The English language has an enormous amount of words that have been borrowed (or loaned) from other languages. This is a collection of tables listing words from the many languages that have contributed words to English. For some languages the word list is complete; for others (French, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Spanish) only a selection of borrowed words is given as there are so many.
Dan Tilque
English is known as a great borrowing language. Among words in the dictionary, roughly 25 percent are native English words, the rest derived from other languages. But how many languages has English borrowed from? The way to find out is to compile a list of words derived from as many different languages as possible.
Before counting, there were a number of issues to resolve. Different references have different etymologies for the same word. Should equal consideration be given to all of them? What exactly constitutes a language? How should language families, creoles, dialects, etc. be handled?
After much consideration, I settled on the following ground rules:
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... only one word per language, but at least you can be pretty sure that word is correctly listed.
Major Periods of Borrowing in the History of English
Loanwords are words adopted by the speakers of one language from a different language (the source language). A loanword can also be called a borrowing. The abstract noun borrowing refers to the process of speakers adopting words from a source language into their native language. "Loan" and "borrowing" are of course metaphors, because there is no literal lending process. There is no transfer from one language to another, and no "returning" words to the source language. They simply come to be used by a speech community that speaks a different language from the one they originated in.
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Product Description
A compilation of English words that are derived from Latin and Greek elements with cross references from the Latin and/or Greek elements or from English to Latin and/or Greek elements.
A learned and lively collection of more than 1,000 surprising and intriguing words that English has borrowed from other languages, along with their often tantalizing histories and etymologies. The word book for people who speak foreign languages every day, whether they know it or not.
