Learn Vocabulary: English words that come from other languages

Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Hi. James from engVid. We always do very serious lessons.

Well, kind of serious lessons, in my case, but usually, you know, we stick with the grammar,

the idioms, vocabulary, and whatnot, and every once in a while, it's just kind of fun to

find out where words are. There's nothing wrong with learning for learning sake. In

fact, when you learn that way and you're having fun, you're probably going to want to learn

more. Okay? Even myself, I've taught English for at least 10 years. Probably longer; gosh

knows. Every once in a while I'm fascinated when I learn the history of something that

I didn't know existed or, you know, why we use this instead of that, or there used to

be something else. It's fascinating.

So today, we're going to have a bit of a fun lesson where you're going to learn about English

words. You're still going to learn how to use them, but we're going to look at words

that actually come from you, the viewing audience. You guys always watch us. Now we're going

to return the favour and tell you about words that come from your countries, your languages

that we brought. Okay? So these are words from around the world, brought to you by Mr.

E. And you can see our globe is here. And we're going to take a first look at our visual

words, and then we're going to do a few others and give you some definitions. You ready?

Let's do the first one.

What could be more American in the world than the hamburger? There's McDonald's hamburgers,

Big Boy burgers, just burgers. Right? The hamburger and the hot dog are American as

apple pie. But what if I told you the hamburger is not American? Right now there are about

a million Americans having heart attacks, like: "Don't take that away from us. That's

American like apple pie." Like an American German apple pie? [Laughs] You'll see, in

the country Germany there is a place called Hamburg, and the hamburger wasn't served on

a bun. That, I have to give to the Americans, they put it on a bun. Because you know they're

lazy... I didn't say that, guys, but they don't want to use knife and fork, so they

use a bun. In Hamburg, they had the patty, the beef patty, and they would eat it that

way. It took an American to put some bread underneath and bread on top, and have that

patty that way. But it... Hamburger was originally from Hamburg and it was just a meat patty.

Didn't know that, did you? That's right, Americans, I've got more. [Laughs]

What's next? Popular instrument. If you love jazz [makes music noise] that's not even a

saxophone; I don't know how to play. Go watch The Simpsons and watch Lisa Simpson, she plays

the saxophone. I had a teacher named David Mott, great guy, he also played the sax. Professional

jazz player. Sexy instrument. Now, the saxophone, it sounds very French, no? The French people

right now are going: "Of course, it's magnifique. It's ours. It is a phone. It is a sax." I've

got news for you: bloody Germans... Well, not Germans. This guy's... This time the guy's

from Belgium. His name was Adolphe Sax. Okay? "Adolphe" is spelt "ph", so you've got your

"ph" here. "Saxophone", it was his musical scene. He's from Belgium. Belgium? Except

from The Muscles from Brussels, Jean-Claude Van Damme, nothing comes from Belgium. And

chocolates. But they also made the saxophone. Cool? There you go.

I got one more for you. Canadian, eh? Finally, the Canadians are like: "We're on the map,

dude." News for you: "Machiavellian", which means devil-like. Right? You think it's Canadian?

Maple syrup, hosers, hockey? No. Italiano. The Italians invented this. This guy's name

was Nicolli-, Machiavelli. He wrote book 500 years ago, and this book was so bad the church

didn't like it, and they called it devil and Machiavellian when a person has a bad idea.

Yeah, I know, it's a bad Italian accent, but you get the point. We take a lot of your words,

we use it in our language, and you come and say: "English is so difficult." I go: "Yeah,

it is, because they're your words." So we've done these ones. And what we're going to do

now is I'm going to... You know, I'm going to do that magical disappear thing and I'm

going to introduce you to some other words that have been brought into English in our

everyday lexicon or dictionary that we use regularly, and give you some expressions that

we might use them with. You ready? Let's go on our world tour.

And we're back. So, we started with those first three words, if you remember. We talked

about the saxophone, the hamburger, and Machiavellian, and we noticed that words that seem to be

English actually can come from different parts of the world. We're going to look at a couple

other words now or a few that come from not just different places, but different times

in history. You ready? Let's go to the board.

All right, so: "spartan". Some of you watched the movie The 300. "This is Sparta!" which

this is a... This was a Greek city state, about 2,000 odd years ago. All right? "Spartan"

means severely simple. It means... It's not just simple. Simple is nice. Water is simple.

The severely simple. It's hard to describe. It means very strongly simple, but hard, harsh.

"Harsh" means strong, but in a negative way. So they kept things very, very simple. Okay?

So when somebody says: "This is a spartan existence", it means there's nothing much.

Maybe you have one chair, one bed, one pair of pants, one shirt, and that's all you have.

A spartan diet would be very simple. Maybe you would have four vegetables, two fruits,

and two pieces of meat. Nothing else. No cake. No, put the Fanta down. No Fanta. None of

that. You're living a spartan existence. [Whistles] Tough. Okay?

We use these as... Some expressions you might say: "A spartan diet", I gave you an example

of that. No cake, sugars, and that. Just simple, basic foods. You kill it, you eat it. What

I kill I keep. That's it. That's spartan, son. "A spartan existence", you know that

cellphone, "bringity, bringity, bring"? No cellphone, no internet, no TV. That's right.

And your game box, good bye. Spartan existence: chair with no couch. Woo, couch is gone too,

baby. You're lucky you get to sit down. You got a bed and you got a chair. You go to work,

you come back, you go to bed, you get up and you do it again. Nothing else. Oh, and working

out like Arnold. Spartan existence. Maybe a book, if you're lucky. That's a privilege.

[Laughs]

And a "spartan upbringing". Some parents are very strict. They will say something like:

"No television. Only on the weekends. No candy, except, you know, three times a year. You

know, one present a year. You're going to have a lot of discipline." That's a spartan

upbringing, which means all of the things that many children enjoy; playing out and

doing... You don't. You would be working, sleeping, going to school, being strong, eating

basic foods. No... Not a lot of fun. Disney World, good bye. All right? So, when people

talk about spartan, it's very simple, very basic, and it can be harsh for many people.

Very strong.

Let's talk about "bedlam". "Bedlam" means chaos. "Chaos" means it's out of control,

it's crazy. Everything's going over; noise, people running, fires, whatnot. It's total

bedlam. No control. No leadership. Funny, because "bedlam" comes from a famous English

mental hospital. They were crazy. Absolutely not. They were crazy house, and they were

so crazy, people would refer to a situation being bedlam, and they go: "Oh my god, is

it that crazy? This is bad. We have to fix it." They tore down the hospital, but that's

from a long time ago, and that's where all the famous mental people went. All right?

So when you talk about bedlam, you talk about chaos. Things are just nuts, out of control.

"Chauvinist", this is funny. This comes from a guy from France who loved Napoleon so much,

and thought Napoleon was the best, the French people were the best. I know there's some

French people right now watching, going: "We are the best." You're not. Nicolas Chauvin

thought they were fantastic, so the name became used for anybody who thinks something is superior

to other things. It could be men superior to women, one religion superior to another

one. If you think your country is superior to another, you're a chauvinist. A person

who greatly believes in the superior or the greatness of your people or your group to

others. All right?

"Boycott", I like this. Can you imagine this? A long, long time ago, laddy, in Ireland,

there was a guy who had... He was a landlord. We have a video out about property and ownership,

go check it out, and it's got "landlord", and it explains it. It's a person who own

lands, and people live there, and they pay rent; monthly money to stay or food. Anyway,

this guy was so bad... His name was Boycott. He was so bad that the people in the town

socially isolated him. They wouldn't talk to him, because he was mean to the tenants.

Like maybe he wouldn't give them water to drink or he wouldn't let them have their food

there. He was so horrible, and he wasn't even living there. He was what we call "absentee

landlord". He didn't live there. He did nothing. These people isolated him socially. So when

you boycott something, you refuse to do... Deal with or deal business with somebody,

because you say: "You're so bad I don't want to have anything to do with you." Now, you

can't boycott a friend. I wish we could, but you can't boycott a friend. It's to boycott

someone that you do business with. So they will eventually lose money and hopefully change

their ways. All right? They do it for countries as well. They boycott them. All right?

Finally: "mentor". In English, we use it... People use it every day and think mentor is

somebody... And it's true. Is somebody who's loyal and they advise you. They're smart,

they're wise, and they advise you. They give you good advice to help you do well in your

career. Usually career or sports. Right? They help bring you up through the ranks. Help

you move up. But funny, this word is from Greece from thousands of years ago. There

was a poem. We call it a book, but it was a huge, a gigantic poem called The Odyssey,

and in this book, the hero was named Odysseus. Think of Batman, Spiderman, Wolverine, all

of those guys without the superpowers, without the super uniform. He was a guy. Okay? But

he went and travelled the world, and he was trying to get back home. And he went on...

That's what The Odyssey is called, travelling. He went on a big journey to get back home.

And he had a good friend, and his friend's name was... Guess what? Mentor. His friend's

name was Mentor, so you know, all the smart people in the world went: "Hmm. Mentor was

his good friend and he gave him good advice. Why don't we call everybody who gives good

advice and is loyal a mentor?" And thus, the word was born. Da-da. So we've gone from Greece,

France, Belgium, Greece again, London. We've... Well, we didn't come to Canada. I put Canadian,

but we never came back here. One day there'll be a word that will be here that's strictly

Canadian. That day's not today.

Anyway, once again, we have our little quiz, the mini quiz, because you're going to take

the bigger quiz after. Right? And we're going to see how well you learned your lesson today.

Are you ready?

"There was __________ in the streets when Japan beat Brazil in the world cup."

Think about it. Japan, I love you, your people are beautiful. [Kisses] You cannot beat Brazil.

If you beat Brazil in the world cup in the next couple of years, there would be what?

People would go crazy. They would lose their minds. Right? There would be

bedlam. Chaos.

Trust me, the Brazilians would go crazy first.

Then the rest of us, like: "Really? Oh that's so nice."

Okay, what about number two? Mr. E thinks that women are not as smart as

men. He is a __________ pig." How can he say that? How can he think men

are superior to women? Clearly, ladies, because I love you ladies, you know that's not true.

Right? Right. I think Mr. E is a what?

He's a chauvinist. But we would say here: "He is

a male chauvinist pig." Male indicates he is a man and he thinks men are better than

women. So a male chauvinist pig is what Mr. E is. I always liked that worm. We've been

together for years, man. Anyway.

Finally, number three on our quiz which I know you're going to know the answer to if

I give you two seconds. One, two, done. Your time's up. [Laughs]

"Her father was strict when she was a child. She had a __________."

What? So her childhood, she was getting up, upbringing. What kind of upbringing would

have a strict father, wouldn't let her have dollies? Well, she was a girl who played with

trucks, man. She didn't play around. She had a

spartan upbringing. Remember we talked about

that? When the father is strict and you have very few things. She had a spartan upbringing.

And that concludes our lesson. It wasn't spartan in any way. We gave you all of the frills

and we travelled the world. A small odyssey, you might say. And I digress. Anyway, listen,

it was a great lesson. Thank you for coming here once again. Love the fact you interact

with us. We love your comments. We do look at them. In fact, one of the lessons coming

up is on one of your comments.

But before we go there, I want you to go to a special place that's in my heart. Okay?

I'm a bit of a chauvinist on this because I do feel that engVid is really good. Forgive

me. But engVid, I just mentioned it. www, the three w's, right? Then eng as in English,

let me do it this way, vid as in video. Or I'll turn it around. Woops. I can't remember.

In England, don't look because I did it wrong. Okay? www.engvid.com, okay? Where you'll see

myself and a lot of other fantastic teachers who can teach you as much wonderful English

as you'd like. I hope you enjoyed the lesson to give you a little bit... Bring a little

bit of you to us, because we appreciate what you've done for our language.

Have a great day, and don't forget: go do the quiz and press "like". All right? Sign up. Bye.