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From: dgpi@troi.cc.rochester.edu (Derrick G. Pitard)
Subject: Re: Borrowed Words
Message-ID: <1995Apr13.215557.16421@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>
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Date: Thu, 13 Apr 95 21:55:57 GMT
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In <3mj41n$r7u@news.primenet.com> jpmork@primenet.com (James P Mork) writes:

>My wife was working on a crossword puzzle this morning premised on the 
>idea that "English speakers" know more non-English words than they think.
>Anyway, that made me think about all the instances where I've run into 
>words that got adopted into English because they were so useful.  One was 
>"pajama" which I looked up and is a Hindi word.  Practically on the same 
>page was "pagoda" which until today I didnt know came from Persian-Hindi.

>In her puzzle was "boomerang" which I'm sure is Australain aboriginal.
>And I know I've constantly learned that other words I use constantly came 
>from aboriginal Americans.  Like "toboggan" which is a word probably in 
>every language now that it is an Olympic event.  Or "squash" which comes 
>from the aboriginal word for a vegetable used all over the world.

>I was thinking how educational it would be to locate, within reason, all 
>the native words from all over the world that have enriched English (and 
>often exist in all other major languages, too).  But other than starting 
>on page 1 of my dictionary, I couldnt think of a way.  Unless someone was 
>similarly inspired and wrote a good book.  Anyone hear of such a thing?


There are in fact several!  The one which I remember is by someone named
Serjeantson, I believe, and is called Loan Words in English, and is divided
up by the languages which have lent words to our fair and colonialist
tongue.  Or, it will have the phrase "Loan Words" in the title if you look
it up in some library catalogue.  It is probably out of print by now,
though--I think it was done in the 60's.
-- 
_______________________________________________________________________________
Derrick G. Pitard               "Just sit your ass in the chair. . ."
dgpi@troi.cc.rochester.edu       --David Bleich 
________________________________________________________________________________
