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If there were any sense to the English language...............

MROSS said:
Any specific examples of non-English, or those English words which might be helpful in our everyday lives?

- The Italian word 'malinteso' means 'misunderstanding.'

- The German word, 'fehlstart' means 'false start' - a word which might convey a 'haste makes waste' scenario.

Such non-English words such as 'malinteso' and 'fehlstart' are easy to remember, spell, and pronounce in the often hurried 'English speaking world. Are such non-English words ripe for wide adaptation in the English speaking world?

* Discussion continues in next post.............
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English has thousands of words borrowed from other languages. All of us regularly use those words, and new words regularly become part of our lexicon. Some fairly recent adoptions include schadenfreude and uber.
 
Mary Terry said:
English has thousands of words borrowed from other languages. All of us regularly use those words, and new words regularly become part of our lexicon. Some fairly recent adoptions include schadenfreude and uber.
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The non-English words which are easy to remember, spell, and pronounce would be those words most ripe for wide adaptation in the English speaking world.
 
Mary Terry said:
English has thousands of words borrowed from other languages. All of us regularly use those words, and new words regularly become part of our lexicon. Some fairly recent adoptions include schadenfreude and uber.
Click to expand...
It always amuses me to hear someone speaking Dutch, and to hear some words that are very close to German. Then to suddenly hear an English word in all of it. LOL.

I still remember the day my boss (Web Producer) told me about a new product website I had to design. At the end of the conversation she casually tells me, "BTW you'll have to make this site entirely in the Dutch language". I laughed....then she told me she wasn't kidding!
 
This discussion-thread presented diverse examples of non-English words.

What about specific non-English words which are both ripe-for adoption in the English speaking world, and words that deal with those more mundane, somtimes challenging situations of everyday life?
 
MROSS said:
This discussion-thread presented diverse examples of non-English words.

What about specific non-English words which are both ripe-for adoption in the English speaking world, and words that deal with those more mundane, somtimes challenging situations of everyday life?
Click to expand...

Well, it is interesting to speculate about new words being adopted, but there is no "nominating" process for foreign words to be added to the English language. It's not something that people vote on and there is no formal adoption process. It seems to me that foreign words become part of everyday English when a sufficient number of English speakers use those words on a regular basis for a sufficient length of time that most people know the meaning of the new word and find it a useful word to use. I think languages evolve through custom and practice.
 
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