From which surprising language has English borrowed over 900 words?
We’ve all heard of English words that come from other languages, like Spanish or French. And some of us can list them: mosquito, royal, mansion, tornado. But did you know there’s a surprising language that English has borrowed around 900+ words from? It’s Arabic and some of the words we use from Arabic are extremely common! And they don’t all start with “al”!
Welcome to Not Trivial! A podcast that takes a deeper dive into the stories behind the trivia questions you might’ve heard at the pub. My name is Liz, and I’ve been a trivia nerd since I was young. My parents and I would play Trivial Pursuit very often. Still do. I’ve hosted pub trivia, I’ve played pub trivia, and I’m a collector of random history, language, and world culture facts. One of my greatest passions is sharing what I’ve collected with others. I’m hopeful this podcast makes the trivia questions feel less trivial, and more important to understanding how the past creates the present, and subsequently the future. Let’s get started…
Before we get into how or why there are Arabic words in the English language, let’s start with just the language: Arabic. It is part of the Semitic language family, Hebrew is also part of the same language family. Arabic is currently the sixth-most spoken language in the world, a total of 274 million people. That’s roughly the same as French, more than Russian and Urdu, and fewer than Spanish or Mandarin Chinese. The fact that English is the most widely-spoken language in the world will come into the story later on.
Arabic is spoken first in local dialects, and it’s with standard education that Arabic speakers learn Modern Standard Arabic. However, with the advent of social media, written forms of local Arabic dialects have become increasingly visible. The language uses not an alphabet as most English-speakers understand it; it uses an abjad. This means only consonants are represented in the script, vowels are left to be inferred by the speaker. Semitic languages were far more prevalent in ancient times. Languages like Aramaic, Nabatean, and Phoenician.
Linguists generally agree that Arabic originated in roughly the 1st century. Its grammar was standardized in the 600s. Specifically, the introduction of diacritics by Abu al-Aswad al-Du’ali. Diacritics are little markings either above or below letters within words. Adding diacritics allowed consonants to be differentiated from vocalizations. Adding diacritics helps non-Arabs identify and learn words more easily. The first dictionary was created in the 700s. As the Islamic Caliphates earned conquests in Turkey and Persia, new vocabulary words were added to Arabic. Even terms in Classical Greek entered Arabic when the Grand Library in Baghdad was developed. And I don’t necessarily mean a big building with books in it, like in Alexandria. The Grand Library was also called the House of Wisdom, and likely referred to a public intellectual academy. That also included scholarly books that needed translating.
Throughout the development of Arabic as a language, it was the various forms of poetry that pushed the language forward. Poetry is ingrained in the Islamic cultures of medieval times, one cannot be discussed without the other. You also can’t speak of the Arabic language, without speaking about the Quran. It’s difficult for a non-Arabic speaker to comprehend how significant this book is, not just to the religion of Islam, but to the Arabic language itself. One comparison I personally would liken it to are the works of Shakespeare. And I use this comparison for English-speakers to understand how relevant the Quran still is to the development of the Arabic language. To make an even more apt comparison, linguistically, the various Arabic dialects compare to how the various Romance languages diverge from each other. A speaker of Moroccan Arabic would not be immediately understood by an Arabic speaker from Iraq, in the same way that a French speaker would not immediately be understood by an Italian. But the two could easily learn the differences in their vocabulary and phrasing, in order to communicate.
Another large part of the story of Arabic as a language is about the scholarship; the mathematicians and physicians and astronomers, who helped establish foundational knowledge we still use today. And yet, in many Western classrooms, it’s the Greeks and Romans …maybe the Egyptians, who get air time. Great minds like those of Ibn al-Haytham, the “father of optics'', who unlocked the way humans perceive light. Ibn Sina, often referred to as the “father of early modern medicine”, is credited with recognizing that pathogens could be spread through the air. The Banu Musa brothers invented the automatic crank, conical valve, and control valve. In the medieval Islamic world, glass was manufactured from stone, soap-making was an industry, the earliest hollow-glass syringe was used for cataract surgery, magnifying glass and convex lenses were produced, sponges were soaked in narcotic drugs and used as anesthesia for the first time.
It would be difficult to have this amount of scientific progress and not have words associated. Some of the words we’ll hear about on today’s episode do indeed relate to the sciences of the Islamic world. But as you would expect, if you’ve taken any Western Civilization 101 college course, much of the Arabic language also revolves around trade. Ah yes, the famous Silk Road. China and India being connected to Europe through the trading of goods not found on the respective ends of the road. And the Islamic world benefited financially and culturally from being located between Asia and Europe.
Let’s start there. There are some very common words we use all the time in English that have their roots in Arabic. Like: Coffee, Cotton, Lemon, Lime, Orange, Tangerine. Even if this is new information to you, knowing about trade along the Silk Road, it shouldn’t be a surprise. Coffee was first cultivated in Ethiopia and Sufi monasteries in Yemen used coffee as a means to concentrate during prayers. Commercial Mediterranean trade routes brought coffee to Italy in the 16th century and… well, let’s just say it got popular real quick. The word ‘coffee’ is derived from the Arabic ‘qahwa’, which then became the Turkish word ‘kahve’ because Turkish did not have a ‘w’ sound.
The word ‘coffee’ is a great example of how an origin word, as the item itself is traded and used and spoken about, modifies to meet the needs of the language speaker. The words ‘lemon’ and ‘lime’ however are great examples of how a word doesn’t change much, even though the item itself can be cultivated in various places with the right climate. Same with the word ‘cotton’. The plant exists in multiple places around the world, including the Americas, and yet it’s the Arabic root word that survives in English. This is because the Islamic world had some of the greatest merchants and traders. And when you trade in goods, if it’s a good the other side doesn’t have a word for, you learn the word from the trader. Or even if you do have a word for it, if trade is successful, you may take on that word over the course of time.
Small tangent story to discuss Islamic trade. Let’s talk about Mansa Musa. Mansa Musa was a king of the Mali Empire, located along the Niger River in parts of modern-day Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, and Guinea. The Empire reached its territorial peak during his reign and was an empire wealthy from the gold trade. The fabled city of Timbuktu became part of the empire during Musa’s rule, and was a key trading city along the caravan route. Taxes on any gold, salt, and copper that moved through the empire gave the empire great wealth. Mansa Musa, ruling at the empire’s height, is often associated as being “the wealthiest person in history”. We don’t know exactly how much he was worth, or how much the empire was worth, because there was no standardized currency used. But to exhibit the type of wealth we’re talking about… When Musa departed Mali for the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, he left with over 60,000 men, 80 camels, and over 50,000 pounds of gold bars and gold dust. This gold was handed out to the poor he encountered along his 2,700 mile journey. So, Mansa Musa is also known as one of the most generous kings in history as well. Musa even established a university in Timbuktu, which brought astronomers, mathematicians, and other scholars from around the Islamic world to his empire.
Mansa Musa is an amazing tangent to talk about, since he represents the classic Islamic king or emir who benefitted from the trade of caravan routes common to North Africa. But also, his place in history is established today due to Arabic writings, but is not necessarily supported by local Mande oral traditions. Another example of “those who are written in history are remembered”.
Back to the language… Other words don’t fit neatly into the world of trade, but do come from the culture of the medieval Islamic world. Words like ‘assassin’ and ‘alcohol’. An assassin was an Arabic nickname for a religious sect during the years of the Crusades, who would carry out killings against rival chiefs of other sects. Christians got wind of their brutal killings and the word stuck. Alcohol was not originally liquid, but the very fine powder of stibnite or galena, which is the natural mineral form of lead sulfide. The word refers to the science of sublimation, so when Swiss scientist Paracelsus tried to recreate the science of the medieval Islamic world, he viewed the resulting powder as a distillate. And so, the word evolved to mean the distillate of wine. Europeans had been drinking wine and beer and other forms of liquor for centuries, dating back to Roman times. The word ‘alcohol’ entered into English in the late 1500s, but by the 1700s meant an “intoxicating ingredient in strong liquor”.
But there are so many other words we use often, stemming from Arabic, that are even more surprising. Instead of going just alphabetically, let’s go categorically. We can start with my favorite category: food! Because people don’t just trade minerals, they trade seeds and plants.
Food words
Let’s begin from some of the oldest food words from Arabic to enter English. Oddly enough, the most surprising word in this food list is one of the oldest still in use.
Candy - The French word çucre candi is ultimately from the Arabic qandi, which is likely from the Sanskrit word khanda. In Sanskrit, it meant a small ‘piece of sugar’. By the time it got to Arabic, it meant specifically ‘cane sugar’. This English word has been in use since the late 13th century - that’s the 1280s and 90s, around the same time that Marco Polo traversed the Silk Road. But it’s also important to consider that the Iberian peninsula, i.e. Spain and Portugal, was ruled by Islamic Caliphates from the early 700s into the late 1400s. It would have been fairly easy for Arabic words to infiltrate via trade and diplomacy into French.
Sugar - Not surprising that if the word ‘candy’ came from Arabic, the word ‘sugar’ would also. The Arabic form is sukkar. Cane sugar had an Old World home in India. Alexander the Great’s company of men spoke of “honey without bees”. The Sanskrit word for ‘sugar’ is sharkara. But it wasn’t until the Islamic world cultivated cane sugar in Spain and Sicily, that Europeans started to replace honey with sugar as a sweetener. Imperial Europeans took cane sugar and ran with it - introducing it to the New World in Cuba and Brazil in the 1500s.
Tamarind - This word is taken directly from the Arabic tamr hindi, meaning “date of India”. The Islamic world would have known of dates, as they’re native to what we call the Persian Gulf. Learning of tamarind and how it grew, on trees same as dates, it makes sense they would term it accordingly. However, the plant in parts of the Malay world is called by a very different name: asam or asam jawa. But Europeans weren’t interacting with the Malay world directly. The Islamic world was much closer. This English word has been in use since the early 1400s.
Artichoke - This food item name is inherently based in the Arabic language. And that’s because the plant itself, while native to the entire Mediterranean, was more successfully cultivated in North Africa. Or rather, the ancient peoples of the Med knew of the cardoon, which is a thistle plant that just doesn’t produce the large globe flower that we think of, when we think of artichoke. The Arabic word al-hursufa was assimilated into Spanish as alcarchofa, which then became the Italian word arcicioffo, and then ultimately the Northern Italian variant word that looks familiar to us: articiocco. The English word artichoke has been in use since the 1530s.
Apricot - OK, so technically, the initial root of this word comes from Latin praecoquum. This has Proto-Indo-European beginnings in the root form of *pekw-, which means to cook or ripen. The Latin word meant “to ripen early” and eventually wandered into becoming the word ‘precocious’. But typically, Latin words simply evolved within its own language family: Romance. Usually, French or Spanish or Italian. But the Latin word praecoquum took a detour into the Byzantine Greek: berikokkia. Which then got passed into Arabic: al-birquq. Arabic speakers traded with Spanish and Portuguese, so the word became albaricoque. And as the word was assimilated into French, both the “l” and the “ck” end sound were dropped: abricot. The English word of apricot has been in use since the 1550s.
Aubergine - This is a French word directly assimilated into English, but where did the French get the word? From the Arabic al-badinjan and it was the Islamic world which introduced the aubergine to Europeans. Ancient Romans or Greeks had no knowledge of this plant and its edible product. Even the Arabic word stems from elsewhere. The Persian word badin-gan assimilated into Arabic, but the Persians had the word from Sanskrit: vatigagama. And that’s because this plant is native to Southeast Asia. The word in English has been used since only the late 1700s.
Industry or trade words
This is a central theme to how Arabic words entered the English language, but let’s get specific into a handful of words for this category.
Camphor - I realize this might not seem like a big deal in the fields of industry, but in the medieval world, it was a big deal for medicine. We still use camphor today. Anybody grow up with Vicks? How about Blistex? Ever seen Shaq shill for Icy Hot? All those brand products contain camphor. In the medieval world, it was a main ingredient in embalming fluid, a fumigant during times of the Black Death and other plagues, and a perfume ingredient in the Islamic world. This word comes directly from Malay, one region where the trees grew: kapur. Which then became the Arabic kafur. Which then became the French camphre. The English word has been in use since the early 14th century.
Amber - Now, this is an interesting story: amber was known to the Romans, so why do we use a word rooted in Arabic? Well, we use both words actually, just not for the same thing. The Romans knew of Baltic amber (a region known for being plentiful in amber; FYI one palace in St Petersburg Russia has an entire room made out of the stuff), but the Romans called it electrum. This word has wandered into English as the word electric. This makes sense, as initial attempts to create electricity produced a light similar in color to amber. The Arabic word anbar easily became the French word ambre, especially as the ‘nb’ in Arabic can sound like ‘mb’. This English word has been in use since the mid 14th century.
Ream - You can’t trade goods well, without knowing how much of it you’re getting. This word comes from the French reyme, which came from the Spanish resma, which came from the Arabic rizmah. It’s always referred to a ‘bundle’ of paper. And this is because the Islamic world brought the manufacture of cotton paper into Spain. There is also a variant of this word in Dutch, rym. But the Spanish did control Holland during the early 1500s, which is when this Dutch word came into being. Dutch likely borrowed the word from the Spanish. This English word has been in use since the mid 14th century.
Crimson - You also can’t trade goods well, without specifying what you want. Crimson has always referred to a highly chromatic deep red color, and it first entered into Italian via the silk trade with the Islamic world. Italian silk merchants then helped the word profligate into many other European languages, even Russian. The Italian word of the 13th century is cremesi, which came from the Arabic word of qirmizī. The French form of the word entered English in the 15th century, and we’ve used it ever since.
Jar - What do traded goods come in? OK, technically all kinds of containers, but one of those containers is a jar. This word remains mostly unchanged from the Arabic jarrah. It meant an ‘earthen water vessel, ewer’. Remember the manufacturing of glass from stone in the medieval Islamic world? Glass jars have been used to contain liquid from very early days. Initially, jars would have been much larger than the ones we currently keep in our cabinets, and used primarily for the import/export of olive oil. We’ve been using this English word since the early 15th century.
Tare - How do you know you have ‘enough’ of a good to trade it? The tare, or the allowable difference between gross and net weight. Meaning, the weight of the goods inside the packaging or container versus the weight of them once unpacked. We absolutely still use this word today - on electric scales, especially the small ones used to weigh food in a kitchen. It comes from the Arabic word tarah, which meant ‘a thing deducted or rejected’. When it assimilated into French, it meant ‘wastage of goods, or deficiency’. English has used this word since the late 15th century.
Arsenal - This word may not seem related to trade or industry, but that’s because we use it differently today. Originally, the word came from the Arabic dar as-sina'ah. The dar meant ‘house’ and sina’ah meant ‘art, craft’. In Arabic, this was a house of manufacturing, or a workshop. In Italian, since goods came into and out of naval ports, arzenale came to mean a dockyard. In Venice, they applied the word to a large wharf in the city, from there the English picked it up. It didn’t start to mean ‘place for making or storing weapons and ammunition’ until the 1570s. It had been used as the word for dockyard since about 1500. Bonus: The London football club Arsenal was named for the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, where the original players worked.
Magazine - There’s the arsenal, or workshop from Arabic, but what about the warehouse or storage space? The arsenal would have been on the sending side of trade, the magazine would have been on the receiving side. It comes from the Arabic makhazin, which was from the root verb of khazana or ‘to store up’. Nobody uses the word like this anymore, and that’s because the word began to become figurative in English from the early 1600s. The printed lists of military stores and information were ‘magazines’, which was then used in the 1700s when publishers created periodical journals for gentlemen. It’s not until the mid 1800s, when a magazine becomes a cartridge chamber for a repeating rifle. But the original meaning of a warehouse was used in English from the 1580s.
Tariff - Oddly enough, the word tariff comes into English a good hundred years after the word tare. As an English speaker, these two words must be related, no? Nope. In Arabic, the word is ta’rif, meaning an inventory of fees to be paid. This stems also from a verb in Arabic: arafa. This verb meant ‘he made known, he taught’. This makes sense, since we use the word tariff to refer to laws regulating import duties. The gravitas of the word has never left its meaning. It came from English though Italian, tariffa, meaning price or assessment. English has had this word since the 1590s.
Culture words (clothing, games, way of life)
Check - The most highlighted word I could highlight in this episode is this word: check. Because we use it so often we don’t even notice it. The word check stems from the game of chess, which originated in India, and then migrated to Persia, but came to the Islamic world when the Rashidun caliphate conquered Persia in the 600s. It’s at this point when the use of the term ‘checkmate’ or Shah mat! becomes a rule of play. Both pilgrims and traders alike brought the game to the rest of Europe and it’s the Arabic term that has stuck. In chess, checkmate means the king cannot move and is rendered useless, the game is effectively over. The meaning of the word ‘check’ is used similarly. It initially referred to a hostile environment or harmful incident, which grew to mean a sudden stoppage or restraint, which then became the act of restraining or hindering. If you think about all the words that build off ‘check’ still in everyday use, the sense of the word has not changed. If you checkout at a store, you are stopped from leaving before purchasing. If you check in at a hotel, you stop at a desk before knowing which room to go to. Even when you ask for the check at a restaurant, you are asking for a record of items and their respective cost, so you can verify this with the restaurant to prevent mistakes. This is essentially an act of restraint. This versatile English word has been in use since roughly 1300.
Mattress - This word came from Arabic as al-matrah, which was a large rug or cushion for lying on. The root word of taraha comes literally from the verb meaning ‘to throw down’. It has always meant something relatively flat, on the ground, and for resting. The fabrication of a mattress started from very early on - specifically, that the material inside was tacked down at dispersed intervals, so the woven outside would not slip or burst. English has used this word as such since roughly 1300.
Caravan - I’ve used this word already in today’s episode. In Arabic, a qairawan refers specifically to desert travelers, very likely by camel. And linguists believe this is because the Sanskrit word for camel is karabhah. As the Islamic world collided with the Christian world of Europe during the Crusades, all manner of words and phrases were exchanged. This one has stuck, also because of generational trade routes in North Africa and the Middle East. If it had been a word used only during battles or military campaigns, perhaps the word would have died out with the Crusades themselves, but not so. This English word has been used since the 1590s.
Sequin - The word came from Italian into English about 1610 or so. Now, I’m not going to tell you that sequins as decoration for clothing were traded back in those days. Sadly, no. But how the word came to mean what it is now is very interesting. The word sequin from the 1600s meant an Italian or Turkish gold coin. That’s because the Venetians minted a gold coin called a zecchino. Which came from the word for ‘a mint’: zecca. This Italian word is from Arabic, sikka, meaning ‘a minting die’ and by extension ‘coinage’. It was the Victorians and ladies of the ‘gilded age’ of the 19th century, who loved playing dress up, who began to speak of ‘head dresses in the Greek style, hung with chains of gilt sequins’. This referred to the gold coins of old, but eventually ladies started requesting ‘sequins’ to decorate their garments and hats.
Sofa - Oddly enough, the word sofa comes much later than the word mattress, not until the 1620s. The word as is, is Turkish and the Arabic word is suffah, meaning a bench of stone or wood. The adding of cushions or carpets was implied for comfort, but it’s the actual raised-off-the-floor part that the word refers to more so. Although, in Europe especially, where the climate tends to be colder and wetter, it does make sense that sofas would have taken a while to catch on. Most houses in Europe were not weather-proofed until the 1600s. And of course the wealthy of the 1700s and 1800s had plenty of other words for furniture from “the East”, i.e. ottoman, divan. Divan is a word from Arabic via Turkish, for example.
Phew! We’ve really covered a lot of vocabulary. And there’s more! Stay tuned for five more words that we maybe don’t use very often, but have some fun stories behind them.
Are you ready for just five more words for our episode today? There’s some interesting tangents and misnomers to each of these words. Let’s dive in!
The extra fun words
Admiral - Since about 1200, English has had this word in some capacity. But it wasn’t always spelled this way. French originally had this word as amirail in the 12th century. No ‘d’. English initially left the ‘d’ out as well: amiral. And that’s because this word stems from the Arabic word emir. Which means a chief of a tribe, or a ruling prince. But during the Crusades (there they are again!), the use of the word amiral referred to a Muslim military commander, a “Saracen commander”. The use of the word Saracen was important to the Christian Crusaders, as it marked someone out as religiously different - as well as ethnically different. So, a Saracen is darker-skinned as well as a Muslim. Humans are great at lumping things together aren’t we? Linguistically, at some point, the ‘d’ was added to adhere to European language familiarities. Why say amiral when Latin provides us with words like admire? Why not add a ‘d’ to compensate? Bonus: the use of the word admiral to refer to naval commanders goes all the way back to the 15th century!
Garble - This word entered English in the early 15th century. Originally, it meant ‘to inspect and remove the dirt from spices’, i.e. ‘to sift’. Where are these spices from? Well, OK, not just the Islamic world, fair enough - but the Arabic word of gharbal is the one that stuck with us. This is actually a word widespread amongst the traders of the Mediterranean. Italian has garbellare, Spanish has garbillare, and French has garbeler. In a general sense, it means to ‘sort out the finer parts of anything’. Could be spices, could be grain. Somehow the word evolved to mean ‘distort for some devious purpose’. The idea of a lie of omission. During medieval times, there was a European idea that if you were well-spoken you could be trusted. Only mumblers or stammerers or garblers were considered devious - or perhaps their tongue was possessed and their speech was compromised by some demon. We still have this idea, in the sense that if you hear someone say something ‘under their breath’ you are suspicious. Luckily, to ‘mix up or confuse your words’, i.e. garble, is no longer considered the devil’s work. Well, I won’t say that to your face on a caffeine-less Monday morning though!
Zenith - This word does come from Arabic by way of medieval Latin, but the Arabic word doesn’t look much like zenith. And that’s because of a transliteration bungling. The Arabic word is samt, which is an abbreviation of samt ar-ras. This literally means the road over your head, and the word samt was simply a road or a path. Latin scholars were reading and translating Arabic texts without an Arabic speaker to guide them. So, the letter ‘m’ was misread as a ‘ni’ combination, becoming cenit or senit. French added the ‘h’ at the end, but the meaning is still intact: ‘point of the heavens directly overhead at any place’. It wasn’t until the early 1600s that the word evolved to mean the highest point. The opposing word from Arabic that also comes to English, luckily completely unchanged, is nadir. In Arabic it is: nazir as-samt. Meaning ‘imaginary point of the celestial sphere vertically opposite to the zenith of the sun; the inferior pole of the horizon’. Both words come from the Islamic world’s work in astronomy. It wasn’t until the very late 1700s that the word came to mean ‘the lowest point’. Good to know we can’t have one without the other!
Cipher / Zero - These two words are related! Cipher came to English in the late 14th century, but zero came later in the early 1600s. A cipher is originally the ‘arithmetical symbol for zero’. That’s because the Arabic word is sifr, which means ‘nothing, nought, empty’. As Arabic numerals entered Europe via the study of the Islamic world’s great scholars, the idea of zero had to come as well. And this is where the Islamic world has had the greatest impact on Europe. Let’s nerd out a bit, shall we? There are different types of numbering systems. An additive system is like the one used in ancient Rome. The letter V meant the number five and that’s all it could mean. The only purpose of numbers is counting. It’s why the Romans had a different symbol for ten and hundred and thousand. Those symbols are orders of magnitude. The Islamic world used a positional system. And this is not a system compatible with counting. Imagine trying to write the number 2,002 in a positional system without the number zero. Romans would simply have had MMII. Two symbols for a thousand plus two symbols for one. But how do you represent the absence of hundreds in a number? On top of that, two absences back to back! You would require a number in and of itself to mean a lack of a number. A bit mind blowing, if I’m honest. And the Islamic world is the world that gave us the word for this number, but it is the subcontinent of India, and the Gupta dynasty specifically, that gives us the idea of the number zero. Even other cultures who used positional systems, like the Babylonians, Mayan, and Chinese, didn’t really ideate the number zero until later on. They simply used spaces to show an absence of a number, like a placeholder. It was in India that a mathematician first proved that subtracting a number from itself resulted in zero. As much as the European world referred to “Arabic numerals”, the Islamic world referred to arqam al hind - “figures from India”.
Bonus: the idea of a cipher key also comes from mathematics. Early codes substituted numbers for letters. A cipher is then a key to unlocking a secret way of writing. The Latinization of the idea begat the word decipher, for example. The ‘de’ prefix comes from Latin, meaning ‘down, down from, off’. To decipher means ‘to interpret by means of a key’, i.e. decode. However, I can’t help but love the idea that linguistically, the word decipher means ‘down from nothing’ or ‘under nothing’ or even ‘sub zero’, if you will.
And that concludes our jaunt through Arabic words used in English. I mentioned at the start of this episode that English being the most widely-spoken language would be an important piece of the story. The story of languages is very much the story of humans. If humans migrate, trade with each other, intersect in any kind of manner; language evolves accordingly. And sadly, it’s often the winners of wars or captains of industry whose language will triumph. But English also has another element that has allowed it to become the most widely-spoken: it’s relatively simple and highly flexible.
When I say simple, I mean grammatically. Plurals are fairly simplistic and easy to learn, as is verb conjugation. There’s a pattern to pick up, I swear! Also, it’s a gender-neutral language without many addendums or markers needed. English has remained flexible and assimilated other languages’ vocabulary into itself, allowing for multiple ways to say the same thing. From a linguistic perspective, it’s an astonishing feat. It is estimated that roughly 60% of the current modern vocabulary of English is borrowed from other languages.
And there you have it, the answer to the trivia question: What surprising language has English borrowed almost 1000 words from? I hope you enjoyed learning about how much of a polyglot you already are, just for speaking the English language. Another episode of Not Trivial is coming soon, so please subscribe - available wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you!