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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Following feelings of your own
And now you are washed up on the shoreline
I can see your body lie, it's a shame you have to die ...
Maybe we'll go, maybe we'll disappear
It's not that we don't know
It's just that we don't want to care
Under the bridges, over the foam
Wind on the water, carry me home ...
People respond to new information. A much more parsimonious explanation is that fisherman are being way more careful than they used to be.