The cohabitation of Greek and Arabic did not last long enough for the former to be influenced by the latter, especially as the Arabo-Muslims did not initially have a very restrictive linguistic policy. It was precisely when Arabic began to dominate the Egyptian linguistic landscape that Greek disappeared. The influence of Arabic on Greek - necessarily limited, unlike that of Coptic, with which it coexisted for much longer - can be seen on several levels.
- Lexical novelties in the form of (a) transliterations (e.g. ἀμιραλμουμνιν amīr al-mu'minīn "commander of the believers"), (b) Hellenized borrowings (e.g.. καλαφάτης qalafāṭ, ğalafāṭ "calfat"), (c) semantic calques (e.g. σύμβουλος "governor" mušīr "advisor"?). These lexical novelties render, as expected and as we had already seen with Persian borrowings, new realities of a religious (αβδελλα, ἀμιραλμουμνιν, μασγιδᾶς), institutional (αλμεδινα?ἀμιρ(ᾶς), μασρ, ἀμαλίτης, μαυλεύς, μωαγαρίτης, (πρωτο)σύμβουλος) and fiscal (θεβεδ, καλαφάτης, μησαχα, ῥουζικόν), which did not exist in Greek and were introduced by the new conquerors. They are few in number: the Arabo-Muslims didn't try to introduce too many foreign words into the Greek lexicon, limiting themselves to indispensable cases and only in official documents. They are therefore imposed by the new power and reflect the administrative innovations it introduced.
- Innovations in the forms of certain documents also testify to the active participation of the new regime in the development of a new form of documentary diplomacy, very foreign to the Greek-Byzantine spirit, which translated rather than adapted the Arabic form. This Arabic form is attested very early on (as early as 643), which could mean that it had been perfected before the conquest, probably in Syria-Palestine. In addition to these deliberate form innovations, we can sometimes find unintentional Arabicisms that betray the Arabic origin of the letter-writer, when the letters are not written by Greek-speaking secretaries.
