Ademir said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arabic_loanwords_in_English
It doesn't matter if the Arabs got them somewhere else. The fact stands, you would not be saying it today if it wasn't for the Arabs (except by some coincidence).
Put it into perspective:
Less than one percent of English words are made up of every single language except for Greek, French, German and Latin. And of that less than one percent which includes all but 4 languages (past and present) only some of them are Arabic. And of those words that are Arabic, most of them are actually loan-words from Latin, Greek etc.
So only a miniscule amount of words (a tiny fraction of a percent) are partly from Arabic.
I never said the Phoenicians were Muslim. I don't why anyone would imply I did.
The thread was never about the Middle East but Muslims. That is the obvious reason why everyone would imply you did especially as you were replying in the topic of Islam.
The views that the Phoenicians were of European origin are a minority view, usually proposed by Eurocentric scholars.
Actually, no it isn't the minority view.
The Phoenicians spoke a Semitic language (and this has been attested) which is the language family in which Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew etc. belong to, unlike Greek which is Indo-European.
Yes, great summary of wikipedia
Furthermore, if they were in fact Greek, why would the Phoenician alphabet contain no symbols for vowels? The whole reason the Greeks added vowels into the alphabet is because the Greek language could not be written without separate symbols for vowels, while the Phoenician could.
The written languages started and developed differently as they had seperated between the stage of the change from Mycenean Greek and Proteo-Greek. So what you said just made no sense, on face value or logically. You also fail to understand the origins of people and that independance from geopgraphy. I'm sorry to tell you but Wikipedia does not have all the answers for you. Please use other sources such as actual history books, or jorunals on the development of lexicons etc.
Arabic is related to Phoenician, and Arabic too doesn't use symbols for vowels. Thus neither the language nor the culture of Phoenicia was Greek.
How did you come to this conclusion? There is no logical argument put forward and no causal link. You cannot draw together a language by the fact that it uses vowels. Especially as Arabic was conceived 1500 years after the Phoeneician alphabet had died out. Sorry to disappoint.
In any case, the Minoans were not Greeks. They lived on an island which the Greeks later took and incorporated into their lands, and which has since belonged to Greece. That doesn't make them Greek culturally or linguistically.
You demonstrate such a lack of knowledge that Wikipedia will not fill. I suggest you read 'A History of Greece: to the death of Alexander the great' by JB Bury and Russel Meiggs. It is a long book and quite old now but I'm sure it will give you some sort of idea about what you are saying.
Also
The Origins of Writing and Administration on Crete
Schoep, Ilse
Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 1999, 18, 3, Aug, 265-276
A Text Linguistic Approach to the Syntax and Style of the Phoenician Inscription of Azatiwada
Schade, Aaron
Journal of Semitic Studies, 2005, 50, 1, spring, 35-58
The Structure of the Minoan Language
Owens, Gareth
The Journal of Indo-European Studies, 1999, 27, 1-2, spring-summer, 15-55
Minoan = Proto-Greek. Reflections on the Divine Epithets and the Ideograms of the Phaistos Disk
Neuss, Ottomar