that there could be more than this number in case the researchers use other Maranao dictionaries. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the dictionary that the researchers have used as a primary source of data is one of the rarest dictionary of its kind and this explains the reason why the researchers focus on examining only 18,000 entries of Maranao Dictionary, Part I. The findings were tabulated; each word is provided separately with its English meaning, Arabic word equivalent, and its Arabic transliteration, as shown in Appendix (1).

Categories of Maranao-Arabic Words
The researchers have identified Arabic words in Maranao dictionary as previously shown. This section aims to achieve the second objective of this study, which is, to find out the categories or types of Arabic words used by the Maranaos in their communication. The researchers came up with categories scheme in which they worked out together in order to classify each word under suitable category. These categories include religion-related words, time-related words, creation-related words, economy-related words, status-related words, nation-related words, place-related words, law-related words, names, languagerelated words, thought-related words, social-related words, attributes-related words, action-related words, nature-related words, and abstract words. Below, each category will be discussed in detail.

Religion-related words
This study reveals that one third of Arabic words found in the Maranao Dictionary, Part I are religion-related words. Some of these words are illustrated below under different classifications. These words are related to Islamic terms or expressions as shown in table (1). Table 1

. Islamic related-terms found in Maranao language
The Islamic-related words also include a holy Islamic places or sacred sites as shown in table (2).

Time-related words
This study shows that there are number of time-related Arabic words which are found in the Maranao dictionary. These words are related to the days of the week, the months of the Islamic calendar, the prayer times in the prescribed 5 times daily prayer, life-related words and periods of things. The seven days of the week in Arabic language are rendered and spoken in Maranao language in its Arabic form with minor changes of pronounciation.

Days of the week
The days in Maranao language which are found in Arabic language are shown in table (5) below. Interestingly, this study reveals that the Maranao word takoim which means calendar in English is the same Arabic word taqweem. The Islamic calendar months are shown ain table (6) below. The Maranao word musim which means season or weather has originated from Arabic language, mawsim means weather or season in Arabic.   Food: this study reveals that the Maranao word taqam/ta'am which means taste of food is an Arabic word which is pronounced as /taa'm/ which means food as a generic term. Examples of types of food are shown in table (10) below.

Table 17. Places names in Maranao language
It is also noted in this study that some Arabic words which relate to the context of place are found in Maranao vocabulary, however, these words somehow have another meaning or context in the Maranao words. For example, the Maranao word darpa which means place or seat, means 'way' in Arabic and pronounced as darb. In another example, the Maranao word maidan which means formal gathering, is pronounced as maydan in Arabic which means a place.

Grammar
The word naho in Maranao language, means grammar in English, is an Arabic word which is pronounced as /nahou/. In addition, the Maranao word tasrip which means 'compose' in a grammatical context is an Arabic word, pronounced as tasreef. Furthermore, the findings reveal a few incidences of Arabic pronouns as shown in table (19) below. Some of these words are archaic as archaic Arabic. where, when /inda/ anta who, whose /anta/ antari Whoever /anta/ (father) and omi (mother) have other Maranao words for them. Furthermore, in an interesting finding, it is found that the Maranao word akiq/aki which means friend originally comes from the Arabic word /akhi/; however, it means my brother in Arabic. In another interesting finding, the Maranao word apid which means ancestor or descendant comes from the Arabic word /abi/ which means my father. Hence, it is not necessary to have the same word with same meaning, yet, the same context still exists, which is, acquaintances. Moreover, other social terms appear in the analysis and they are categorised under the realm of social relationships, as shown in table (21) below.

Attributes/characteristics
This study reveals that a number of words that relate to specific attributives appear in the analysis. This shows that there are numerous Maranao words relating to specific attributes which originated from Arabic words as shown in table (22)

CONCLUSION
In the findings of this study, it is revealed that there are intersection of religion-based words in Maranao vocabulary on other aspects of Maranao vocabulary like the names of the prophets, economy-related terms, sacred places and sites, dates, time-related words among others. For example the words sultan, khalīfah/kalipa, imām, kadiq, moqalam, mopti, oazir/wazir, olamaq, paki, and solotan/sultan are Islamic terms which intersect with status or profession which are related to the religion context, and there is intersection between places and holy places such as kadaralasoad, baitul mokadas, and baitula, these are categorized as places but they are mainly associated to religious sites or holy places. Interestingly, Iaman (Yemen), Arabic form, this would indicate the arrival of people from these places as sources of spreading Islam and Arabic language in the Philippines. The influence of Arabic language on Maranao language was due to Arab traders who came to Philippines as early as the 7 th century. The following centuries after the 7 th century had facilitated further the influence of the Arabic language on the Maranao language through the proselytizing Arab traders and Muslim missionaries who came to the Philippines. The strong relation of Islam and language and identity has deepened due to the fact that Islamic rituals, prayers, festivals, the months in Islamic calendar are spoken in Arabic. This has facilitated further the absorption of the Maranao language of numerous Arabic words. The coming of Islam to the Philippines has a civilizational aspect not only on the religion but also on the language, traditions, culture and identity of the Muslim Filipinos. The Maranao language is like any other language which is developing and evolving through times. Language is not a rigid piece of culture as a part of communicative culture. Language is an applied art which makes human communication and interaction possible. It is itself a tool for learning language, philosophy, culture, arts, science, religion and ideas. It is a useful tool to access to power and express feelings and sentiments. It is flexible and adaptable as indicated in this study. The Maranao absorbed Arabic words and terminologies and used them, hence, language can be expansive to other languages. Today, numerous Maranaos are fluent in Arabic both written, reading and communication since Arabic language is taught in some public universities in the Philippines as part of the curriculum in some degree courses. Arabic language is taught in religious and secular Arabic schools in the Philippines. Meanwhile, many Maranaos studied Arabic language, jurisprudence, laws and religion in the Middle East and Arabic speaking countries.
This study is important because the researchers believe that such study is the first of its kind which investigates the Arabic words used in the Maranao vocabularies. Hence, this research is a novel; the dictionary used in this research was written in 1970 and until today there is no academic work conducted on any language influence on Maranao including Arabic and other languages such as English, Malay and Spanish. This work is significant to those who are in the field of history, linguistics, civilisation, anthropology, and sociology. In addition, the Maranao students or those who are interested in learning Arabic language may benefit from this study in order to find the common words in their language which facilitates in learning Arabic easily. Furthermore, this work encourages other publications in the fields through investigating other languages influence to Maranao language.

RECOMMENDATION The Philippines policy makers: the legislators and senators
Many Maranao words are lost and the Maranao language is disappearing slowly due to the fact that English and Filipinos are generally used as a medium of instructions in private and public schools at all levels in the Philippines' education setting. Thus, the Philippines policy makers, the legislators or the senators must legislate laws which provide the preservation of the Maranao language, in this laws, it must provide the use of mother tongue as a medium of instruction in primary or elementary education in public and private schools in the Maranao dominated areas in the Philippines.

Educators: primary, secondary and college teachers
The teachers in primary, secondary and college schools play an important role to nationbuilding. Thus, the teachers must enculcate to the minds of young generation the importance of preservation of culture including language.

The Department of Education (DepEd)
The Department of Education (DepEd) is the executive department of the Philippines government responsible for ensuring access to, promoting equity in, and improving the quality of basic education. It is the main agency tasked to manage and govern the Philippines system of basic education. The DepEd higher officials may propose policies on designing a Maranao-based curriculum, pedagogues, teaching manuals and Maranao native-tongue as a medium of instructions for primary education geard towards catering the needs of the Maranao primary students who are native speakers of Maranao language. In this way, the Maranao language is preserve through basic education, early schooling and hands-on practices. Hence, the Arabic-based Maranao words are preserve as well.

The Commission on Higher Education (CHED)
Generally, Filipino and English are used as method of instructions in primary, secondary and college schools both in private and public schools in the Philippines. The Commission on Higher Education of the Philippines (CHED) is a government agency attached to the Office of the President of the Philippines for administrative purposes on effecting quality education in the Philippines. The CHED may allocate funds from the national budget and treasury to fund proposals on policies on designing and developing a Maranao-based curriculum, pedagogues, teaching manuals and Maranao native-tongue as a method of instructions for primary education geards towards catering the Maranao primary students who are native speakers of Maranao language.

National Commission on Muslim Filipinos (NCMF)
The Philippines is populated with Christian majority. Hence, the basic, social and education welfare policies in the Philippines are for general majority of the population. Books used in private and public schools are generally designed for Christian students. The Muslim Filipinos which comprises 12 million individuals are disregarded in many ways in basic rights and welfare including education. The National Commission on Muslim Filipinos (NCMF) is national government agency in the Philippines. One of the NCMF objectives is to promote the rights of Muslim Filipinos and to make them active participants in the Philippines nation-building. The question is, how could the Muslim Filipinos be empowered and be an active participants to nation-building when their education is limited and constraint? Therefore, the NCMF must work closely with various government agencies to closely monitor the basic needs of the Muslim Filipinos including education. It is recommended that the Maranaos and other Muslim groups in the Philipines who studies Arabic, madaris must be funded by the national government to make the Muslim Filipinos feel unalienated and not neglected by the Philippines government. Arabic schools, madaris in the Philippines must be as well funded by the National government to empower the Muslim Filipinos through education. Arabic language is very important to nation-building in the Philippines because all Arabic speaking countries have the Philippines embassies where Arabic speakers and Arabic learned people are needed in its work force and they must be the main actors in diplomacy.

Historians
Historians in the Philippines must see more broadly the impacts and influences of the Arab culture to the culture of the Muslim Filipinos. The historians must re-write the history of the Arabs who came to the Philippines, particularly their contribution to the civilization and culture of the Muslim Filipinos. In this context, the importance of influence of the Arab civilization to the civilization of the Muslim Filipinos is realized on a national level. Hence, it calls on awareness of the non-Muslim Filipinos to the intricate culture of the Muslim Filipinos. It is hoped that this bridges social gaps and trust between the Muslim Filipinos and the non-Muslim Filipinos. The general researchers Future researchers may investigate the influence of other languages on Maranao vocabularies such as English, Malay, and Spanish. The reason of such recommendation is that the researchers came across numerous words from the aforementioned languages while conducting their research. The future researchers may also explore other Maranao dictionaries, if there is, to find more Arabic vocabularies.