An English word that was taken directly from another language?

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• Nice, Suby! Lots of Indian words in English! Thanks! :)

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  by Marky Mark on August 25th, 2009

• Lots of English words in Indian languages too, Marky.

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  by Suby the Coat on August 25th, 2009

• Languages are so dynamic. Very interesting to find words borrowed and common/ related words. I doubt there are many "pure" languages. Like people. Seems like the world is and always was a melting pot.

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  by Marky Mark on August 25th, 2009

• To be reasonable how could you describe a bus in a single word in any other language? So a bus should be a bus everywhere. Same with bazaar. You could say a market place, but the spirit of the bazaar would be lost.
  Language chauvinists want to keep their languages pure. But my two examples above, a bus and a bazaar, would explain why words must be borrowed from other languages so that a language can grow.

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  by Suby the Coat on August 25th, 2009

• True. Language purists may invent words but it is the users of the language, the people, who ultimately decide whether a word joins the lexicon or whether it withers and dies in the dictionary of the purist.

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  by Marky Mark on August 25th, 2009

• Yes suby - a bazaar and a market are two very different things - they conjure up completely different images. When I hear "market" I think of a dull grey day with lots of stalls selling produce, when I hear "bazaar" I think of heat and sounds and smells.
  
  English is a particularly lively language - it is a mishmash of influences representing a lifetime of world colonisation! and yet also a lifetime of integration!

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  by dea_ex_machina on August 25th, 2009

• Take the best and leave out the rest, thats the policy.

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  by Suby the Coat on August 26th, 2009