Thank you for that, Kacir! That was very informative!
Via
Dictionary.com's Everything After Z:
Quote:
Why Does English Have Borrowed Words From Other Languages?
English is a More Varied (and Delicious) Melting Pot Than You Think
English—is one of the most incredible, flavorfully-complex melting pots of linguistic ingredients from other countries that’s been left to simmer for (in some cases) centuries. These linguistic ingredients are called loanwords that have been borrowed and incorporated into English. The loanwords are oftentimes so common now, the foreign flavor has been completely lost on speakers.
What usually happens is that English speakers find a word in another language to describe something they don’t yet have a word for. So they “borrow” that word. Forever. That said, loanwords fall into two categories: popular loanwords and learned loanwords.
Learned loanwords tend to come from scholarly or specialized fields, like medicine or law. It’s usually easier to see what language these words came from. English, for example, draws from Latin for a lot of medical and legal terms.
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