• samus12345@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Of course they are. The fact that they originated in other languages is irrelevant, since the vast majority of English words have as well.

        • TomasEkeli@programming.dev
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          3 months ago

          That’s why he said “the shower-drain of languages”. It’s how English got so rich, by accepting words from wherever into it. It’s like a petri-dish that everyone spits into: wonderfully varied and complex, but not very sanitary.

          Edit: dunno why I wrote shower curtain

          • samus12345@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            I remember reading something about when Asterix (a French comic that loves puns) was translated into English, they had to find equivalent puns since most don’t translate. “Fortunately, English is arguably the lexicon for puns.” Being a hodgepodge of other languages is a big part of that.

        • samus12345@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          Quite literally, yes. They are also French, German, etc. words in other languages. A word’s origin does not determine what language it is, the language using it does.

        • TwistedTurtle@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          That’s literally how languages work. They don’t spring whole cloth from an originator country, they evolve from older languages and are often influenced by other cultures.

    • hakase@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      Ooh, this is a fun game.

      Ok, how about “tea”? Is that an English word?

      How about “chef”? If not, then how about “chief”?

      “Dexterity”?

      “History”?

      “Anger?” “Egg?” “Justice?”

      What about “circle”, “cheese”, and “wine”?

      Do they count as English if the borrowing predates English? “Sand” and “tin”? “Silver”?

      What about if they really predate English like “ox”?

        • hakase@lemmy.zip
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          3 months ago

          Says the one trying to “um, ackshually” entrepreneur and schadenfreude out of being English words.

          Just take the L, my dude or dudette. You’ll get 'em next time.

            • stickly@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              That’s why I never order an omelette at my diner. I just say “egg pancake” because they might not speak French.

              You’re really dying on a stupid hill, more power to you

                • stickly@lemmy.world
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                  3 months ago

                  By my logic an English speaker will know what omelette means, they’d be confused if you ordered it with un jus d’orange, s’il vous plaît.

                  Something like 25-30% of English is native Anglo-Saxon and the rest is borrowed or adapted. By your logic, English doesn’t exist.

            • hakase@sh.itjust.works
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              3 months ago

              So answer my original question then. You know, the one that you dodged while calling me pretentious. Are the words I listed here English, or are they not?

                • hakase@sh.itjust.works
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                  3 months ago

                  Apparently all Japanese is English if an English person is speaking it.

                  coming immediately after

                  We’re not talking about those words, I don’t play whataboutism.

                  Whatever you say bruh.


                  But fine, we won’t refer to any other loanwords. Instead, I’ll ask you to generalize whatever your position is: that is, can you provide a consistent definition of “English word” that will include what you consider to be English words and exclude “entrepreneur” and “schadenfreude” and any other words that you don’t think are English?

                  Apparently all Japanese is English if an English person is speaking it.

                  The linguistic explanation for what you’re getting hung up on here is pretty straightforward (though whether you accept it or not remains to be seen), but I’ll save it for later in the conversation to keep our discussion on topic in the meantime.

            • MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works
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              3 months ago

              Absorbing foreign words has been happening since forever in English. Example: Mirror is an English word, right? No, it’s a loan word from French, introduced after the Norman conquest in 1066. The English word is “looking-glass”.

              Don’t have a cow (English), what’s your beef (French)?

        • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          Irony - from the latin ironia and greek eironeia

          Answer - from old nord ansvar

          Question - latin quaesto

          Pretentious - latin praetendere

          Are these all not English words?

    • howrar@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      If a monolingual English speaker understands you, then you are speaking English. That is my definition for whether a word belongs to a certain language.