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
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That's why it's depressing You want to be reminded that you're essentially a sexual cripple because of your gender? I don't.
And yeah, the article seems laughably shallow and there are plenty of things you can find wrong about it, and I'm over-reacting, but it's a neurose, and yes, I'm aware of it, and yes, I'm trying not too think about it too hard, because if I do I'll either want to cry or smash things.
And yeah, Hani found it amusing and swears that I was a woman in a past life, because I'm blubbering over not being invited into (apparently) the Giant Lesbian Orgy that is womankind.