Oh they do, but the weird multi root nature of English, and it’s tendency to aggressively ransack other languages for vocabulary tends to give it a little more wiggle room for describing ideas. The cost being it’s evil to learn, compared to a lot of languages. Just try reading the poem “The chaos” aloud.
I speak 7 different european languages and they’re all like that.
It’s not by chance that “yogurt” is pretty much the same word in just about all languages (different spelling at times, similar sounding), being originally a Turkish word, and similarly for “helicopter” which comes from the Greek, whilst all the ways to say “tea” in the whole wide world pretty much derive from just three root words - tea, cha and chai.
My own native language - Portuguese - seems to have spread around the world for just nautical terms around sailing and pretty much nothing else which kinda makes sense since at one point when Portugal was an empire, that’s the technology is developed. (Curiously the word in India for a certain kind of bread - “Pao” - derives from the Portuguese word for bread - “Pão” - probably because the Indian city of Goa was controlled by Portugal for a couple of centuries),
it’s tendency to aggressively ransack other languages for vocabulary
I feel like this hasn’t happened as much as people think in the last century or so, it’s much more the other way around, almost every language now adds a lot of english vocabulary.
the word first appeared in English in the later part of the 19th century. By the mid-20th century smorgasbord was being used outside of food-related contexts to refer to something that comprises a mixture or assemblage of different parts.
German uses these two words as well, and until 5 minutes ago I didn’t even know they were of Swedish origin. And it connects nicely to my original comment in this thread where I said that it’s not just english that takes words from other languages and it’s not something that makes english particularly special.
Oh they do, but the weird multi root nature of English, and it’s tendency to aggressively ransack other languages for vocabulary tends to give it a little more wiggle room for describing ideas. The cost being it’s evil to learn, compared to a lot of languages. Just try reading the poem “The chaos” aloud.
I speak 7 different european languages and they’re all like that.
It’s not by chance that “yogurt” is pretty much the same word in just about all languages (different spelling at times, similar sounding), being originally a Turkish word, and similarly for “helicopter” which comes from the Greek, whilst all the ways to say “tea” in the whole wide world pretty much derive from just three root words - tea, cha and chai.
My own native language - Portuguese - seems to have spread around the world for just nautical terms around sailing and pretty much nothing else which kinda makes sense since at one point when Portugal was an empire, that’s the technology is developed. (Curiously the word in India for a certain kind of bread - “Pao” - derives from the Portuguese word for bread - “Pão” - probably because the Indian city of Goa was controlled by Portugal for a couple of centuries),
I feel like this hasn’t happened as much as people think in the last century or so, it’s much more the other way around, almost every language now adds a lot of english vocabulary.
You have a whole smörgåsbord of recent word thefts
Source
You got anything more recent?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Swedish_origin
Moped
Arguably ombudsman also counts
German uses these two words as well, and until 5 minutes ago I didn’t even know they were of Swedish origin. And it connects nicely to my original comment in this thread where I said that it’s not just english that takes words from other languages and it’s not something that makes english particularly special.