Chrysti The Wordsmith: Loan Words- 3

Greetings This is Christie the wordsmith. Recently on the series we've been discussing loan words or terms introduced from one language to another. English is packed with loan words from many of the world's languages for example from the continent of India come the words pajama shampoo and Guru. The Persians and Turks have loaned us their words caviar tulip caravan and yogurt. When English speakers began colonizing the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries they added to their body of loanwords by borrowing native terms animals figure significantly in this roster for example a possum wop a coyote llama and chipmunk are all loanwords from various Native American languages. Some native food items have also retained their original names in loanwords because squash potato avocado tomato and cashew all of these are native North and South American terms though these words once seemed exotic to English speaking settlers and colonists they as loan words were ultimately assimilated into the language and now appear in

every English dictionary. It's been argued that there are over a million words in the English vocabulary though the number of loan words that constitute that million can only be estimated. The average English speaker uses dozens of loan words every day from the vocabularies of Sanskrit to sail ish from Hindi to Hebrew from Montana State University in Bozeman. I'm Christie the wordsmith good daver bores. CHRISTIE The wordsmith a sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.