Ojala

Since both classes are review the subjunctive, I thought it would be nice if I gave you a little history on a very common word associated with the subjunctive: ojala...

Modern speakers of Spanish use ojalá! The same way that English speakers say if only it were so or let's hope. The original phrase came from Arabic and means "May it be Allah's will that…" Like nearly all of the many words that Spanish acquired from Arabic, it entered the language as a result of the Muslim invasion that occurred in the year 711. For eight hundred years, the Iberian Peninsula was divided into Muslim and Christian enclaves, but they were not totally cut off from each other. Thus many Spanish (and English) words were originally Arabic words - espcially words used in science, math, medicine, agriculture and architecture. For example, both algodon and cotton come from the Arabic al qutn, and álgebra and algebra from al jabra. This even trickled down to when naming places, Guadalajara means "river of the rocks", the root guad means river in Arabic.