English is not normal, says John McWhorter

[Mark44]

But that's true for every borrowing in every language. What would "returning a word" even mean?

Again, V50's only point is that "borrow" is not the appropriate word.

 

[LittleSchwinger]

Again, V50's only point is that "borrow" is not the appropriate word.

Borrow also means "to adapt or use as one's own". Like "to borrow a metaphor". That's the meaning when it's used as a technical term in linguistics. Seems fine to me.

 

[Mark44]

A similar list as the one you produced can be given for languages from Welsh to Chinese.

I'm not sure that's true. How many Algonquin words are there in either Welsh or Mandarin? How many Malay words are there in Portuguese? How many Swahili words are in Mongolian? English has Algonquin (and many other North American Indian words), plus Malay words as well as Swahili.

 

[LittleSchwinger]

I'm not sure that's true. How many Algonquin words are there in either Welsh or Mandarin? How many Malay words are there in Portuguese? How many Swahili words are in Mongolian? English has Algonquin (and many other North American Indian words), plus Malay words as well as Swahili.

Are you asking if the specific ratio of borrowings from various languages are the same in other languages as they are in English? That won't be true between any two languages. However most languages have a similarly broad source of borrowings, English is not unusual in that regard.

For example Ukranian has Mongolian words, Uralic words, Sino-Tibetan words, Turkic words. Several different linguistic families other than its own, not to mention borrowings from other Indo-European languages. It won't have as many Algonquin derived words as English.

Welsh has racŵn-gi from an Algonquin language and Portuguese has many Malay words (and vice versa) due to trade during the Age of Sail. Similar to how Japanese has many Portuguese words.

 

[Mark44]

Are you asking if the specific ratio of borrowings from various languages are the same in other languages as they are in English? That won't be true between any two languages. However most languages have a similarly broad source of borrowings, English is not unusual in that regard.

What I'm saying is that I believe the list is longer in English than in many or most other languages, in part because of the expanse of the British Empire (on which it was said that "the sun never sets"), but also words from Arabic by way of the Spaniards who came to the New World, not to mention the waves of European immigrants who came here from the 18th Century to the early 20th Century. Your example of Ukrainian lists words from peoples from more-or-less nearby areas, such as the Mongols who swept through the plains of Ukraine and beyond. There are hardly any world languages that haven't contributed at least a few words to English.
In contrast, I would venture to guess that French contains proportionally fewer borrowed words, mostly due to the French National Academy's attempts to prevent foreign words from entering the language.

 

[LittleSchwinger]

What I'm saying is that I believe the list is longer in English than in many or most other languages

Williams, Joseph M. (1986). Origins of the English Language: A Social and Linguistic History gives the vocabulary of English as:
26% "native" Germanic
29% Latin
29% Old French
6% Greek

All other languages across the world contribute about 6%. So English also mostly borrowed from nearby languages, namely Latin, Old French and Greek.

Your example of Ukrainian lists words from peoples from more-or-less nearby areas, such as the Mongols who swept through the plains of Ukraine and beyond.

That's not really different from English per the above. Borrowings are mostly from nearby languages, with a smaller amount from other languages further afield. If you list out all sources the contributions are just as wide as English, but the ratios are different with the highest ratios from close languages. Just as in the case of English.

 

[jedishrfu]

Do you think we can all agree to get back to the essence of this thread?

 

[LittleSchwinger]

Do you think we can all agree to get back to the essence of this thread?

Well that's what I'm talking about, when you actually analyse it as linguists have English is pretty normal.

 

[Mark44]

All other languages across the world contribute about 6%.

The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, of 1989, counts 600,000 words. The 6% of "other languages" makes up about 36,000 words.

So English also mostly borrowed from nearby languages, namely Latin, Old French and Greek.

I'm not talking about words borrowed from nearby languages -- I'm talking about words from countries far away from the Anglosphere -- including words from Asia, Africa, and elsewhere.

Per this site, https://www.dictionary.com/e/borrowed-words/

Loanwords make up 80% of English
What this means is that there is no such thing as pure English. English is a delectable, slow-cooked language of languages. As lexicographer Kory Stamper explains, “English has been borrowing words from other languages since its infancy.” As many as 350 other languages are represented and their linguistic contributions actually make up about 80% of English!

Ranking from most influential to least, English is composed of words from: Latin, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Scandinavian, Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, Sanskrit, Russian, Maori, Hindi, Hebrew, Persian, Malay, Urdu, Irish, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Chinese, Turkish, Norwegian, Zulu, and Swahili. And, that’s not even 10% of the 350 languages in the English melting pot.

Fewer than half of the 16 languages listed above could be counted as "nearby" languages.

 

[Mark44]

Do you think we can all agree to get back to the essence of this thread?

Which is whether English is or is not a "normal language." I maintain that because of the plethora of borrowed words, it is not.

 

[Vanadium 50]

One can argue that English is a Romance vocabulary grafted onto a Germanic structure.

Is that "normal"? Well, it's normal for English!

 

[Hornbein]

Indonesian/Malaysian has words from Spanish, English, Dutch, Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, and French.

Japanese has lots of borrowed words but they are usually unrecognizable. bāsudē raibu is "birthday live."

 

[LittleSchwinger]

I'm not talking about words borrowed from nearby languages -- I'm talking about words from countries far away from the Anglosphere -- including words from Asia, Africa, and elsewhere.

I understand. I'm saying that in total English has about 6% of its words, as per the monograph above, consisting of borrowings from such far away languages. This isn't that unusual. Take Japanese. 8% of its words are directly taken from such distant languages (金田一京, ed. (2001). 新選国語辞典. 小学館) and another 6% come from hybridising between such borrowings from distant languages (same source).

So that's 14% of "far away borrowings", compared to the 6% of English. Again English isn't that unusual. You get figures of about 5-7% for such "distant" borrowings for most languages.