Which Words has English Taken from Other Languages and How?

Languages grow. They develop; they change. They come in contact with other cultures and are influenced by them. Consequently, new words enter a language and old ones become obsolete.

Recently, we’ve had several articles discussing the transformation of the English language over the course of several centuries. When discussing the most important changes, we usually take some general dates as points of orientation.

Clearly, none of these dates denotes a specific point in time when the language changed at once. Instead, they usually have to do with grand battles or other historical events that brought new cultures and rulers to English speaking territory.

Some of these dates are related to a period when a particular ruler practiced politics that stimulated language change. Such was the case with the Queen Elizabeth’s love for theatre, which triggered the growth of English drama in this period.

Shakespeare is probably the best known writer from this time and he alone is credited with introducing around 1700 new words, phrases and expressions into the English language.

However, even if there are no grand events that bring two countries and their languages into consistent contact, there are still many ways they can interact, especially now in the era of global economy and market internationalization. This is how English has adopted so many words from Japanese, Russian, Italian, etc.

But, let’s start from the beginning.

Old Norse and French

It is impossible to discuss the profile of the English we speak today without mentioning Old Norse and the massive adoption of Scandinavian words into what is now known as Old English. During the Norman occupation, more than 10,000 new words were introduced and most of them are in use even today:

Cake, fog, die, happy, husband, leg, mistake, window

At the same time, plenty of Old French words began to enter English because French was set as the language of the court. The influence of French is readily recognizable today. It is said that 30% of English vocabulary is derived from French, so a great many of the words you can think of right now were probably taken from it.

Liberty and justice as opposed to freedom and fairness, as well as some down-to-earth words such as machine, garage, terrain, collage.

Japanese

Contrary to what one may expect, English uses lots of words borrowed from Japanese. While most of them denote something specific to the Japanese culture and lifestyle (such as martial arts terminology), others were adopted through popular brands. Thus we have:

Tycoon, kimono, Sudoku, karaoke (the original meaning of which was an ‘open orchestra’);
plus, the brand names we all know: Nintendo, SEGA, etc.

Chinese

China’s growing economic power has triggered the adoption of a number of Chinese words:

“Long time, no see” is just one of the widely accepted phrases originally taken from Chinese. In addition to this, there are the following words:
Ketchup, Silk, Tea, Feng Shui

Arabian

Arabic words were introduced into English directly or through another language English interacted with. Here are some of the everyday words that have an Arabic origin:

Coffee, Banana, Lemon, Lemonade, Algebra, Zero, Sofa, Mattress

Russian

The world’s most widely spoken Slavic language has also contributed to the expansion of English vocabulary, though not as extensively as some other languages have. Here are some of the words we still use in English.

Bridge game, Cosmonaut, Troika, Samizdat

Spanish

English and Spanish have interacted for centuries, which is quite logical considering how close the territories of the UK and Spain are. The US and Mexico are also close to one another and their citizens interact in many ways. Some common words adopted from Spanish are:

Vanilla, Macho, Platinum, Cigar

Italian

The most widely used Italian words are those related to cuisine, such as pizza, pasta and spaghetti. Besides these, the following were also adopted from Italian:

Balcony, Cartoon, Gallery, Graffiti

German

Some of the most popular English words of German origin are hamburger, kindergarten, and zeitgeist but these are certainly not all. Since the story of German-English contact is particularly interesting, we suggest you read more about the first German settlers and their influence on the development of US language and culture.

Now, can you imagine how many words of English origin other languages have? How about your language? Does it contain many English words?
And are there any words English took from your language? Which ones?

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