I really like studying etymology and the origins of words, and I'm interested in the fairly omnivorous nature of English, which has a huge "borrowed" vocabulary. (Random fact: "bugger" is related to "Bulgaria".) So I thought every now and then I'd put up random lists of words English borrows from various languages - well, besides French, German, and Spanish, or I'll exhaust myself from typing. I thought I'd start with Malay, national language of Singapore. Wikipedia already has a partial list , but I thought I'd come up with a list that also included a few other loan words. The obvious ones are words for things that are indigenous to the region - plants (durian, rambutan, bamboo, sago, camphor ), animals (orang-utan, pangolin, cassowary), and cloth ( gingham , sarong). But there's a whole bunch that're less obvious, even to native English speakers from this region: amok . If you asked me to name one English loan word that
Comments
I always laugh when I read that. "We know Cookie's fat. But, see! He exercises and eats healthy food! So it's OK! If you have a fat friend, don't treat them differently... as long as they lift weights."
Will they begin rooting the Seven Deadly Sins out of all the Muppets? Gluttony? Check. Anger? Get Oscar into therapy, stat. Zoe has definite Envy issues, and they all seem overly Prideful. Snuffy's definitely got Sloth-like tendencies. Lust? Maria and Luis, get a room! And Greed? The work here needs to be done on the merchandisers who came up with "Chicken Dance Elmo."