But, when it comes to languages of different origins, it would be of a great difficulty to guess a word, as cognates do not exist. Thus, An Arab learning English would such difficulty and would have to guess the meaning through context with the help of an English dictionary.
It would be even more difficult for an English learner to look up an Arabic word in an Arabic dictionary. To do so, all word affixes have to be omitted and word has to be clipped off to its root by following the rules of the pattern system. Such process is not that easy as it is in English when all one might have to do is to take off the prefixes and the suffixes of a word then look it up in a dictionary.
Synonymy and polysemy are two areas of vocabulary all languages including English and Arabic share, and that lead to the enlargement and enrichment of languages.
When two words share the same meaning (not identical meaning), they are considered synonyms. Synonymy imparts variety of style and helps express the nuances of meaning.
Synonymous words may differ in their dialect, their degree of formality, or their evaluative meaning. For instance, “Lift” and “Elevator” share the same meaning but the former being American and the later being British. The word “die” is neutral, “decease” is formal, and “kick the bucket” is very informal. The word “thrifty” is approving and “stingy” is disapproving.
The same goes for Arabic as in أهلا بك ، أهلا فيك and مات ، توفى ، غار في داهية and حريص ، بخيل ، جلده
Polysemy is when a word has more than one meaning. Polysemous words in English may have equivalent meanings in Arabic corresponding to each polysem and the same applies on polysemous words in Arabic. For example, in English the word “Bank” could mean a place where money is kept:مصرف , or could mean the riverbank: ضفة . In Arabic a word like طويل could mean either long for distance or tall for height.
Synonyms and polysemous words could constitute in an incorrect understanding or mistranslation for an incompetent Arab learning English. And a competent language learner should determine the accurate meaning of word through good understanding of the context.
